Puffy Stickers!

My latest big project: going through last year’s horse trading. The spreadsheets were all fine and up-to-date: the work was in the cleaning, sorting and organizing of the paperwork that went into it. I would have finished today, too, if the printer hadn’t run out of toner.

I’ve had too much experience with electronic files being lost, destroyed or tampered with to abandon the security of hard copies. And there’s some satisfaction in seeing it all neatly tabbed, collated and sitting on the shelf in one sturdy little binder. It’s like a craft project, with data instead of scrapbook paper!

Since I was already in the mood, I also started reorganizing my hobby archives. I had my archives in a couple of different locations in the house, and I’m now attempting to relocate all - or most - of it into my office. I knew I had a lot of stuff, but putting it all in one room was quite enlightening.

I’ll go on another day about my efforts to create a true model horse hobby archive; I scrapped my first attempt to articulate my thoughts about it (thus explaining the shortness of today’s post!) And I do want to tidy up the place a bit before I share pictures of what my "library" looks like, anyway.

I will share a couple of things that I found in the move: the Puffy Stickers I mentioned in the post about the J.C. Unger connection a little while back. They were right where I thought they were - in a mixed box of loose bits of Breyer tack.


In case they aren’t quite readable the first sheet has: (Bay) Jumping Horse, Overo Paint, Lady Phase, Trakehner, Traditional Black Beauty, Traditional Man o’ War, (Buckskin) Mustang, Tennessee Walker (aka Midnight Sun) and Legionario III.


Second Sheet: Stud Spider, (Palomino) Family Stallion, (Palomino) Western Prancing Horse, Clydesdale Stallion, (Appaloosa) Running Stallion, (Buckskin) Quarter Horse, Clydesdale Mare, (Bay) Running Mare and the (Mahogany Bay) Proud Arabian Stallion.

They’re in remarkably good condition, considering that they’re nearly 30 years old. The sheets are bent slightly, but I don’t see any yellowing, peeling or cracking. I did keep them in their original wrappers and stored in an unlit closet for most of that time, which probably helped.

Side Stander Clocks

Let’s continue with the theme of "whatever happens to be on or near my desk" with this not-so-little beauty, a Palomino Side Stander Clock:


Unlike the "Horse Over" Clock (now considered largely a Hartland-molded product) there’s little dispute over the "Side Stander’s" origins: the horse Breyer-molded. The base probably is, too - there’s no identifying mark to speak of, but the plastic has the same texture, weight and consistency as the horse, and the molded-in swirly color is similar to the color seen on my square tortoiseshell clock with the early Breyer mold mark.

The clock itself is painted metal, with a "Ceramic Clock Co." label on the back. It is generally assumed that the Ceramic Clock Company was a subsidiary of MasterCrafters: some labels show that they shared the same street address. What the exact relationship is not known to me; I haven’t followed up on that topic, not for a lack of interest, but because of the paucity of the paper trail.

The exact chronology of the two clocks is unknown; it’s believed that the Side Stander Clocks came after the Horse Over Clocks, but when exactly - and how long - I don’t know. I don’t think I have any documentation in my archives that even shows a true Side Stander clock for sale, either. A page from the Fall-Winter 1951 Sears Roebuck Catalog does show the non-Breyer, pot-metal version of this clock: I don’t know who was copying whom, though.

Wherever the truth lies, the horses found on the Side Stander Clocks represent some of the earliest Breyer model horses known, if not the earliest. Both White and Palomino versions have been found; White ones seem to be slightly more common than the Palomino, but that could be a sampling error on my part.

And did you happen to notice this clock is a variation, too? He has two socks, not the standard four! It’s definitely not very common: I’ve only seen two others like this, and both were Clock Horses as well. Four-sock versions of this clock exist, too, so I don't know if this means that the two-sock version was the first version of the Palomino Western Horse, or just an early variation.

Anyone remember Steha?

Another short one today - I’m in the final throes of a big, complicated non-horse, non-writing project, and I don’t want to lose my momentum. (It’ll be done today, and then I’ll move on to the next big, complicated non-horse, non-writing project. Yes, I do have way too many hobbies!)

Some hobbyists think that Reeves’ involvement in the wonderful world of model horses began in late 1984, when they acquired the Breyer brand. This is not so: prior to that, they were the exclusive U.S. distributor of Steha Horses.

I didn’t know this until recently, myself. A few years ago, I purchased a couple of Reeves’ Great Lines Catalogues on eBay. These books contain bound copies of dealer catalogs of all of the lines that Reeves imported and distributed. I found a Steha catalog bound in the 1981-82 edition.


I don’t have a lot of data about Steha in my archives, aside from this bound-in dealer’s catalog. Stehas were flocked and haired horses made in West Germany, and were available from the 1950s to (at least) the early 1980s. Here’s a link to a good-sized picture of one:

http://www.instappraisal.com/content/steha-horse

Stehas were never a big part of the model horse world, at least in the U.S. First of all, they weren’t very realistic: some were nicer than others, but none of them could pass competitive muster, even in the more forgiving earlier days of the hobby. Second, they were rather expensive compared to Breyers: the wholesale prices for Traditional-scale Breyers in 1981 ranged from $3-6; the wholesale prices for comparable Stehas were $14-19! Yikes!

Some Steha items did find a place in the hobby: their carts and wagons were surprisingly nice, and of much better quality than hobbyists were able to create for themselves at the time.


I remember at least one local toy store that carried Stehas in the 1970s, but I never actually owned one. Aside from being expensive and homely, I was never a big fan of flockies in general: they’re hard to keep clean, and they have a nasty habit of yellowing, shedding and disintegrating.

Stehas are rather expensive and hard to come by nowadays, presumably for the same reason. If I had known back then that they’d have a Breyer connection now, I might have parceled out a bit of my allowance money and bought one.

Adventures in Home Decorating

It’s the question that’s launched a thousand debates at live shows and online: what are Breyers, exactly? Are they toys, or collectibles?

The correct answer: they’re whatever you want them to be. I’m not trying to be clever or coy here: Breyer actually made that "ambiguity" central to their earliest advertising campaign. Their earliest known slogan was "It’s a Toy, a Welcome Gift, an Art Object, because it’s so real" (emphasis theirs, not mine.)


(Sorry for the moire patterning - it's the scanner again.)

Breyer was still a relative newcomer to the world of proprietary products then, and probably seemed like a safe bet to them to shoot for the widest possible customer base. (It’s cheap enough to be a toy, but classy enough to be home décor!)

By the early 1960s, though, different product lines, with different marketing strategies, started to emerge. Some were clearly marketed towards the home décor market - such as Decorators and Woodgrains - while others were clearly marketed as toys, like the Family Arabians (every model, in every color had a name!) Everything else sort-of fell in between: these were the slightly nicer and pricier models that members of the youth market to aspired to, and that the adult market also saw as an affordable and more durable alternative to comparable china figurines.

By the late 1960s, these loose distinctions in their product line fell apart. The short and simple reason why? Hobbyists. Breyer had been aware of the "hobby," such as it was, by the early 1960s, but it wasn’t until the late 1960s - with sales lagging, and the brand in danger of being discontinued completely - that Breyer finally decided to tap into the hobbyist market. And hobbyists preferred a more realistic model horse.

Pieces designed for "home décor" didn’t disappear overnight; they just didn’t get quite the same attention and marketing push that pieces designed for the toy and hobbyist markets did. Woodgrains continued to be made into the early 1970s - mostly as special runs for the Ranchcraft Lamps - and a handful glosses and nonrealistic colors were mixed into the regular run line.

In recent years Reeves has attempted to recapture a larger portion of the home décor market. Someone on Blab recently resurrected an ancient thread - from 2004! - about an attempt by Reeves to grab a bigger piece of that market. A few models featured in that failed launch were later repurposed; I think the 2006 Porcelain release Tally Ho might have been one of them.

Another one of these models was later featured as a Daily Breyer on their Facebook page: Hot to Trot. She’s definitely not my cup of tea - not because of the paint job (that I kinda like) but the mold: Magnolia is not one of my favorite Moody sculptures.

Walking Black Angus Bull

Still being a bit lazy; I’m trying to finish at least one of my big sewing projects by the end of the week, and while I am a good multitasker in general, I am not quite good enough to sew and type at the same time.

I just happened to still have one of my Walking Black Angus Bulls on my desk, leftover from the Boehm posts: I think I’ll talk about him today.

The Walking Black Angus Bull is supposedly based on the Boehm Black Angus Bull, though the resemblance is the weakest among the four known Boehm copies: the original was standing, not walking, and didn’t have a halter. There are other differences, too - enough to make me think that there might have been an intermediate step in the mold’s translation to plastic.

He was a relatively late addition to Breyer’s lineup compared to the other Boehm molds - either in 1959 or 1960, at least three years after the Brahma and the Horned Hereford Bull were introduced. Coincidentally, this just so happened to be around the time that Breyer was having legal troubles with Hagen-Renaker concerning the Old Mold Arabians: could it be that Breyer, spooked by the lawsuit, made some pre-emptive changes to the Angus Bull mold?

There just so happens to be rumors of a Standing variation of the Walking Black Angus Bull, originating in Marney Walerius’s book Breyer Models. On page 23 of this now collectible reference book, it’s listed as a separate version of the #72 mold, released in 1957 and 1958.

No such models have turned up anywhere, however, and I rather doubt they will.

Why do I think that? Well, a lot of Marney’s research was based not on physical documentation, but on memories, hearsay and rumors that she picked up in her many trips to the Chicago factory. But memories, hearsay and rumors are unreliable things, and have a nasty habit of changing over time.

I think there is a kernel of truth in there somewhere. Marney was right more often than she was wrong: it’s just taken us years of research and documentation to sift the truth out of the debris. In the case of the Black Angus, we still don’t have enough objective, independent data to distinguish one from the other yet.

Did she confuse the Boehm Angus with the Breyer Angus? Did Breyer create the mold in a standing position originally, and change it prior to production? I don’t know.

Even after he was released, Breyer continued to tinker with the mold. There are three known "states" to the mold: "poodle cut," "semi-rough," and "full rough." It is generally believed that the "poodle cut" version is the rarest, but the "semi-rough" is not easy to find either, probably because it looks similar enough to the "full rough" on first glance that it gets overlooked. It’s only when you put them side to side that you can really see the difference.

A lot of early Breyer molds had significant mold alterations made early on, with the Clydesdale Stallion’s shoulder being the best known of these changes. The reasons for most of these mold changes - including the Walking Black Angus - is unknown.

Oasis and the Multi-Molds

No convenient excuses today: I was just being lazy. I had a longer-than-expected work assignment the other day, and I didn't feel like typing. Then I found a couple of movies in the discount bin at the local Big Lots that just exacerbated the problem. (Me and my fascination with cheesy vampire flicks. Sigh.) But I was actually doing some model horsey research at the Big Lots, so it wasn’t a complete waste of time.

I sent in my entry for the latest Connoisseur drawing Oasis today. My JAH took a little longer than average to arrive at the Ranch, so I witnessed most of fuss and bother from a slightly distant perspective. Was I missing something from the scans? Or was it just the usual carping and moaning? (Too plain! I hated the first tail less! Looks too much like the Bay Missouri Fox Trotter!)

Sure, she’s a little pricey, and she doesn’t have a flashy, ornate paint job that might visually justify the price. But we’re talking about a mold with multiple molding variations: two necks, two tails, two manes (so far.) All three of the known or upcoming releases of this mold differ in both color and shape: it may well be that this particular combination of mold elements may be unique, or rare. So the price justification may come not from the quality of the paint job, but in the mold itself.

Interesting new development, I think.

We’ve had significant changes to molds in the past, but for the most part these were permanent alterations: being able to switch back and forth is something new. (It’s already giving me fits in the documentation department: do I label them by their parts, or give each part combo a label? Grr. Argh.)

Stone paved the way with the ISH and his various mane and tail combos. Emboldened by the success of the ISH, they began to experiment with more drastic and dramatic changes, essentially creating a whole new subcategory of OF models now dubbed "Factory Customs." They’ve improved their processes considerably from their first awkward attempts - leaden lumps of hair being blown in three different directions - but they’re not mass-produced pieces on the same level as an average, regular run Breyer release. Most of the alterations they’ve done have been done post-molding, on a small-scale basis, and are mostly cosmetic.

One of Breyer's earliest experiments with the multiple molding variations was the Classic Shire: we had the head up "Shire A" and the head down "Shire B." We haven’t seen much of the "Shire B" variation, though. All three of his plastic releases have had rather limited distribution: the Bay in the pricey 2405 Delivery Wagon in 2002, the 2007 BreyerFest Contest model Yankee Doodle, and this year’s (now discontinued?) 620 Spotted Shire.

The Spotted Shire’s quick disappearance is being blamed on molding problems. Normally I’m not a big fan of that theory - anytime a mold is taken out of production, even briefly, hobbyists start screaming about molding problems - but there may be some justification in this case. As Reeves’s first serious "multi-mold," he might have some issues that later, more technologically sophisticated ones don’t.

The newer molds have their problems, too: the original, head-down Make A Wish has a funky double shoulder that’s somewhat covered up by her big hairdo. Mane and tail options don’t always "fit" to the body correctly, either technically or aesthetically. I’m sure these mold probably cost more than the average mold, with higher than average maintenance costs.

So far most of the newer "multi-molds" have limited themselves to insertable mane and tail changes; whether we get more molds with more extensive changes will depend on how well the Make A Wish mold performs - both in the factory, and on the shelf.

Grab Bag

I’m still not operating at 100%, but I’m getting there. And along the way I have discovered my new favorite sickbed indulgence: Del Monte Fruit Chillers. (Single-serving sorbets! Brilliant!)

I’ll be doing a bit of a "grab bag" style posting today, wrapping up a few loose ends that don’t merit a single post individually. I’m still feeling a bit scattered from the flu, so I might as well work with it, rather than against.

Speaking of the Grab Bags, I managed to successfully resist their temptations. Part of me feared I would have ended up with a porcelain, and I have a nasty habit of breaking those kinds of things. Especially when I’m slightly disoriented from OTC cold and flu remedies.

Interesting how most of the Medalist Ponies that were sent out in the Grab Bags were the Bronzes - were they going through them by color, or did the bulk of the leftover Ponies just happen to be Bronze? (I can’t recall the ratios of the different colors leftover in the Tent.) Or did they just happen to pick that color because it was the most autumnal of the three colors, and therefore the most appropriate thing to include in a "Fall" Grab Bag?

The second "wave" seem to be including Gold one, so I’m just going with the "by color" theory. And if that’s the case, I still have a shot at getting a Silver one, which is the only one I really want. (It’s one of my stable colors, and the chemical symbol for silver is Ag, which just so happen to be my initials. Hence the want.)

Me and my pedestrian tastes: I think of all the LSE models, I like the Shining N Sassy best. They really put a lot of effort into her: birdcatcher spots, rabicano roaning and mapping on the blaze? Excellent! Not that I have any remote chance of getting her at a reasonable price, even though she’s considered unforgivably "common." I do wonder what’ll happen to the handful of Frankensteeds leftover in the second grabby hands pass through: will there be any controversy when they finally show up somewhere else?

I find it very surprising, still, that there are hobbyists out there that are unaware of the amount of Reeves’s lurking about in the online model horse world. They avoid posting mostly in the interest of not playing favorites (and to avoid the inevitable stream of unsolicited PMs, too.) They will be specifically lurking about on Blab, however, in a thread asking for suggestions for future BreyerFest themes and guest horses. It’s in one of the open, no-pay forums, so if you think you have the next great idea, go for it.

I’ll be doing more follow-up on the Boehm biography in the future; it led me on a couple of interesting and surprising productive research paths, quite literally ranging from the sublime to the ridiculous. (Two words: Miniature Golf. No, really!)

The outdoor flea market is closed for the season. We have plenty of antique malls, thrift shops, indoor markets and Salvation Army outlets to keep me sufficiently busy, but I do miss the cheap, unpredictable thrills the outdoor market offers. Like everyone else, though, I’m having a hard time selling anything right now, so less inventory is probably a good thing.

I have a few things I’m giving away (for the cost of postage): back issues of my BreyerFest MGR Samplers. I always end up with a few extra cobbled together from the leftover pages created during the printing process. They’re all complete issues: I just reprinted whatever pages I’m missing from my original computer files. Here’s what I have left, by year:

2009: 7 issues
2008: 7 issues
2007: 3 issues
2006: 2 issues
2005: 1 issue

PM me or drop me an e-mail for availability and a postage estimate, if you’re interested.
I don’t plan on reprinting any more on an individual basis: I might print an omnibus/collected edition sometime in the future, no guarantee though.