Sunday, August 13, 2000
What's the Buzz?
Hasbro butters up the fair
How do you bring butter to life? Mix toy-makers with the dairy farmers during the Ohio State Fair.
Eight Cincinnati toy sculptors from Hasbro went from designing action-figures to spending four days in a refrigerator sculpting butter.
The local design team is behind this year's 2,100-pound butter sculpture — the largest ever at the fair — on display through Aug. in Columbus. Accompanying the annual cow and calf are depictions of Hasbro's Mr. Monopoly, pet Furby and a Tonka Truck.
The Hasbro designers approached the American Dairy Association (ADA) of the Mideast after their veteran butter sculptor of 36 years retired.
The ADA Mideast liked the idea. There aren't a lot of skilled butter sculptors in the area to carry on the century-old tradition.
“The dairy industry and Hasbro have a lot in common — children,” said Jenny Wilson, director of communications for Mideast ADA, who pointed out that the “milk mustache” ad campaign is aimed at children.
Adept at molding clay into child-size figures, the toy designers wanted to see if they had what it takes to a depict a life-size dairy cow and calf.
Designing the butter sculpture involved more than making something that's pleasing to the eye, and made with 100 percent Mideast butter — it had to depict a champion milker.
Not familiar with the elements that make-up the “ideal'; Holstein cow, the toy designers traveled to Pleasant Plain to see a grand champion Holstein cow. They took measurements and pictures while the herdsman pointed out what features a dairy man notices when judging a cow.
“This stuff isn't generated on a computer,” said Bob Kling, director of sculpting at Hasbro, Inc., in Cincinnati.
Some choice details, such as the folds of skin in the hind quarters, a big vein on the udder and the slope of the cow's back, were pain painstakingly patted into place.
Contrary to popular opinion, butter is no easy medium.
“It's slimy,” said Mr. Kling “[Butter] responds a little bit like bad clay,” he said.
Although the team worked in a 45-degree walk-in cooler, they found that their body heat would still melt the butter that ran down their arms.
“At the end of the day we would shower and even then, we still smelled like butter,” said Mr. Kling.
However artfully successful the sculptures are, they'll last only as long as the fair.
“They'll turn off the cooler and pressure wash the frames,” said Mr. Kling, who said it would be too expensive to try to preserve the butter art in another medium.
— Sarah Anne Wright
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