The Breyer Mane Beauty Styling Heads are sculpted and decorated with long, no-tangle manes. Each comes with a styling booklet; a mane comb; and mane clips, spirals, and elastics for hairstyling possibilities. The heads are available in three styles: Blaze (black mane), Daybreak (white mane), and Sunset (blonde mane). The styling heads will be available this July.Press Release
Toy Fair web site page, with various links
I could easily have seen my nine-year-old self getting a Styling Head for Christmas, especially since Mom was kind of obsessed with styling my hair back then and clearly wanted me to follow suit. (Some of my grammar school “picture day” pictures are memorable for all the wrong reasons!)
While it certainly wasn’t exactly what I would have wanted, I would not have been completely displeased with it, either. Even today I’m pretty terrible at braiding and weaving, so I this product definitely would have reduced the amount of yelling involved when I was trying to teach myself basketweaving a few years ago, or this past week when I was trying to teach myself how to braid rope.
(Also not going well, but managing.)
The 70th Anniversary products do get a shoutout in the press release:
Breyer’s 70th Anniversary Assortment features five hand-decorated models, each commemorating a different decade. The models feature an anniversary logo and come in special packaging. There is also a limited-edition, rare chase figure in the collection. These figures are available now at specialty toy stores.You can spot the Gambler’s Choice collection display in photos of their booth at Toy Fair on Twitter, too. But the focus is clearly on the Styling Heads, rather than the figurines we fret and obsess about.
If hobbyists have an issue with this (I don’t, but I’ve met my share who have), it might be worth revisiting how Reeves now defines Breyer itself: not as just a model horse manufacturer, but as a brand. Also from the press release:
Breyer, celebrating its 70th anniversary in 2020, is the world’s leading brand of horse-inspired toys, gifts, collectibles and live events.This is part of their long-term strategy to reshape themselves into a lifestyle brand. It has been for me, for at least the past (yeesh!) forty-something years, so you know I’m okay with that. In fact, I’ve kind of been wondering why it’s taken them this long, but whatever…
5 comments:
When I was a kid I gravitated towards Breyer horses BECAUSE they WERE realistic model horses. If I wanted something with big hair, I could have gotten Barbie's horses or My Little Ponies. But I am probably in the minority.
But honestly, you can go down to Walmart today and get all sorts of Spirit horses and Barbie spin-offs with hair. So I don't see why Breyer is gravitating towards that junky-type toy horse stuff. When you were a kid wouldn't you have rather had a Breyer than a Barbie horse?
Breyer's main product lines have for a long time been aimed at "girls who like horses." In pursuit of more profit, they want to sell things to "girls" too -- girls who have no interest in horses, but who like to do things like brush and style hair -- so these new toys are aimed at kids like these, in the hopes that they'll get them interested in horses along the way.
I would have been meh on the horse head, but then I had a real horse to fiddle around with, if I'd ever gotten the urge to do braids. Now, for horse-loving girls who don't have a backyard horse, maybe they'll practice show braids on this one? Who knows. I can confirm that being able to do a French braid on myself comes in handy when braiding a horse's tail (not for showing, just because his pasturemate bottle calf was a tail-chewer).
Too bad one isn't a unicorn, my niece loves unicorns and doing hair, but not so much actual horses.
Great poost thanks
Post a Comment