The Bland Brothers

Since you all enjoyed the Alabaster APH so much, here he is with his two almost equally bland brothers, Splash Spot Leopard Appaloosa and Red Roan!

Paint jobs in the late 1980s were not terribly innovative or daring, but the fact that three of the four Horses International Performance Horses – all save the Liver Chestnut, who is in storage and I’m not in a mood to dig him out today – were a similar shade of pale was a little much even back then. 

We bought them anyway because (a) our options were limited when it came to Special Runs, and (b) we were buying them sight unseen. “Red Roan” could have been the vintage-style Freckle Roan, and the Leopard Appaloosa could have been the same Leopard Appaloosa we originally saw on the #115 Appaloosa Western Prancing Horse. Right?

But they weren’t. 

The style of Red Roan seen on this APH was something relatively new – first released on the Signing Party Lady Phase that same year – and it represented one of Reeves’s earliest attempts to create more realistic Roans. 

That Lady Phase was pretty well received: as a fan of Roans in general, I thought she was pretty spiffy, too. But the Roan APH is probably my least favorite of the set of four, perhaps because I was hoping against hope that they’d still opt to put that crazy Freckle Red Roan on him anyway, even though they hadn’t been using it much since its brief renaissance in the early 1980s.

I still love him anyway, but dang, he looks a lot like Lady Phase’s slightly homely little brother, you know?

I still long for a vintage Freckle Red Roan on the Performance Horse I had originally hoped for. The pretty Dark Bay Roan they’ve used on releases like the 2012 Constellation, on the Roxy mold, will also do. Speaking of her, I’ve been meaning to pull mine out of storage here; I got a lovely Sample one in the NPOD at BreyerFest years ago, and I am looking to beef up the “non-collectibility” portion of my live show string...

Off to finish off my birthday cake (homemade Carrot Cake, yes!) and head to bed. I did buy some Stablemates to celebrate, by the way, but I left them in the car tonight and I don’t feel like going back outside. I’m not one to complain much about the weather, but I am so over this recent cold spell, and I’d rather not go outside and be reminded of it again.