The Mystery Mare

Still busy cleaning; late Saturday night I started a long-overdue purge of out-of-date reference books and books-I’ve-lost-interest-in from the bookshelves, and it felt so good I’ve since moved on to other parts of the home and office.

It’s been a constructive way to work off some personal and professional frustrations, too. (Nothing y’all need to know about, other than that’s my operational mode right now.)

Anyway, much speculation has abounded about the Proud Arabian Mare silhouette Reeves has been teasing us with on all fronts since yesterday:

There’s been only one official BreyerFest Special Run on the Proud Arabian Mare: the elusive, desirable Silver Filigree Volunteer Model from 1993.

There have been a three of the Stallion – the 2003 Silver Filigree Raffle Model Saturday Night Fever, the 2009 Volunteer Special After Party, and the 2015 Raffle Model Que Sera Sera – but only one of the Foal: the 2003 Silver Filigree Born to Run.

I suppose the Palomino Appaloosa Fun Foals that were made available in the Ninja Pit with all of the other leftover Fun Foals could count as a BreyerFest Special Run too, since that’s where the majority of them (all of them?) were distributed.

I have no special insight as to the nature of this Special Run – whether it’s going to be a Raffle Model, Prize Model, Store Special, or straight-up Tent Special. I figured they’d give us at least one Arabian model this year, but the Proud Arabian Mare never came up as a possibility to me.

Most of the speculation seems to be focusing on it as being a Raffle or Prize Model, or the Pop-Up Store Crystal release – in other words, something extremely limited – but I don’t think we can rule out a larger release.

We had the Vintage Club Farah in 2015, and several recent larger-scale releases of the Hagen-Renaker Classic Racehorses too: the Terrang Coeur de Lion, the Swaps Web Special Scotty, and the re-release of the Man o’ War.

If they do go the Tent/Store route, I think a PAM release will be on the smallish side (1000 or fewer) – but it won’t be out of contractual issues, mostly.

It’ll be because she’s a Vintage mold, featuring an old-fashioned/dated body type.

The younger/newer hobbyists who make up a fairly large chunk of the BreyerFest crowd will be both unfamiliar with and unsentimental about her. And wondering why Reeves couldn’t have gone with a newer mold like Weather Girl or the Make A Wish/Justadream instead, because obviously.

(Remember the response to the Appaloosa Bonne Fete in 2014? More experienced hobbyists were unimpressed, but Reeves knew what it was doing: the newer hobbyists helped sell it out.)

I’ll be fine, regardless. If it’s a smaller release, I’m not going to let myself worry about it, and if it’s a larger release, it shouldn’t be too difficult to attain – if I like it, well enough.

While I think she’d look fabulous in a Gloss Dappled Red Bay with a lot of white, there’s already a lot of Bays in the lineup. It also happens to be her 60th anniversary as a Breyer release, so a Decorator release isn’t out of the question either...