Another Dapple Gray Clyde?

Lots of news happening in the past couple of days, so Andrea’s Awesome Adventure in Almost-Canada will have to wait until next time.

First up is a Father’s Day Web Special that’s going live for entries starting on May 29th; from the cropped photo, it appears to be a Gloss Dapple Gray Clydesdale Stallion. Not an odd choice for a Father’s Day model, except for the fact that the Clydesdale has already had about a half dozen Regular Run and Special Run Dapple Gray releases already. One of my favorites in that category would be the 1999 Toys R Us Special Run "Shire", one of the last entries in their exclusive "Medallion" Series:

The best part about him? He’s also a variation - for some crazy reason, his gold bobs are only painted on his right side! He was part of a small batch of these Shires that showed up at a local Toys R Us with a reputation for getting oddballs.

The only significant difference between the Web Special and all of the other Dapple Gray Clydesdales that came before it is the airbrushed dappling, something that several hobbyists are already griping and sniping about in a manner they seem to think is clever or funny. (What would actually be clever: someone inventing a browser filter that automatically replaces the terms "chicken wire" or "fish scale" with other randomly chosen culinary or farming terminology, like "lima bean" or "manure spreader.")

All I hope for is that he gets dressed up with some fancifying extras, like multicolored ribbons, tricked out hooves (striping! growth rings!) sabino spotting or dark points.

That we’re getting another limited edition on the Clydesdale so soon after the Vintage Club Dandy raises an interesting question: will we be seeing a Web Special Fighting Stallion soon, too? It makes sense, economically: it wouldn’t cost all that much extra to make up a few hundred extra of a mold that’s already been prepped and dropped into the molding machine.

(If so, the Appaloosa Performance Horse Fighter we were all fantasizing about a few months ago, Reeves? Make it so!)

Some photos of the 2012 Mid-Years are floating around, though they are not technically supposed to be released for another week or two. I haven’t bothered to get the download, simply because I’m having a hard enough time dealing with all I’ve had to deal with this week, and we’ll all be seeing them - legally - soon enough.

The Mid-Years include another release on the Hackney mold (that may rule out any Fest Hackney SRs), and a leopard Appaloosa on the Zippo Pine Bar mold that apparently annoys a lot of people. Because (a) it may displease the people fortunate to own the Volunteer Special "Zeppelin", and (b) "popular wisdom" has determined the Zippo mold to be unacceptable to show in polite company anyway.

As I am not a Zeppelin owner, nor am I normally considered "polite company", I am perfectly okay with it, depending on what he looks like in person, and all that.

And finally, according to the "official" BreyerFest Blog, the Gloss Mariah’s Boon models will be given out as a prize for the Poppycock Parade, not the Fascinator Contest. I am also okay with this "upping" of the piece count, since the quality and quantity of Costume Contest entries we’ve been seeing rival anything I’ve seen at various Comicons and other conventions of that nature.

(Which makes sense, since there’s so much overlap of the respective fan bases. We’re all slan, yo.)

Frankly, anyone willing to humiliate themselves in public - outside, in scorching heat and insanely high humidity - deserves a little something for their efforts.