Friday, August 12, 2016

Pink

I am not really understanding the antagonism over the latest Stablemates Club release Ricochet, the Pink Pearl Florentine Decorator G3 Andalusian:


I dislike the gender stereotyping of Pink as a “girly” color as much as the next person, and I don’t wear it personally because I look terrible in it, but I don’t hate it. There are some colors I like less than others – Magenta, ahem – but I don’t shy away from any of them as an artist.

Whatever works, works. (I’ve found it to be a very versatile color in my quilting projects: it works especially well with browns, yellows, and neutrals.)

Ricochet is not the first official, non-accidental production run model in some shade of Pink: come to think of it, we’ve had a lot.

Off the top of my head… we’ve had Color Crazy Stablemates, the 2011 BreyerFest Fairytails Flora, the 2014 BreyerFest Stablemate Birthday Cake, the Breast Cancer Awareness Horses, pieces in both the Blossoms and Zodiac series, and of course the notorious Pink Poodle Cotton Candy, on the Small Poodle mold:


Most recently – this year, in fact – we’ve also had the Mini Whinnies Blind Bag Surprise Landing Jumper Strawberry.

While most Pink Breyers are of recent origin, one Pink piece is among the oldest, and rarest: the Pink Elephant, made very briefly in 1958. It was probably made from a batch of pink-colored Tenite purchased for the then-unlaunched Small Poodle mold.

I think. It’s what makes sense from the evidence, since Test pieces of the original Small Poodle mold seem to indicate that they were intended to release it in Pink and Light Blue. (The former being the inspiration for Cotton Candy!)

It would also explain why they’d release an Elephant, otherwise inexplicably, in Blue instead of a more logical color like White.

(Yeah, I saw that Test Color White Elephant on eBay a while back. Sigh. Odds are pretty good for an Elephant Special Run for next year’s Indian-themed ‘Fest, so here’s hoping…)

3 comments:

Truson said...

I like the Stablemate for the pearlescent finish but I'm pretty sick of pink being everywhere because of the whole breast cancer awareness thing. There are many other forms of cancer that are pretty devastating and even more deadly, so I've really had much more than my fill of the whole hoopla.
I'm buying one of these Stablemates off of a friend because I like decorators, but yeah, Breyer needs to give the girly crap a rest:

Little Black Car said...

I ordered this for no good reason: I don't love the mold, I don't really do decorators or unrealistic colors. I have no idea what came over me.

I've already decided to name him Miami Vice (men in pink, right?), which seems appropriately Eighties.

Anonymous said...

I don't understand all of the vitriol at Breyer over pink. They didn't market the run as a girl's item, and really it's just another color they are experimenting in filigree with after their success with Holly and Ivy. Some people like pink and some people don't. That doesn't mean Breyer should never use the color again. If you don't like it, don't buy it. It's really that simple