The Story of Julius

Dear Reeves-type people: I am completely exhausted and you can stop with all the reveals, new stuff and special offers now. I’m sure everybody at the warehouse would also be relieved. 

Aside from the Vintage Club and Premier Club reveals and another web exclusive Unicorn, take a gander at the New Products page for the latest Good Grief What Now. Not shown on this page: the fact that the 70th Anniversary Traditionals are now also selectable by mold, so if you still need a Palomino Hamilton, now’s your chance.

(I’ll wait for that shiny black one.) 

The Vintage Club is currently taking renewals from current subscribers and will start taking new subbers on November 4th. I have no idea if they will release pictures of any of the other releases in the club, and I am not at liberty to give you any hints anyway. 

Except (a) I expect it to sell out quickly, and (b) I don’t think you will be disappointed. 

As for Julius, the first reveal in the VC, I have a little story to tell about him:

It has been one of my greatest joys – and favorite hobby accomplishments – to name actual Breyer releases. When it came time to find a suitable name for a Vintage Club release on the Georg, one name became very obvious for me.

I named him after my Uncle George (my grandfather’s youngest brother), whose given name was actually Julius.

All of the male siblings in the family were... hell raisers, to put it mildly. The inside joke was that if anything went awry on the family farm, they’d blame it on “George”: that was the name the brothers called each other, much to the consternation of their father. (The brothers actual names were Joseph, Charles and Julius.)

Truth be told it, was Julius who was the biggest troublemaker of the bunch, so he eventually he became “George”. Our grandfather Charles passed away when we were fairly young, so George became our surrogate grandfather, even though he had a son who was two years younger than my brother, which caused all sorts of confusion in school. (We lived in the same town, for a while.)

My brother and I didn’t even know that George’s actual name was Julius until years later, when we wondered why everyone else at holiday get-togethers called him “Julius”, instead.

(There was a lot of that in my family, actually. Both sides. I learned very early on that identity can be a very slippery thing.)

All the men on my Grandfather’s side of the family were stout and big-boned: if they had been horses, they would have been Drafts. The name Julius also has an old-fashioned, old-world feel to it that suited the Georg mold very well. 

There have also been a number of Breyer releases that have unintentionally named after other relatives of mine, so it seemed appropriate that one be intentionally so.