Hamish

Yes, I am very pleased by this year’s BreyerFest Nonhorse Special Run Hamish, on the #365 Standing Black Angus Bull mold. He is even prettier than I imagined!

I thought this one was pretty obvious from the clue they gave us earlier in the week. Although combining splash spotting with masked markings is a technique that has been used on horse molds before – most notoriously on the Lady Roxana release Cinnamon – it’s been more typically found on livestock molds.

For examples, there’s the Micro Run Polled Hereford Bull Marshall, the BreyerFest Special Run Charolais Bowland, the Exclusive Event Longhorn Bull Wrangler, and the #384 Texas Longhorn Bull.

I momentarily considered the possibility that they might use the Charolais Bull mold instead. Usually when a mold returns after an extended absence as a small Special Run (like Reuben!) it’s followed up with a more plentiful Special Run or Regular Run shortly afterwards.

It’s costly and time-consuming to get a mold up and running, so it’s not something you’re going to do for just a couple hundred pieces. You run more, and warehouse the unused portion for later use. 

But it’s also possible that Reuben was made from the production leftovers from Bowland, back in 2012. After all, they only made 450 of him, which is partly why he’s one of the more difficult to find BreyerFest Nonhorse runs. That, and the fact that I consider him one of the more attractive recent BreyerFest Nonhorse Special Runs.

But Hamish is… well, all that and a bag of kettle chips: a vintage mold that hasn’t been in production for over 15 years, in an eyecatching gloss parti-color paint job. He’s basically Marshall with an Irish accent!

The consensus online seems to agree with me, so I am just a wee bit concerned about the piece run on this one. I hope that it’s a decently-sized one, because getting a good draw on my ticket times tends to be the exception, not the rule.

I have to admit that some of the more recent BreyerFest Nonhorse releases (namely, 2015’s Le Taureau, 2016’s Zebu, and 2017’s Diwali) haven’t blown me away. I collect the Dog molds so last year’s Saint Bernard Bucky was obvious, and I’ve been yearning (yearning!) for more Elk releases, so 2018’s Inari was my number one want (and got!) that year.

My only (minor) complaint is having to scroll past all of the usual backhanded compliments about this release being “appropriate to the theme this time”.

As I’ve addressed before, having every release hew as closely to a given theme is neither creatively nor economically viable. It’s in Reeves’s best interest to have a variety of molds and models to suit as wide an audience as possible – up to and including people who have little or no interest in the theme itself.

Personally I am indifferent to the theme this year, but all the models revealed so far have been quite lovely, whether they directly fit the theme (Hamish) or not (Oak).