"By Popular Demand"

The past few days have been crazy stressful, again. The work schedule’s been changing on a daily basis, I’m still working on that Very Important Hobby Matter, and I had a dentist’s appointment today. (I get to keep ‘em another six months, yay!)

Due to the time crunch, I had to put away most of the bodies I was "playing" with. I haven’t lost the need to get all funky and creative, I’ve just moved back to sewing and quilting: when you have to do most of your crafting in your car, sewing is much more practicable than Dremeling. (No, I don’t need to know if there’s an attachment for that.)

One of my newer additions here - part of my latest box lot purchase - is this pretty solid-faced variation of the #105 Chestnut Cantering Welsh Pony:

Even though I seem to have an insanely large number of Cantering Welshies, this is the first solid-faced Chestnut I’ve had the pleasure of owning.

I don’t know why I didn’t see the need for having one before; I remember being very, very obsessed with getting the original bald-faced version of the Chestnut when it was discontinued in 1976. That was a couple of years before I became involved in the hobby, and the only way I could obtain such a rare and valuable creature was to harass my parents into dragging me to every toy store within a reasonable driving distance to our house.

(FYI: Mission accomplished.)

In 1979 Breyer brought her back, "by popular demand". It wasn’t all that unusual a maneuver in the 1970s; the scuttlebutt I heard was that it was done, primarily, to get rid of warehouse backstock. If the initial sales were good enough, they would put the item back into full production.

Such was the case with the Cantering Welsh: not only are most of the later pieces painted differently than the earlier ones - with solid faces and no ribbons - they also sport the "B" mold mark, common on molds from the late 1970s and early 1980s.

The solid-faced Cantering Welsh Ponies are somewhat less common than the bald-faced ones: the bald-faced pieces were available from 1971 through 1976, while the solid-faced ones were available from 1979 through 1981. There’s not a huge difference in the price between the two of them, though, since the demand for the mold isn’t what it used to be.