"Bob Kling makes a final touch to his Furby creation at the butter cow display at the Ohio State Fair in 2000. Kling is director of Sculpting for Hasbro."
Article From The Cincinnati Enquirer (newspapers.com transcript)
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 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.
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.
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