Blankets

When I was first finding my way around the hobby, it became pretty clear to me that I was not a tack and accessories person. Whenever a choice between a new saddle or a new horse had to be made, “new horse” always won.

There were some exceptions. I was fascinated by wagons, carts and sleighs (especially sleighs!), and I made a few fair-to-middling attempts at Hollywood-style Arabian Costumes. 

I have bought a few bits of Breyer Tack over the years, mostly because they came in sets and I am loathe to break apart sets on principle. And if I have been given promotional pieces, like the various blankets and things given out at BreyerFest on occasion, I never turned down those items down, either. 

One thing that’s just killing me, though, is this new Gift Set on the Breyer web site: the Le Mer with a sequined blanket. I bought this model all the way back in April because I though it was pretty – put that color on almost anything, and I’ll either buy it, or at least consider it – but you’re telling me if I had waited six months I could have gotten one with a super cool blanket with reversible sequins, too? 

Argh!

Sure, I could just go ahead and buy the set anyway – money is definitely not an issue for me right here, right now – but then I’d have to add another item to my already-too-big sales list. (I am hoping to get some stuff online by Thanksgiving week, but no promises!)

To throw a little history into the topic...

Saddle blankets have been a part of Breyer History since the literal beginning of Breyer History: the blankets for the Western Horse and Pony saddles have been molded into all their various permutations since the early 1950s. Fleece blankets were a component of the early Indian Horse and Rider Sets, too, and the Fury Prancers sold with English Saddles also came with separately-molded hard plastic saddle blankets. 

But the first official production release that came with fabric stable blankets was the #8384 Clydesdale Mare and Foal Set in 1971. Technically, some of the Groomers came with vinyl accessories that could have kinda-sorta passed for stable blankets in the 1950s. Not too many collectors are familiar with the latter: while Grooming Kits are not too hard to come by generally, the stable-blanket style ones are pretty tough. 

I have not lucked into one yet, but I live in hope!

Old Wooden Stables

I made the mistake of watching a couple of hoarding videos last week (I was trying to get caught up on the latest Curiosity, Inc. Hoarder House cleanout; I swear I saw horse-shaped objects and well, you know…) and now I’m in deep cleaning mode, again. As if I don’t have enough to do.

But hey, the garage is definitely looking navigable again. 

All kidding aside, I really do need to make myself scarce for the next few weeks and get some things done around here. I may also have a scheduling change soon that may make the timing of some of my posts extremely peculiar. 

As I like to say, no rest for the wicked.

Anyway, here’s another thing I purchased recently that’s much more exciting than the visuals give away. Behold the #7000 Stable for Traditional Size, the plus-sized counterpart of the #7100 Stable for Stablemate Size, of the same vintage (1976) and in the same style box:

As for that label? I made the mistake of forgetting to tell the seller to wrap the box in paper before shipping it. It didn’t incur a lot of damage, fortunately, but I should have known better and that’s my fault. It was someone who obviously didn’t deal with Breyer items very often who just happened to stumble across something that was that unusual combination of rare and obscure. 

I don’t like to assume that the seller in question doesn’t know what they’re doing, but lesson learned. Nevertheless, it’s still something that’s very much a thing I’ve been wanting for years and I am very happy it is now in my possession. 

Especially since the likelihood of something like this showing up again anytime soon is also unlikely. Until recently, I assumed that both of these early Breyer stables – like the Breyer Rider Gift Set with Palomino Adios – were never officially sold retail, but that now does seem to be the case, at least on a very limited basis.

After this, Breyer only attempted to market one more Stable of its own before being purchased by Reeves: the Traditional-scale #7025 in 1980. I’m not certain #7025 was even manufactured; while the #7000 and #7100 both briefly appeared on Bentley Sales Discontinued Price Lists, the #7025 never did.

There have been numerous Stables issued since then, and many of them are also quite scarce, including Reeves’s first official attempts in 1986/1987. Both appear to be the same or a very similar stable that was sold in Holiday catalogs as early as 1979, but not officially marketed as a Breyer product until 1986. 

There have been almost countless Stables since then, from Stablemates scale to Traditional. While I wouldn’t mind adding a few more to the collection, space is definitely an issue. The only ones that would seriously attract my attention now would probably be the #7025 (if it even exists), and maybe the 1986 and 1987 ones (#200 and #201, respectively) but only in their original boxes.

There’s also a Play-Well Stable Set in its original box on eBay that’s been piquing my interest; it’s the same set that was sold by mail-order companies that sold Breyers and Hartlands direct to consumers as early as 1962. 

It sort of boggles my mind, but in a good way, that the market for model horses was strong enough that other manufacturers were creating complementary products for them. 

The Stablemates Riders

My Sampler is coming along surprisingly well; I’m hoping to have it done by the end of the week, except for a few photos of things buried in storage that I plan to dig out during my big “photo show shoot” over the next three weeks.

Yeah, I know, I haven’t even started that project yet. But I’m not overly worried – if I somehow managed to nearly complete my Sampler in little over a week, uploading and taking a few hundred photos in three should be a piece of cake.

A couple of months ago I ran across an article about the difference between being motivated versus being disciplined. I can’t remember if it was about exercising, dieting, or just getting anything done in general during the early days of the quarantine times, but I found it ironically… rather inspirational.

Motivation is unreliable: it comes and goes. But discipline is a habit you can develop. It seems so obvious now, but the message just hit me at the right moment, I guess.

Which is part of the reason why I am so chill about the BreyerFest stuff this year. It does bother me that a lot of the other things I’ve been wanting to get done this year have fallen by the wayside, but at least I am getting some things done, instead of picking at projects whenever I feel like it and then panicking when I realize the deadline is two days from now.

Sometimes getting stuff done now is better than getting it done perfectly never.

Anyway, end of the pep talk. Here’s a recent purchase I am rather pleased by:

It’s those loose Stablemates Riders that they offered back in September 2014. I briefly considered buying them when they were originally offered, but they sold out before I could really think about it anyway.

But since I apparently have a thing for weird Stablemates stuff in general – like my mint in box Wooden Stablemates Stable from 1976, and all those odd 2008 Target Special Run accessory sets I keep telling myself to sell, but I can’t – when I saw a lot full of these pop up on eBay, I couldn’t help myself.

One of my great unfinished projects is documenting all the various, teeny bits and pieces that come with the Stablemate Gift sets. I actually don’t think it will be that difficult, but it will be time consuming.

And time is finite, at the moment. No amount of discipline can change that.

Just Beachy

(Work ran really long today, so tonight’s post is really short.)

Breyer has issued a lot of really weird accessories over the years. But what would be the weirdest? Was it the Baby Gorilla from the Pony Gals Wildlife Adventure Gift Set?

http://www.identifyyourbreyer.com/images/720601set.jpg

(Because of my current infatuation with the Classics Duchess, I might be adding that one to my want list for BreyerFest.)

The scary-big Fly that came with the Summer Turnout Set? And the newer Turnout Set?

http://www.breyerhorses.com/summer_turnout_accessory
http://www.breyerhorses.com/2065-turnout-set

(Not a big fan of the mutant bugs, so not on the want list. Nope.)

However, my personal favorite has to be the original head scratcher:

Yes, the Bitsy Breyer Beach Set. It came with a surfboard.

My first thought upon seeing this set back when it came out in the early 1980s was – hey, it’s a Mr. Ed gift set! Because of course I remembered that episode where Mr. Ed goes surfing:

(Season 2, Episode 23: Ed the Beachcomber)

Because being the horse-centric girl that I was, my first assumption was that the surfboard was for the horse. The board was a bit small, but eh, most of the accessories then (and to a degree, even now) were never quite to scale anyway. Seemed perfectly logical to me then.

The only part that was not logical was that none of the Little Bits Arabians issued at the time came in Palomino. Just the standard and kind of boring actually Chestnut, Bay and Slate Gray. And Mr. Ed himself was not an Arabian.

Oh well, maybe someday...

In the Family

Today needs a picture of a puppy. Here’s Vita, being rudely awakened from her beauty sleep yesterday:

I had a coworker that I had affectionately nicknamed "my little puppy", because she reminded me a little of Vita: small in stature, with short tousled hair, a sly and subtle sense of humor, and always first among us to greet and comfort others.

Sharon passed away earlier this week, suddenly and unexpectedly. We’re all taking it very, very hard at work. She was loved by everyone who knew her: I can think of no better epitaph for anyone.

(BTW, Vita has been a most effective grief counselor this week. When she's bad, she's Bad, but when she's good she's Wonderful.)

On a lighter note and slightly more cheerful note, here’s what I was going to write about this week - the Breyer Bolo Tie.

This is an example of one of the original releases that I found (of course) at the local flea market. One of the horn tips on the skull is broken, but since you don’t see them " in the wild" very often, I was happy just to rescue it.

The Bolo Tie was Breyer’s first retail "wearable" item, being released in 1972 and lingering in the line through 1976. Although it wasn’t hugely popular, it is also not a real difficult item to find in hobbyist circles: I think a lot of hobbyists bought them just for their sheer oddness, thus keeping most of them "in the family".

It was released with either black or brown woven plastic strings under the same number, #501. It was sculpted by Bob Scriver, who over a decade later gave us the Traditional Buckshot mold.

The Bolo Tie was reissued at Breyerfest as a "surprise" Special Run, in the arena sales area before it earned its "NPOD" sobriquet. First in 1998 in a similar colorway - charcoal gray with either brown or black woven leather strings - and then in 2000 in metallic gold and silver.

The SRs sell for about the same price the originals do, when they come up for sale: most of the people who bought them in the store have also kept them. Although rare, in a technical sense, they’re one of those specialty items that appeals mostly to nerdier among us. 

Stablemates Riders

I don’t know about you, but I’ve been getting so many e-mail offers from Reeves lately that the e-mail servers now think I live in New Jersey! No, really, I don’t need to know what the weather is like in Mt. Laurel…

Last week’s most interesting e-mail was a special offer for a Free Stablemates Rider with purchase of 25 dollars worth of Stablemates merchandise. A little weird, but I thought maybe they just had some leftover play set "rigid" riders they wanted to get rid of in a creative way. Today they sent out another e-mail about them: nope, apparently they are a thing they are selling separately now.

http://www.breyerhorses.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=6505

Interesting. I haven’t done a comprehensive search yet to see if the paint jobs are unique, or if they can be identified from specific sets. I can’t tell right off because I haven’t been buying many Stablemates lately, outside of vintage pieces to fill in collection gaps, upgrades, and Special Event/BreyerFest ones. (Though I’d like to buy more!)

Regardless, I don’t know if I now need to classify these as separate mold releases or continue to treat them as accessories. I guess it’ll have to depend on how long the program runs.

When I saw the original e-mail, the first thing that popped into my mind were the smaller-scale (about Little Bits/Paddock Pal size) Horse and Rider sets that Hartland released in the 1960s. Like these guys:

The horses to these sets I find occasionally, but the riders I almost never do, which is another reason why I’m reluctant to pass up on the Stablemates Riders. If it is an experimental thing, I’ll probably regret not getting them now while they’re still (relatively) cheap and affordable. Some of the bills for my Kentucky misadventures are starting to come in, though, so it looks like another no-can-do here.

Like Breyer is doing now with their various Stablemates Play Sets, Hartland made a lot of odd bits and quasi-accessories like that back then too, and I find them fascinating. I don’t go out of my way to collect them, but if they happen to find their way here, they tend to stay. I recently purchased a big bag of plastic animals, pursuant to another crazy idea I had rumbling around in my head. In the bag were two Hartland Farm animals, from their "Sunny Acres Farm" series. The Goat, and the Black Lamb:

So cute!

Just goes to show that there’s really no such thing as a new idea in the hobby. Just the same ideas, in endless iterations.

Stablemates Grail #2

Today was a day full of indignities.

First thing this morning: I had to spend an hour trapped in a voice mail system trying to get a problem resolved. Awesome way to start my day, especially since I’m somewhat telephonophobic. If there’s any way to resolve something without resorting to the phone, I’m going to do it, but that was not possible in this situation.

The problem was fixed, at least, but the day continued rolling downhill. Then I logged on to Blab to see everyone hyperventilating over the latest Exclusive Breyer Event. What’s with all the freaking out by everybody about everything lately? Flurry, Icicle, the Indian Pony, the Tractor Supply SR…

Chill out people, seriously. Take a deep breath and go back to making pumpkin pies for Turkey Day. (If anyone needs a spare, Mom made three. They're worth the drive!)

Okay, all the downer stuff is out of the way - onto Stablemates Grail #2, something that was hitherto unavailable to me not because of a lack of funds, but because I wasn’t sure any existed at all:

The #7100 Wooden Stablemates Stable, from 1976. Still in the original box - with the original instructions!

For years I assumed this item - and the corresponding Traditional Wood Stable - didn’t even exist. I never saw one for sale anywhere, I knew no one who had one, and it doesn’t even appear in any of the 1976 price lists that I’ve seen or own. I thought it, like the notorious Breyer Rider Gift Set (the one with the first Palomino Adios) was never formally released, or released in such small numbers that it might as well have never existed at all.

It does appear on some early Bentley Sales Discontinued Lists, such as this one from December 1978:

(If I remember correctly, this was the same sales list that I ordered a Red Roan Running Mare off of, funded by accumulated allowance and unspent lunch money. It was sold by the time my money reached them, so I ended up with a credit of $6.50, which I then applied to my second choice: the Special Run Solid Black Mustang, who was the same price. Yes, I suck.)

The average price of a Traditional Horse then was 5.99, and a Stablemate was 1.49, so 14.50 for a Stable was wicked expensive. I could buy two Traditionals and at least one Stablemate with that kind of money. Twice as much, for the Traditional Stable. So buying it back then never crossed my mind. Horses, and lots of them, that's what I was aiming for!

Years later, looking back at those sales lists, I just assumed that these Wood Stables were never officially released to the retail market. Whatever little stock they did manufacture was probably offered to mail order companies like Bentley Sales to unload, discreetly.

That was pretty much Standard Operating Procedure back then, actually. Whatever odds and ends Breyer had knocking around their warehouse, outfits like Bentley Sales would pick up. (Literally, in the Bentleys’ case!) Recently, or not so recently discontinued stock, Christmas catalog overruns, leftovers from live show special runs or promotions, whatever.

This particular Stable is stamped on the outside with the address for Mission Supply House, not Bentley Sales. I don’t know what that means: was it shipped to and then purchased from Mission Supply House, or did Mission Supply House have a role in its manufacture?

I say that because the paper that the various stable parts are still wrapped in is from Florida - and oddly, dated from 1974. (Anyone want a 1969 Pontiac Bonneville? Only $988!) It could just be a coincidence - someone opening the package, decided it wasn’t worth the effort, and then rewrapping it and putting it away somewhere.

Yet the notion of Breyer subcontracting the manufacture of things that did not need to be painted or molded was not farfetched, even at that early a date. That’s definitely something I’m going to have to do some research on.

As to why this item didn’t/couldn't sell, the contents of the box told the tale: knotty wood, stapled leather hinges, and unfinished edges? It was so NOT worth it. It makes the corrugated cardboard stable look posh in comparison.

The Bentleys Discontinued Lists that I have list the Stablemates Stable as late as 1981; the Traditional one, it's gone by Spring 1979. That doesn't necessarily mean anything in terms of quantity - 100 and 200 piece Special Runs lingered on these lists for months or even years - and the nature of the product led me to believe that those few that once did exist were no more. I was happy to be proven wrong.

Well, Obviously

My work scheduling issue has been somewhat remedied, if me basically not being home for the rest of the week is "remedied". This is good for my checking account, by not so good for blogging. Or writing. Or sleeping.

(See the timestamp on this posting?)

This is fine, to a degree. The current tone of chatter on the Internet is starting to annoy me again, and this gives me a completely legitimate excuse to be antisocial.

On the other hand, I do actually have some serious model horse business to attend to, and it’s not going to get done any time soon. I need to wrap up my 2012 paperwork, get some color copies made for someone’s collectibility documentation, unpack the big box lot of horses I got in a few weeks ago and get ‘em prepped for sale, and finish the ephemera inventory.

That last task is especially bothering me. The last few scraps - the ones that have so far defied categorization - have been mocking me every time I walk past them in my office downstairs. I’ve been promising myself for the past two weeks that it’d be that "next thing" I’d get wrapped up, but you know how life is, one darn thing after another…

The one advantage to having those unidentifiable bits sitting out and staring me in the face is that it’s helped me finally identify some of them. Take this Glossy 8 x 10 photograph, which seemed so familiar:

It is, of course, the photograph on the original packaging for the Wooden Corral, from late 1982:

Since much of the material I had been sorting was packaging-related stuff from the late 1970s and early 1980s, this sort of thing should have been, I don't know, a little more obvious to me.

It didn’t occur to me until after I had been thinking about the Corral in reference to yet another project I really need to work on. I pulled up the picture above from my files, and all I could mutter to myself was "Boy, do I feel dumb".

As I’ve explained before, this is how history tends to work: most discoveries aren’t about undiscovered objects, they're about previously unrecognized data.

In the grand scheme of things it’s not all that big a deal: big whoop, I found out that I have the original photograph used for the Corral packaging. While it may not be much even in the context of this tiny little sliver of history we obsess over, it’s not nothing, either. It's another tiny piece of the puzzle of Breyer History, now recognized.

Back to work, again. Then another nap. Then more work.

All for G4

I am such a dork. Look at what just arrived in the mail:


NIP (new, in package) with a 1982 copyright date!

More proof that my obsession with Breyer History has probably ruined my ability to enter Collector Classes forever. ("Before judging, please note that the Corral is considered part of my entry. Five page dissertation and bibliography included.")

I love how the label mentions "HORSES NOT INCLUDED." What kind of horses would someone reasonably expect to find in such a package? Something inflatable? Paper Dolls/Standees? Those little spongey "grows in water" critters you find at the dollar store? Cellulose Acetate does absorb water, but not quite that much.

I did buy some actual horses recently: the WEG Stablemates. I bought them during the Black Friday Weekend sale on Shopatron a couple of weeks ago. $15 for a set of 8, including the itty-bitty blanket? Couldn’t pass that up! I bought a Cedric, too, because I still didn’t have a Show Jumping Warmblood in the collection. I know he’s a "regular run" item for next year, but I figured the $30 price tag was about the best price I’d find him at, at least in the short term.

(What I’d really like is an Inconspicuous, but that ain’t gonna happen. A Mon Gamin would be nice, too, but that’s someone I need to handpick.)

Back to the Stablemates. I had seen the G4s before, but I hadn’t had the chance to examine them up close, in person and out of package. After spending the day admiring them, I do have to wonder what all the fuss was about.

There are a few minor issues I have with them. The Driving Horse has thicker than necessary legs, the mane and tail on the Endurance horse are ropey and a little crude, and the barrels on the Dressage and Para Dressage Horses are a bit on the heavy and undefined side.

Other than that, though, these little fellows are really nicely modeled. Their hooves even have frogs! And they have so much personality - I just want to hug that big, drafty Para Dressage Horse:


The Vaulting Horse is much, much better in person too, like a lighter version of the G1 Love Draft Horse. And dare I say it - I think the G4’s head and neck are more expressive than the G1’s. (And before you get your breeches in a bunch, yes, I have seen crisply detailed, early run casts of the G1 Drafter. So there.)


The fault lies, as usual, with whatever photographer or photographers Reeves is utilizing. How they manage to capture the least appealing angle of every model is a wonder for the ages. I will forgive them a little on the Vaulting Horse: the bay roan paint job was a good idea on paper - and good on larger scale models, in practice - but that particular style of roaning just doesn’t work on Stablemates. The way it was applied obliterated some of his finer features.

Not his manhood, though. I certainly wasn’t expecting that part of the anatomy to be so, umm, detailed. Almost to the point of naughtiness. The fact that I opened them late at night, by myself, in the privacy of my basement office only added to my discomfort.