I need to work on my analogies. I've been using that phrase for months, trust HN to point out the error! To be fair, I base the analogy on the following:

Due to a phenomenon known as color confinement, quarks are never directly observed or found in isolation; they can only be found within hadrons

What? Bosons, such as a photon, definitely exist in the sense that they are part of the Standard Model of particle physics. They are as 'real' as electrons or quarks or, in some sense, a table.