On Golden Cows

Good grife, I hate reruns.

Went to bed before it went online Tuesday night, didn’t check anything model-horse-related for the five minutes I was online Wednesday morning, and when I finally got home from work Wednesday afternoon, the Gold Charm Cow and Calf were – of course! – sold out.

Again? Again??

Just lovely.

I wasn’t all that mad at Olaf – the Longhorn Bull is a shelf hog, and I’ve been trimming back my Bull collection a bit anyway. And my fun money fund really could go to other things. (In fact, I had transfer a chunk of my Paypal balance to another account the day before, for just such a purpose.)

I have access to multiple independent toy stores, farm stores, fabulous thrift stores, one of the world’s greatest flea markets and all that. This year I acquired numerous Monrovia H-Rs, several fabulous Hwins, another lovely Volunteer Model…

Yet relatively plentiful, first-come-first-served Holiday Animal Special Runs? It is starting to look like the Universe is telling me no-can-do.

I’m fearful it’s going to get put on the list of my other hobby no-can-dos, like getting picked from the Wait List for anything. (My win rate on Web Special draws is about average, but in the 200 or so of those drawings I have entered for, not once have I been pulled from the Wait List.)

As I predicted last year, the going price for Olafs today haven’t strayed far from the original issue price. I suspect Eldora and Sol will be the same in a year or so, when I’ll somehow probably manage to miss the next Holiday Animal Special Run.

It feels super weird that I can manage to score rarer things, but completely whiff on the stuff that’s specifically designed to almost be a “gimme”.

It’s not really that big of a deal. It’s not something that I was specifically pining for – it wasn’t a Deer Family, a Saint Bernard, or an Elk. And I do have a couple of kind and interesting offers to mull over.

But it still carries enough of a personal sting for me to consider washing my hands of the whole deal, as I have in the past with other models I shall not name.

Besides, it’s a Special Run that includes a Golden Calf whose name could also be interpreted as an acronym for how I’ve been feeling lately. I should just take those hints and run.

The IMHJ

Looks like the next several weeks are going to be a little crazy for me; what it means here is that you’ll be seeing a lot of short and sweet posts here in the interim. (Nothing traumatic or life-threatening, just work-related and time-sensitive.)

First up is this Bentley Sales Company ad from early 1978, scanned from the pages of the short-lived but influential hobby magazine The International Model Horse Journal.

As I’ve elaborated on before, the Black Angus Calf was one of the earliest of the direct-to-collectors Special Runs, debuting at the 1977 Model Horse Congress. The hobby was much smaller then, so even though the subscription base for the IMHJ was only around 200 people, that still represented a significant chunk of the hobby community.

It’s kind of mindblowing to think that a low piece run Special Run Calf could still be available nearly a half year after it was offered. Yep, things were definitely different back then! (Not always better...)

The International Model Horse Journal was an early attempt at creating an offset-printed (i.e. “professional-looking”) hobby periodical. Almost all hobby publications prior – and for several years after – were printed via ditto or mimeograph machine. The results weren’t always pretty, but those printing methods were cheap and accessible. They got the job done.

The IMHJ had already been cancelled before I made my formal entrée into the hobby in the latter half of 1978, so its influence on me was largely indirect. I think I have an almost complete archive of them now, but the numbering system was a little off, so it’s hard to tell.

Black Calf

I didn’t get as much done as I wanted to over the weekend, but I did enough to keep me from losing my mind as I ramp up prep for BreyerFest. As usual, I am nowhere near ready. Just because I’m not doing the costume contest this year doesn’t mean I don’t have a million other things to do.

Now to finish up a post I wrote during my last epic road trip; it’s been stuck on a thumb drive in my work bag, the one that rarely leaves the car. (What else is on the drive? My resume, a couple NaNoWriMo novels, and the accumulated knowledge of the Krell. Duh.)

During my discussion of the Black Family Arabians, I called them "one of the earliest" Special Runs aimed directly at hobbyists. One of the earliest, yes, but not THE earliest. The first verifiable, probably-not-a-repurposed-Test-Color, sold-direct-to-hobbyists Special Run was…

The Black Angus Calf. I don’t have one, so just imagine a Holstein Calf, except all black, and sort of satiny, like the Family Arabians. They were sold at Model Horse Congress in 1977, several months before the "National Hobby Month" debut of the Family Arabians. Approximately 100-150 pieces were made.

(Were there Special Runs that were sold prior to the Black Angus Calf? Well obviously - I’ve discussed some of them here - but I speak of items specifically targeted and made for the hobby, and hobbyists. Whole ‘nother animal, so to speak.)

Why … that, of all things? Good question. I don’t know the answer. It could have been a situation similar to the Family Arabians: maybe they were repurposing Calves leftover from the early 1970s – ones that were also a victim of the 1973 Implosion. Maybe they were test, in a way, for the Family Arabians. Maybe Marney said something to Peter about hobbyists wanting more Calves for performance setups. Perhaps it was a promo piece for the soon-to-be-released #365 Black Angus Bull mold.

I have no idea. In the absence of other evidence, all these theories seem equally valid.

They were not a huge hit, at least initially. The Bentley Sales Company had them on their Discontinued sales lists for a while, even with the relatively low piece count. The Livestock molds were not that big a thing in the hobbyist set at the time – it wouldn’t be until the mid-1980s that the Nonhorse molds really started taking off with collectors.

The Black Angus Calf is a pretty tough little cookie to track down nowadays, if only for the passage of time. There was one on eBay a few years ago, went for a price I definitely couldn’t afford.

Shades of White

Okay, so now the scuttlebutt is that the Shetland Ponies I mentioned last post might/will be a Vintage Club release, so the reference to last year’s e-mail photo was probably the correct one.

I am a little ambivalent about the concept only because, duh, there never were any Decorator Pintos. There were rumors of Decorator Pinto Test Colors floating around back in the day, but I found those rumors even less substantial than the Christmas Decorator ones.

(I swear Reeves does these sneaky reveals on the "Kid Tours" just to mess with us, knowing the kids are going to be fixated on the newer molds in more realistic colors.)

I found some charged batteries, so here’s the Calf I mentioned previously, with his Regular Run cohort:

So now you see why I am not so eager to send the little bugger back!

Yes, I know my Regular Run Calf is yellowed, but it looks worse than it actually is because the Oddball is very stark white - not Chalky or Opaque White Plastic, but I could see how some people could mistake it for such.

That sort of thing happens, from time to time: someone at the factory - possibly by accident - came up with the perfect mix of virgin (fresh) plastic, plasticizer, and colorant. I have an Alabaster Western Pony that’s so white it almost glows in the dark. (Discontinued in 1970, if you’re trying to do the math at home.)

It’s been recently reported on Blab that someone found an older Chestnut Belgian that was actually made of a mix of standard white and Chalky white plastic, which only really reveals itself when held up to a strong light. (Ooh, swirly!)

This does not surprise me at all. Breyer was experimenting with whatever plastic they could get their hands on in the early 1970s (the Chalky Era), and it undoubtedly included many different colors of white in addition to all those funky reds, browns, grays, purples and greens.

In the sometime questionable light of a factory, the mixing of these various whites would become an inevitability, if not an economic necessity. 

It’s even happened more recently, with some of the Stablemates molds: at some point, the Glow-in-the-Dark plastic that was used to make the Giveaway Andalusian Keychains was mixed in with the standard white stuff, giving some later releases a faint luminescence.

Other colors sometimes got swirled into the standard white plastic, especially in the Chalky Era, but they generally got painted over - either by a solid dark (or black) paint job, or with a Chalky basecoat first. Reeves does this even today, as many faux finishers have discovered first hand.

And…I just opened up my Yellow Mount that I bought from That Guy, and guess what? Aside from being one of the nicest Yellow Mounts I’ve ever seen, his plastic is also snowball-white.

Interesting.

(His variations are pretty subtle - tan instead of pink shading, more gray on his muzzle - but I bought him mostly because I wanted a nice Yellow Mount at a nice price. Done, and done.)

When Breyer met ERTL

My Tonka post reminded me of another strange Breyer toy truck connection – not with Corgi, but with ERTL.

While I do modestly well horsewise at my local flea markets, I haven't found much model horse ephemera there. I've found a few things – some old JAHs, a stack of vintage Western Horseman magazines from when Breyer was heavily advertising there, a few vintage Christmas catalogs. I did find an old Hartland flier in a NIB Hartland Polo Pony once (I almost fainted when it fell out of the box!)

It's not just the esoteric nature of the materials that is the issue, but the market too: the ephemera collectors around here are a little more dedicated than most. Whenever I see an old guy in a flannel shirt hunched over a cardboard box, that usually means someone's brought a box of fresh old paper. (Or toy trains.)

By the time I get my turn, it's already been picked through quite thoroughly, but not always.

I got lucky one day, and found a 1983 ERTL Dealer's Catalog. I couldn't pass it up: not only did it feature some of ERTL's early attempts to break into the model horse market, it also featured a number of Breyer knockoffs scattered randomly throughout. Here's a detail of the accessories that came with “The Alamo Quarter Horse Farm Set”: mini FASes!


Knockoffs of the Breyer Cow and Calf are also very prominent – in fact, they seem to be a decorative element on just about every other page in the catalog. Here they are, inexplicably chillin' next to the Wrangler Helicopter Set:


(The catalog text helpfully notes “Accessories not included.” )

But the biggest surprise was found in the “Farm Animals – Plastic” section. A full page is dedicated to their new “Deluxe Animal Assortment.” One of these things is not like the other:


Why on Earth is the Polled Hereford Bull there?

The catalog text notes that a Hereford Bull is included in the assortment. The PHB itself was obviously NOT going to be included: the standard box size is listed as 4 7/8” long, 1 1/2” wide, 3 1/8” high, far too small to contain the PHB's massive bulk. Was he just meant as a stand-in for their own Hereford Bull? Was their own Hereford Bull not ready yet? Or was it a mix up at the printing plant, or by the photographer?

Breyer was still in Chicago at that point, and ERTL was in Iowa, so the mix up theory is a little more plausible than you might think. The style of photography is very similar, so it wouldn't surprise me if the same photographer or studio was involved.

Another thing that strikes me is how much nicer the contemporary Breyer Dealer Catalogs were, from a design standpoint. I don't have the motivation – or the time – to go through my argument on a point by point basis. The Breyer Catalogs are just slicker, cleaner, and more “professional” looking than ERTL's. That's probably just a function of Breyer being in Chicago, rather than Iowa, and thus having a deeper talent pool to draw on. It's not something I've given a lot of thought to, but I probably should. There might be some fruitful research there.