The New PHB

Just because I didn’t come home with a Marshall did not mean I came home from BreyerFest Polled-Hereford-Bull-free:

Although I could have purchased one cheaper locally, I enjoyed the luxury of being able to handpick factory-direct stock in the sales tent on the Sunday afternoon of BreyerFest. While the mold has gained in popularity over the past year or so – thanks, in part, to Marshall – I still had nearly two dozen models to choose from.

And virtually nobody nosing around to see if I had “found” something, even at that late a time. (Truth: I've had people follow me around, for just that reason.)

I picked this one because he was (obviously) different from the others. While the masking is a little different – the mold’s roughly textured finish makes them all unique – what made this example stand out to me was how dark the masked edges were compared to the rest of his coloring.

Most of the other PHBs I inspected had darker masked edges, too, but nothing comparable to this guy. It’s almost like he was outlined in black.

Darker shading along edges isn’t a new thing; it was frequently seen on models from the 1970s, when Breyer was experimenting with freehand airbrushed markings. The best known is Jasper, the Market Hog: on the earliest releases, his big blue-gray spot was lightly outlined and then filled in, leaving a darker edge where the paint overlapped.

In the case of the newer Polled Hereford Bulls, I don’t know if the dark edges were an intentional part of the design, a result of a mandated painting process, or a consequence of the natural tendency of painters to define an edge first, before filling it in.

Whatever the reason, you end up with extra – and usually darker – paint along the mask edges. And in this fellow’s case, to fairly handsome effect.