In good shapeI purchaced this shortly after a client of mine lost her horse unexpectedly. My intentions with the product was to recreate her horse as a model so she had something to hang on to. The packaging was great, everything wrapped in bubble wrap which I will be playing with for a while. The models are bigger than I expected, picturing them the size of a breyer stablemate which is very small. The quality of the model is fair, only a few atomical descrepencies and most of the seams are well hidden. The brushes are low quality, and the bristles will start to fray and seperate after the first couple of coats. This is fine for big splotches or a solid colored horse, not great for fine details in eyes or feet. If you are really paitent you might be able to get a toothpick to work for you, but a better quality tiny brush is well worth your time otherwise. The paint is the worst part about the package. You get a little paint in containers that are hard to open and close with out making a mess, difficult to seperate, and hard to pour the paint out of. The paint quality is poor, and it is hard to mix them together to get the brown you are specifically looking for with the avaliable colors. This would be fine for a little kid making their dream horse, dissipointing for an adult trying to recreate life. The models are not pre primed but it seems just about any acrylic paint will adhere to the model just fine, so if your kid wants a blue horse you can run to the craft store real quick and get any color blue your heart desiers no problem. I ended up getting some miniture paint from a local table top gaming store and was much happier with the final outcome. It is recomended in the instruction manual to cover the horse with a matt protective seal when done, which i recommend you do, but is not included in the box.As a model to let your kids paint, I give this 5 stars. The paint is meh, but they will have fun.However, I bought this model so that I could paint a unicorn toy for my daughter for Christmas. She's really into them and I thought that it would be a nice gift.The unicorn is a good size, easy to play with but not huge. It's very sturdy and has decent construction. There are mold lines, but if I wanted to do so, they could be sanded and patched no problem. I knew that the unicorn would be played with, so I didn't do that extra step.The paint that they give you is standard iridescent colors. The problem with this type of paint is that it has to be low pigment (to get the shine) and the base horse doesn't immediately take it very well. I did end up using the black, white, and a little bit of the pink because it had just enough pigment.Unless you just want to add a light glaze of color over the white, you are going to need a LOT of coats. If you used a very thick acrylic or model paint you'd need fewer. I used a mix of the paints the give you and Arteza iridescent acrylics. This pony has 3-4 coats easy.The reason I took off a star is that the mane and tail are terrible. The tail has so little hair that it almost feels like she's balding. I might try adding another anchor in there to fluff it up, but I doubt that my daughter will mind that her pony is lacking in the tail department.This kit is great. It comes with three Stablemates horses, which are three to four inches tall and 1:32 scale. It includes three "Horsey Colors", which are white, black, and brown. The paint seems thin in the package, but once you start putting it on the horse it works out better than it would if it were thick because it barely shows brush marks. It took me two coats to cover the foal, with lots of paint to spare. I didn't use much of the paint it came with because I have my own acrylic paint, but I'm sure if I'd used it there would have been more than enough. It mixed easily, and thin coats took about ten minutes to dry completely. The package the paint is in is hard to open, but it doesn't squirt out hard. The included paintbrush was warped and the wood was dried out and splintery; and the end was crunchy when I got it, so I'd recommend buying an extra paintbrush with this.The horses had a couple of imperfections in the plastic where there were little pieces sticking off, but I could easily pull it off. One of the horses (the grey model shown on the right of the picture) had a relatively deep scratch on its left side. I was able to cover it up with paint, but it is still there. The best horse in the set is definitely the one shown on the left (the black and white one in the picture) because it has the most detail. The foal was pretty easy to paint, but it was hard to get in between his neck and chest.The instruction booklet tells you about a few different colors of horses, but it does not show you how to paint them. There is, however, a diagram that shows shading and highlights, which is VERY helpful.I would not recommend this product for beginners, since the horses are very small and detailed. If you have some experience painting model horses you will most likely love this set, but I would recommend a Classics or Paddock Pals size horse to paint if you're a beginner. Overall the set was very good for the $8 paid, and I would recommend it to anyone with some experience painting model horses.My seven year old received these for her birthday and was in love. She and her nine year old sister painted them. The painting process requires some patience if you do not want the colors to run together or to be of uneven thickness. They were of course impatient and did not wait in long enough in between coats. They were able to wipe/wash the color off and redo some areas that blurred grey from too much paint / too many colors at once. Their final pieces had some unevenness to the finished product but I chalk that up to age and impatience! The colors provided are vibrant and an ample amount of paint is provided for each color. The only improvement we would suggest is having more than one pony that can rear up on its back legs and be stable.Really really overpriced. Cheap plastic like it comes from the £ shop. Daughter did love it but I would say should be maximum £10My children love these and have purchased a few in the last couple of years... easy to use kids get messy and crafty. Lots of enjoymentThese horses are brilliantly detailed. You can paint them your own colours or use the enclosed booklet to choose a horse breed colour. Comes with full instructions and set of paints with paint brush. Highly recommended. Will buy more soon. Thanks for a great idea.Little girl loves the fact the horses are translucent and not white like normal paint sets , one thing is though it could be abit cheaper for what you get but overall happy with it.Despite it is a toy, you will have a lot of fun painting the little models to your liking. You can paint the horses with real colors, as in the available instructions book, or with the colors suggested by your fantasy.