Wintry Mix

Well, my greatest accomplishment over the past few days was in not dying – literally! 

I was driving in the sleet and freezing rain to work yesterday, and I thought the road conditions were actually improving as I traveled south. I noticed a backup (about ¼ to ½ mile) on the northbound side of the freeway due to a spinout crash into a (newly installed!) guardrail, so I slowed down a bit more as a precaution.

Some knucklehead in an SUV decided they weren’t having this, and made the choice to pass me in the fast lane. They gunned it; I saw them wobble a bit as they crossed lanes a couple car lengths in front of me… and then proceeded to do a full 360 spin in my lane, and then slid down the (very steep) embankment. 

I swear it looked like a special effect straight out of a Final Destination movie. I held my breath, told myself not to brake, braced for impact and… somehow we missed each other. By how much I’ll never know, unless someone else has dashcam video of it. It was not by much!

Since the cops were not even a half mile up the road attending to the other accident, and it didn’t seem wise to stop, I kept driving. And I actually made it to work on time. 

Though, to be honest, I was pretty useless for the first hour or so: my hands were shaking like crazy and I couldn’t concentrate because holy carp, I came within a couple of seconds of nearly dying…

Anyway, that’s the kind of day I had. How was yours? 

The 2023 Volunteer Model is the Croi Damsha/Connemara – a mold I did have on my list of possible candidates – in Red Bay and Sunburnt Black Snowcap Appaloosa: 

They’re holding back the third color until BreyerFest, presumably to leave us something to speculate about. 

Everyone’s first instinct is to think that the third color Chevaliere will come in will be a Decorator, but I’m more inclined to believe it’s going to be a Dilute or some other base color modifier like Dun, Pearl, Roan or Gray. 

While I wouldn’t rule it out (especially a Translucent release – surely there must be a few leftover bodies from the Christmas Spice Drop release hanging around the warehouse somewhere?), it’s been a while since they’ve done a pure Decorator color for the Volunteer Models.

What’s unusual about Chevaliere isn’t the fact that it’s an Appaloosa – they’ve already done the Connemara mold in Dun Blanket Appaloosa, for the 2018 Collector’s Club Special Run Starlet – but that they went with a Snowcap Appaloosa pattern.

Breyer has done a lot of Appaloosas over the years, but most of them have been fairly conventional: Leopards, Semi-Leopards, and Blanket Appaloosas. Few Spots, Varnish Roans, Snowflake and Snowcap Appaloosa releases are much fewer and further between.

Some of it is a reflection of real-world tastes and biases: many horse people have a surprisingly narrow definition of what an Appaloosa should look like, and it usually involves lots of spots. 

And I know from personal experience that some patterns are simply harder to render than others: I will not regale you with all my failed attempts to paint the Snowflake Appaloosa of my dreams. (Will my Few Spot Standing Stock Horse Foal turn out any better? LOL, probably not!)

I’m not sure when the application for volunteering goes up – presumably pretty darn soon? – and I know they need a bunch of people this year, so I encourage anyone who’s curious about it to give it a shot. Heck, I’d do it just for a tee-shirt and a sandwich, but y’all know I’m a lifer…

And don’t worry if you’re not famous, not an expert at anything, or have even been to BreyerFest before. There’s a place for everybody – even (believe it or not) people who aren’t big on crowds! Everybody can contribute something, even if all it is is a cheerful face and a willingness to be helpful.

That’s it for today; I now need to go to bed and stare into the void for a while. I think I deserve it. 

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. 

Alabaster Performance Horse

The garden looks less terrible now – not good, but also not completely embarrassing. And it looks like all I’ll have to replace are the Verbascums and the Lupines, which is strange because those are two perennials I thought could survive an actual nuclear winter. 

(And good news for me, those are two I can direct sow!)

But that will have to wait until next weekend; the weather is turning cold again for a few days, and I have other things to worry about between now and then. Like recompiling my sales list and writing rough first drafts of articles for this year’s Sampler. 

After taking a good, long look at all the places I want to go and stuff I want to do in the month of May, I finally decided against participating in the BreyerFest Breakables Photo Show: I think it might be one activity too far for me. There’s always next year, I guess.

I’m not in a super-talkative mood today – my schedule switched over to days this week*, and I’m still feeling a little jet-lagged – so here’s a picture of an old friend:

Even by the standards of the late 1980s, the Horses International Special Run Appaloosa Performance Horses were kind of boring, but I loved them anyway. The mold is very much in keeping with the unrefined, rat-tailed Appaloosas of my youth, and I’ll always choose him over the more modern Appaloosas. 

Three of those four releases were in solid colors. Although the mold has had its share of solid-colored Test Colors over the years, the Horses International SRs have been the only solid-colored production run pieces on the Appaloosa Performance Horse mold, so far. 

The Alabaster was clearly the most boring of the original four – if there was an award or class for “Most Generic-Looking Special Run”, he’d definitely be a contender. But I love the subtle touch of that single, natural-colored hind hoof.

*I have been told that this is temporary. We will see. 

Getting Artsy

Well, I had my first BreyerFest nightmare in ages last night. That was… unexpected. Can’t say that’s something I missed from the normal BreyerFest experience. 

I mean, other than the Sampler, everything else is a go: the computer has been updated, the VIP purchases have been paid, the time off has been approved. All I have to do is log on, pay for my other SR selections (whatever they are), and do five minutes of shopping (pick up the Stablemate and maybe a t-shirt or mug). After that, it’s just videos and live feeds, and maybe a couple of the VIP exclusive workshops.

I might participate in an NPOD component if it’s there, but I doubt it. That was not fun last year. At all. I thought about about doing a live feed or Zoom meeting, but my work/schedule is hella weird and the times that would be good for me would probably not be good for anybody else in the continental U.S.

I suppose I could clean the office up in case anyone wants to come over at any point during that weekend, but that has to wait until other projects are wrapped up and packed up, and there’s nothing I can do to speed up that timetable. 

Oh, I’ve also decided that instead of baking a cake, I’ll try to make hot pretzels that weekend instead. I planned on buying a box of frozen lemonades to simulate the BreyerFest experience anyway, might as well go all in and add pretzels to the mix, too.

Since I’m currently in picture taking mode for other projects, I decided to put this little piece in the queue since it’s somewhat on topic:

Several years ago I bought a big bag of body-quality Mini Whinnies to keep them on hand for various projects. This is something I did with one batch of them because I had some epoxy that was getting old and I wanted to use it up. I thought I’d make it into something “artsy” just using the materials I had on hand, and I was pretty pleased with the result.

As I’ve mentioned before, I think way too much emphasis is put on realism in the hobby, and it dissuades a lot of people from even trying at all. This was something I did purely as a creative challenge: not only did I enjoy doing it, I learned a lot from the experience.

Anyway, off the soapbox. My Tobias arrived, and he’s neat!

The shipping box he came in was kind of terrifying, but all of the contents inside were fine. And I have to admit, I like this fellow a lot more than I thought I would: all those tiny little spots, all so nicely masked!

The first semi-leopard Appaloosa, of course, was the #99 Appaloosa Performance Horse all the way back in 1974; it was a radical change from Breyer’s appaloosas of the past, and enough of a technical challenge that it would be several years more before they’d try it again. 

And now we’re at a point where they’re releasing Stablemates with a few hundred masked spots as not-outrageously priced club pieces. 

Controversy

Oh goodness, where do I even begin?

The topic of color is just as controversial one in both the live horse and model horse community. 

Some of it is comes out of old and often debunked beliefs and institutional prejudices about certain colors and patterns (Pintaloosas, double dilutes, narrow ranges of acceptable breed colors, excessive white rules, etc.) 

And some of it is genuine concern about the health and wellbeing of the horse itself: flashy color sells, and sometimes horses with obvious and/or potentially harmful characteristics will be bred because they’re a pretty color or sport an eyecatching pattern. (And some of the colors themselves are harmful in and of themselves, in a genetically homozygous form.)

Any time a model is released in an atypical color – for the breed, or just in general – there is always a backlash.

My first concern when they announced next year’s BreyerFest theme – one that I initially dismissed because surely they were smart enough not to go there – was that they might pick a Celebration Horse that might fall into that latter category: pretty, but problematic.

What I was hoping for was that Reeves would carefully thread this needle: we wouldn’t just have colorful representatives of breeds known for their flashy looks, but also horses that didn’t fit the “mold”. That would have included not just rare colors on more common breeds (Pinto Trakehners!), but unusual patterns and oddities (Brindles and Chimeras), visually striking examples of rare breeds, and also horses or breeds that thrived or succeeded outside of their more usual or expected roles or overcame great obstacles or disabilities. 

And also, at least one actual Zebra, a couple of Decorators including a Rainbow-colored one (duh!) and one or two rarely used older molds because they are also “of another color”, metaphorically speaking. 

Well, that’s what I would have gone with or proposed, if I had been asked.

When I initially saw the Celebration Horse model, my first reaction was “Oh okay, an Appaloosa. We haven’t had many Appaloosa Celebration Horses, so that’s seems like a logical choice.” The model looked nice, though very similar to last year’s Holiday Connoisseur Ambrose. I figured there would probably be a little bit of backlash over that, because any time any release is followed by a somewhat similar release, there’s going to be trouble.

But that was not where the trouble really was. I saw pictures of the actual horse the model was based on, and the first words out of my mouth were “Oh, dear…”

Although I have made it very clearly and obviously known that I am not a stickler when it comes to model horse anatomy – plastic has no genotype – that does not extend to the real thing. 

Horses should look like horses, and function like them too. I, too, cringe at what has become of some breeds in recent years, especially Morgan and Quarter Horses. Give me those old Foundation-bred horses anytime!

There is, undoubtedly, some after-the-fact enhancements that make the real-world horse look even more exaggerated in his photos than he does in person. Sadly, it is these exaggerated looks that often win and sell: that’s part of what got the Tennessee Walking Horse breed into the sorry state that it has devolved into. 

It becomes a vicious circle that results in horses being bred to a type that either can’t, or shouldn’t, exist. 

Do the owners of these horses actually love them as horses, or do they only see them as investments? It’s complicated: some do, some don’t, though most exist in a state somewhere between the two. 

I’m not going to speculate on the owners’ motives or where they exist on that scale: I think it’s unfair to do so, especially since I do not know them in any sense of the word. I do understand why he was withdrawn from the event as the Celebration Horse. I saw the tone of the conversation on Facebook, such as it was, before it was pulled. 

I have no doubt there were some comments that veered into volatile or threatening territory: provoking and stoking strong emotions is a behavior endemic to Facebook, and one of the many reasons I try to avoid it.

There’s also been some speculation that this incident proves that the Powers-That-Be at Reeves are “not actually horsepeople”. I know for a fact that this is not true: some of our very own work for them on, by salary and by contract. 

But what did happen to get to this point? It was probably a combination of factors. 

I think part of the problem is that they were allured by the horse’s celebrity owner, and the possibility of using his celebrity status to draw more attention to the event. They’ve been using that strategy since the 1970s with releases like Stud Spider and Lady Phase, and to great effect at BreyerFest. 

It’s also somewhat obvious that the folks at Reeves tend to favor English and International disciplines over Western ones, and may not have been as aware of some of their attendant controversies. They probably had assurances that the horse was N/N for HYPP, and that was enough to allay their initial concerns.

Regardless of how they got to this point, the issue is now: where do they go from here?

First: the model itself likely never got beyond the Test/Sample phase, and production for Celebration Horses doesn’t usually begin until well after ticket sales do, so they don’t have a warehouse full of unsellable models to deal with. 

Second: who becomes the Celebration Horse now? I’ve always assumed – since the Mego incident in 1995 – that Reeves has had backup plans for Celebration Horses who are unable to attend for any given reason. 

If they had backup choices, they’re going to be recontacted this week, obviously, and whatever contracts need to be renegotiated, they will be. It’s also possible that another guest performer who may have already been confirmed – but not yet announced – could be bumped up to “Celebration Horse” status, which could save a lot of time, money and aggravation.

If I had a choice, what I would do is take the negative and turn it into a positive, with a Tennessee Walking Horse as the Celebration Horse. I’d use the Bluegrass Bandit mold as opposed to the Midnight Sun (of course) and utilize this very visible platform to highlight the efforts to redeem and reclaim the breed from the Big Lick. There are a lot of very colorful TWHs out there – another thing the breed is known for! – and that would definitely help “retcon” it into the theme. 

Anyways, that’s my thoughts on the matter. Not exactly how I thought my first “official” post about BreyerFest 2021 would go, but there it is. 

Harley’s Story

With the weather planning on being hot and sticky all week, I flipped the script and spent most of the weekend working on the garden, and I’m feeling every bit of it today.

Oh, and I think I might have bought another minor grail this weekend, too? I’ll know for sure when it arrives, presumably by the end of the week. I usually go on something of a shopping binge after BreyerFest anyway, but this is absolutely nuts…

I think I might have forgotten to tell you the story about why I purchased a Harley as a part of my pre-BreyerFest shopping binge. And it’s not just because he’s a really nice example with extra mottling around his lips and crisp masking (though that doesn’t hurt!)

The first time I visited the Kentucky Horse Park in 1979, near the end of a particularly infamous family road trip, I bought a Black Appaloosa Running Stallion from the Gift Shop, which happened to be in the International Museum of the Horse at the time. I still have him, of course:

Several years later, I purchased a second Black Appaloosa Running Stallion at BreyerFest, nominally as an upgrade. I was pretty sure he was from 1968, the year he was first issued, since he had a small Blue Ribbon Sticker and no USA mold mark.

Several years after that, I was gifted another Black Appaloosa Running Stallion – this one, a Cull – by a friend who saw I was having a particularly rough time of it at BreyerFest that year. She had no idea, of course, that that particular model had any personal historical significance to me. She just assumed (correctly!) that I’d appreciate a vintage, Chicago Era Cull. 

Early this year, when it looked like a road trip was still a possibility – not just to salvage Summer, but maybe even as a way to recreate the “Redneck Road Trip” that gave me my first Black Appaloosa Running Stallion – I had planned on purchasing another Breyer Black Appaloosa Horse during the “visiting the Kentucky Horse Park” portion of the trip.

The obvious choice being… Harley! Even more obvious because when I purchased my original Running Stallion, I named him Sandman. 

This was not an intentional comic book riff; this was ten years before Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman. In fact, I was on a hiatus from comic books until late 1981, when I randomly bought The Legion of Super-Heroes #284, and The Great Darkness Saga made me fall in love with them all over again.... 

To honor the coincidence inherent in Harley’s name, it’s only fitting and right that I am going to name him Quinn. (BTW, if you get a chance to watch the recent animated Harley Quinn series, I highly recommend it. They somehow managed to make Kite Man… kind of adorable?) 

Stud Spider Trophy

After nearly three days of continuous gardening, I am hurting in places I didn’t realize it was possible to hurt. And I am okay with that.

I still have a ton to do, but other tasks await and holy carp, it suddenly turned into Summer outside. (For the record: I like it hot, but I see no need to work myself into a trip to Urgent Care, especially nowadays.)

Here’s one of my latest binge purchases, a Stud Spider Trophy:

The #66 Stud Spider, like the #48 Black Stretched Morgan and the #47 Traditional Man o’ War, is another one of those releases that sort of multiplied on me while I wasn’t looking. I think I have… six or seven different Stud Spider variations now?

Almost enough for a Collectability Class entry, on its own!

So what did I do? After (obviously) not getting chosen for the Wedgewood Blue Stud Spider Test Color a few months back, I decided to be proactive and go looking for another Stud Spider or two to add to my herd.

The Trophy had been sitting on eBay for a while, and I finally decided to pull the trigger and bring him home earlier this month. Most Breyer trophies – outside of the occasional Sales Rep award that makes its way to the secondary market – are aftermarket jobs, and this is also the case here.

A moderately well-known one, at that. I don’t know how many of these were awarded, but it was definitely at least a handful.

I’ll still need to reacquire a decent #859 Family Appaloosa Stallion – a Bay Appaloosa Stud Spider using the original painting mask – and, eventually, a Test Color of some sort that also uses the original painting mask, like this slightly different Bay one:

It doesn’t have to be that one, though. I remember seeing other Test Stud Spiders back in the day in other colors, and I ain’t fussy. Just cheap!

Inexplicable Things

FYI: Both Winx and Crystalline are currently out of stock on the Breyer web site; the Winx because of PR like this:

https://www.horseracingnation.com/news/Winx_is_the_newest_addition_to_the_Breyer_stable_123

The second photo of Winx on the Breyer web site looks very similar to the BreyerFest 2018 Celebration Horse Brass Hat, so I’m more than willing to wait for the luxury of handpicking.

They also dumped two more BreyerFest reveals on us this week, both Appaloosas. First it was the Sunday Raffle Model Fields of Heather, a Nez Perce Horse on the Akhal-Teke/Altynai mold because sure whatever:

Yeah, yeah, beautiful. I’m trying not to get too excited about this one either because aside from the fact that it’s a Raffle Model – and by its very nature, virtually impossible to get – it’s also on a mold I have some apprehensions about.

Mostly by virtue of its length: I’ve already given my heart to the Shagya Arabian mold, and I don’t need another three-foot-long beast competing for shelf space here.

And is it just me, or does this model bear some significant similarities to another Appaloosa release on another dimensionally-challenged mold: namely, the Traditional Black Beauty Sir Wrangler? (More of a coincidence than a callback, I think.)

What I am more excited about is this inexplicable creature: a Buckskin Appaloosa Trakehner? Named Thorn? This is also not a release I would have expected from this theme, but in this case I do not care:

While I’m “old school” and I’d prefer the mold the way it used to be – with the textured coat and the original tail – I’ll still take him. In Gloss, in Matte, and any Decorator surprises they might be throwing in the mix, too. All on the easier to find side, I hope.

(I am also assuming that the actual model will be somewhat less yellow in person, just like last year’s Clydesdale Mare Pepper was.)

With this final reveal of the ticket models, it’s very odd that there’s apparently no true “Decorator” in the BreyerFest mix this year. Makes me wonder if that means… something? Most curious.

The Trakehner mold has only had two other spotted releases, neither one of them an Appaloosa: the #732 Spotted Trakehner in Black Pinto, and the #702395 Kaleidoscope in Red Bay Pinto, both in the 1990s. Otherwise it has been all solids, all the way back to 1979.

And Bay. Mostly Bay.

Aside from my fondness for the mold, he shares a name with another character in another on-again, off-again writing project. While Khalid was my interpretation of the “perfect vampire boyfriend,” Thorn is “your best friend who may – or may not – be an actual dog.”

(A fairy curse may be involved.)

So that settles it: my two definites this year are Hamish (the Standing Black Angus Bull) and Thorn. Everyone else I need to see in person before I make a decision.

Leopold

The name of second release in this year’s Vintage Club is an obvious play on its similarity to the word “leopard”, but what first sprung to my mind was this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gt1V61SPI_w

The Leopold Bugs Bunny satirizes in Long-Haired Hare (1949) is Leopold Stokowski, a conductor best known today for his work on Disney’s Fantasia. And, as Bugs amply demonstrates, his flair for theatricality.

In light of all that, the name certainly suits him!

He was another one that was a tough secret to keep: pretty much a perfectly engineered Vintage Club offering, following in the footsteps of the first Vintage Club Stablemate Eagle, the Second Vintage Club release, the Buckskin Fighting Stallion King, and 2013 Vintage Club release Halo, on the Stretched Morgan…

…with the added difference/bonus being that Leopold is Chalky, as the first releases of the #99 Appaloosa Performance Horses were back in 1974.

As I have noted before, the Appaloosa Performance Horse color was groundbreaking by 1974 standards: prior to it, all Breyer Appaloosas were of the randomly splash-spotted variety. Splash-spotted Appaloosas continued to be made after his arrival – including several APH releases that followed – but so, too, did carefully designed masked patterns, too, like the original Leopard release of the Pony of the Americas and Stud Spider.

What’s interesting to me about the original Appaloosa Performance Horse is that the majority of that mold’s production run releases since his debut have been in some variety of Appaloosa – with the exception of three of the four Special Run releases made for Horses International back in 1989.

His body type is distinctively old-school Appaloosa, so that’s not a big surprise. What is a surprise is the lack of variety in the patterns they have chosen for him over the years: aside from two Semi-Leopards (the original #99 and Exclusive Event Ferris) and the Splash Spot Leopard 1989 Horses International release, it’s been one Spotted Blanket Appaloosa after another.

While I wait for Reeves to come to its senses and finally give us a slightly different look for the APH, maybe I’ll finally dig out the body I have buried in my body box and give it a whirl.

(Probably a Few Spot: you know how much I liked That Guy from last year’s auction.)

Just a Few

A Few Spot Appaloosa on the True North mold? You’re killing me!

Aside from the fact I just think Few Spot Appaloosa are kinda neat, I’m also of the opinion that the Appaloosa as a breed has been done no favors by the aggressive quest for color.

Once I get around to customizing again, one of the projects I’m very eager to get to work on is an Appaloosa Performance Horse in a Few Spot Appaloosa, since it’s unlikely that they’ll ever get around to giving us a Regular Run one anytime soon.

As much as we carp about virtually every release nowadays being spotted, the fact of the matter is that’s what sells. Unless the model is exceptional in some other way – glossy, with extra or extra-special detailing, or is a Portrait Model of someone historical/noteworthy – it’s been in Reeves best financial interest to make it as fancy as possible.

And fancy means spots.

Though it is true that many BreyerFest Auction pieces in the past few years have actually been previews of future releases (in other words, truly Tests!) I’m still skeptical of more Few Spot releases in the near future.

They are, by definition, not fancy enough.

There haven’t been many Breyer Few Spot Appaloosas in the past, either. There are the occasional extreme variations of the #115 Appaloosa Western Prancing Horse, and I’ve seen a few older Gloss Gray Appaloosa with spots sparse enough to possibly pass as one (later examples of the Fighting Stallion, for instance.)

But the only intentional Few Spot that immediately comes to mind is the San Domingo Oxydol, who was from about 20 years ago.

(I have one, he just happens to be in storage right now.)

I think they tried to pass off the Dappled Liver Chestnut Running Mare from the 2009 Fun Foals Treasure Hunt as a “solid Appaloosa” too. Which I thought kind of muddled the color genetics lesson the Fun Foals promotion was supposed to be about. (Would it really have been that big a deal to toss a couple of stray spots on her? Mottle her nose a bit? Add a couple of hoof stripes? )
 
Back to BreyerFest prep…

The Burbank Color

My Fylkir arrived earlier this week. The Appaloosa!

Once upon a time I had a notion that the Stablemates Icelandic mold would be something that I’d actively collect. I haven’t gotten the 2013 One-Day Stablemate Indigo yet, but that was more a matter of timing and priorities, rather than money.

Then Reeves had to go and make him the Gambler’s Choice mold for the Stablemates Club this year.

I was absolutely fine with all four of Fylkir’s colors, but I was hoping that I’d get one of the “more desirable” ones, primarily to save myself some money. Alas, it appears – at least in the short term – that the Appaloosa is the least popular of the four colors.

That’s kind of a bummer, but I do have some big expenses coming up soon anyway, so I’ll chalk it up as the Universe’s way telling me the disposable parts of my income need to go elsewhere.

One thing I find interesting about the Appaloosa Fylkir is that it’s another appearance – second in a year, in fact – of the Burbank colorway: a dark-headed Bay Roan Appaloosa with a masked spotted hip blanket, first popularized on the Exclusive Event Nokota Horse release in 2008.

Earlier this year, we saw it again on the Collector’s Club Exclusive on the Classics Swaps mold, as one of the three available colors on Scotty. That I did not buy because (grumble-mumble) they didn’t make my favorite out of the quartet – the Dun – we voted on.

(Hmm. My favorite of the four Gambler’s Choice Diesels last year was the Gloss Brindle, who also ended up being the least popular of that set. I sense a trend…)

Anyway, it’s kind of neat to see a color “born” like this, especially since it arose out of a Special Run that was not that well received when he was released. Though I think that was due more to his relatively large run size for an Exclusive Event item, rather than any aesthetic issues.

I wonder who’ll be the next to wear it?

French Connections

Such a long week, but capped off nicely with a picture of the latest and greatest BreyerFest release - this year’s Platinum Star, Haute Couture:

It’s the Marwari with a few mold modifications: different mane, different tail, and the much-rumored-about "normal" horse ears. And one of the most fabulous leopard appaloosa paint jobs ever.

"Runway-thin" and sporting a bold and daring print? High Fashion, indeed! It makes sense to me, thematically. Plus, I think he’s pretty, and a lot of other hobbyists apparently think so too. 

It’s funny, just a few days ago I remembered I had a scrap of vintage rayon fabric with stylized pink and brown racehorses; I pulled it out to see if I could repurpose it into a scarf, since I can’t afford my own (real) Hermes. I wanted to find a few pieces of haute couture to wear around BreyerFest with this year; while I have (we have some pretty fashion-forward people in these parts) I’ve found nothing I could squeeze into my modest budget.

When I first saw the sneak peek photo earlier in the week, I assumed that it’d be a different "French Connection" being played up with it: the Georges Seurat-themed pony I was hoping for. How better to honor the artist who created Pointillism than with an Appaloosa, right?

Seurat did do a few paintings with horses, most famously The Circus, ca. 1890-91. Maybe they're saving the artists for the Stablemates or something....

There’s a third possible "French Connection" that could be made to work with this release: the possibility/likelihood of the French cave painting horses depicted spotted (rather than dappled) horses. There are several articles online about it, but I like this one because they used an actual - and accurate! - Leopard Appaloosa as a reference model:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/08/science/spotted-horses-in-cave-art-werent-just-a-figment-dna-shows.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

So while Haute Couture itself doesn’t specifically depict a French breed, a little bit of research and creative thinking can make it (quite) French in spirit.

While I understand the desire for more French breeds (I want a Merens Pony!) I’ll take a nicely executed "theme" horse like Haute Couture over an existing mold made to "fit" a specific breed. Or a new mold that will be nitpicked to death before it even gets officially released.

Want? Yes, want. Like everyone else, I’m fluttering between hope and dread over the possibility that this one gets the half gloss/half matte treatment.

Always Room For Another

FYI: I made some changes to my links; more may be added in the future. For the record, adding the OMH link does not mean I am leaving Blab. As far as drama goes, it’s not a topic-specific problem, but a people-specific one. Same people? Same dramas eventually, whether it’s over politics, preferred brands of mustard or judging standards at NAN.

I am of the opinion that more forums lead to better forums. Heck, I’d start my own, if I had the time. My recent forum activity has been somewhat minimal lately because I’m (a) currently in the busy season at work, and (b) working on some other personal and professional concerns that are a higher priority now. I’m hoping most of what I need to get done will be done by the middle of the year, and I can get back to my more usual level of intensity.

And now back to the show.

From its earliest days, this mold has always been known as the Western Prancing Horse, or Western Prancer:

So to see this in the solicitation e-mail for the Vintage Club Two-Bits made me do a double-take:

Two Bits' glossy leopard appaloosa pattern is borrowed from the Western Prancing Pony, and the color has rarely been seen in the Breyer line since the 1960s.

Western Prancing Pony? The only recollection I have of this mold ever being called a pony is with the Red Dun #889 Ranger - Cow Pony, from 1994-1995. The WPH mold did "replace" the Fury/Prancer mold in the Breyer line ca. 1962, and the Fury/Prancer is ponyish in size compared to Breyer’s other horse molds then.

But the WPH is clearly intended to be horse-sized.

The part about the splash-spot nature of the Vintage Club Two-Bits’ paint job is true: it was a very rarely seen color even back in the old days, and best known as a color specifically associated with the Western Prancer. There was a brief renaissance of the color in the early 1990s, most notably with the release of two Special Runs - on the Pony of the Americas mold, and as a part of the BHR Balking Mule set - though in those two cases they were Matte, not Glossy.

It’s a color that’s also known for its great variability. Some have big spots or little speckles, many spots or only a few. The points vary widely too, from high to low, and from black to charcoal to light gray. You could spend a lot of time collecting many different variations of the Appaloosa Western Prancing Horse, and I have:

Always room for more!

Neat, or Messy?

I bought myself a little something when I went out Black Friday shopping on Friday - literally:

A Regular Run Stablemates G4 Driving Horse as a Knabstrupper! There was just something about his chunkiness and the black polka dots that said "take me home", so I did.

Another reason why I picked him up was because all the examples that I’d seen before had more random and irregular spots more typical of the standard splash spot technique, while this fellow (and the two friends he was hanging with on the clip strip) had the more carefully painted/placed spots. They are similar - but a little better executed, I think - to the spots seen on the Vintage Club Harlequin last year.

The recent Vintage Club Stablemates release of Jackson has a few of these "placed" spots mixed in with the smaller splashier ones. They are black, as opposed to dark gray/charcoal; if you take a look online, you’ll notice that the black spots on each Jackson are more or less in the same place.

I can understand why Reeves would want to perfect this technique: it would result in fewer spots in unfortunate places. This is especially important on smaller scale models like Stablemates, where a single bad spot could obliterate or distort a fine but essential detail, like an eyeball.

Yet I hope that this technique merely becomes another tool in the paint kit, and not the standard. As cute as this Knabstrupper is, he’s still a little too reminiscent of early hobby repaint jobs for comfort. The ones we did without benefit of reference photos and stuff, because our imaginations were better, anyway! (That’s what I told myself.)

What this means, of course, is that when I go to the store tomorrow, I’m gonna have to cruise past the toy aisles and see if I can get myself another Knabstrupper. The messier one, this time, because a Gallant needs his Goofus.

APH: Back to the Source

Scheduling problems, again. Everything I need to get done this week (work and nonwork) is taking too darn long to do.

Instead of weighing in on the pros and cons of Halo, I will focus on the inspiration for him, the original Appaloosa Performance Horse:

The APH was born out of Breyer’s experimentation in the late 1960s and early 1970s with more realistic paint jobs, per collector request. This experimentation also gave rise to the "Resist" Dapple Grays, more precise masking techniques, and (believe it or not) the now-beloved "Freckle" Red Roans.

Unlike the rest, the Performance Horse’s paint job was uniquely his own: it wasn’t seen on an Regular Run or Special Run release until last year’s Vintage Club Stablemates Eagle - and now, on Halo.

There are a small number of Test Colors with this paint job, most famously the Proud Arabian Stallion that is the grail model of so many. A Classic Quarter Horse Mare showed up on eBay a few years ago, and I know of an Adios in private hands. There may be others, too: it was a complicated paint job for its time, and it undoubtedly took some time to perfect.

(In case you were wondering: I don’t have a photo of that Adios, but he’s just as beautiful as you can imagine. And no, it’s neither mine, nor is it for sale. He just is.)

I know I’ve seen in some parts a bit of eyebrow-raising over the use of the Stretched Morgan mold with this color, since it is obviously not a traditional (or even untraditional) Morgan Horse color.

I tend to look at it from an historical perspective: Breyer was never one to let breed standards get in the way of pairing up molds and colors. Palomino Arabians? Not a problem. Have a Standardbred stand in for a Paint Horse? Also, not a problem.

And any light skimming of the live horse classifieds (and live show documentation) will reveal plenty of seemingly inappropriate or bizarre real-life outcrosses, planned or otherwise. Mostly otherwise, but you know some breeders and their "designer" crosses. (Not saying that I approve, just that they, like the APH Adios, do exist.)

So a wild Appaloosa paint job on a Morgan mold is entirely consistent with the Vintage Club aesthetic, and not a huge hurdle for the live shower to overcome. Though I’d be fine with an APH-colored release on just about anything, really. Belgian, Pacer, Lady Roxana …

While it is often said that a good horse can come in any color, in the model horse world the truism is slightly different: a good color can sell on any horse. Well, almost any: I can’t imagine a huge market for an APH-colored Lady Roxana, other than me. (She’d look fabulous next to my imaginary FAS Yellow Man o' War! And my not-imaginary FAMs. Yes, I have more than one.)

Since work ran rather late today - and I’ll be heading out the door again here in a few minutes - I’ll finish up my thoughts on the Appaloosa Performance Horse mold, and color, next time.