WinterFest?

My life is weird, part one million: this past week included my shoes melting and an extended argument about a toilet. I also unintentionally manifested an entire box of French Vanilla coffee creamer.

(Yeah, the same nonsense I can do with models I can now do with food. Except a decent vegetarian corn chowder: that search continues.)

First, some of you were a little confused about the references to the legs on the Family Arabian Foal: I was referring to how she looked from the front, rather than the sides. Here’s a shot to show you how different the leg positions are on my belly-stamped FAF, compared to a slightly later Bay example.

Most of my FAFs (I have… so many) look more like the Bay than the Woodgrain. It could just be that this specific Woodgrain Foal was made this way, or got this way somehow; legs have a habit of going wonky in storage. Maybe there is something more to it, and maybe there isn’t. I haven’t seen enough of these Foals in person to make any assumptions.

Someone mentioned the Old Mold version of the Stallion in the comments – yes, he is most definitely an underappreciated early rarity! But ironically, not a hard one to collect: I think I have a complete collection of them now, and I don’t think any one example cost me more than fifty dollars (the Woodgrain, I believe: I think because he had a Tenite sticker? Back is still too achy for me to dig him out.)

The only significant difference between an Old Mold Stallion and an early Family Arabian Stallion is the mold stamp: Old Molds don’t have it, though most Gray Appaloosas seem to have the partial one. There may be some other subtle differences, but I’ve never been able to conclusively pinpoint anything that couldn’t be ascribed to an incidental manufacturing error. 

Second, this WinterFest thing is interesting; I was just thinking that it was about time for another Duende Special Run. I do like Trueno, and how this paint job makes his mane looks like icicles, but I don’t know if I like him enough to pursue him.

https://www.breyerhorses.com/pages/breyers-winterfest-2023

The same can probably be said of the braided-mane version of Nikolas, named Mouse. Other people have done some digging in my stead and discovered that they are going to be both relatively plentiful and inexpensive, so I may have time to change my mind.

Mouse reminds me a little bit of another one of the customs I’ve been working, too. I’ll probably be putting most of my customizing on hiatus after the Thanksgiving work break, though, to focus on my quilts instead. 

The garage is cold and quilts are warm; that’s all there really is to that.

What else they have in store for this thing we’ll all have to wait and see. I might do a workshop or two if I can find the spare time. (Tempted by the Zebra one, but I fear my patience for painting stripes is very limited.)

Cooler Things

It just amuses and baffles me that I can’t “win” 1000-piece Special Runs, but Test Colors, 50-piece runs, and things other hobbyists are like “what, they made that?” No problemo!

(Yeah, still no Vail. At this point I’m just laughing and shaking my head about it.)

The Bay Lady Roxana has soared past my upper bidding limit; but that’s fine: I went and bought some box lots on the Internet for less that are probably worth more; I’ll find out by the end of the week!

So here’s another cool thing I have been looking for for an insanely long time:

As you might have guessed – because it’s me we’re talking about here – this is no ordinary Family Arabian Foal. Check out the location of her mold mark!

(Just above the drip mark.)

The belly-stamped Foals are obviously very early; in fact, I think they represent the “first state” of the mold, before any of the multitude of other changes were made to it. 

The Family Arabian Foal was likely Breyer’s most popular and in-demand mold through the 1960s and a large portion of the 1970s, and because of the wear and tear of near-constant production, it went through many repairs and revisions. So many, in fact, that with a little extra research, we could probably create a pretty accurate year-by-year timeline of the changes.

(Sorry folks, I do not have the time for that right now!)

Looking for a belly-stamped FAF has been awkward, to say the least, and is complicated by the fact that the best place you would think to find something like this – BreyerFest – has also become one of the less likely. Unless it’s a Test Color, Oddity, Rare SR, New in Box or another known rare variation (like the Sorrels), people don’t bring Family Arabians to sell, because they’re old-fashioned, common and allegedly boring. 

Fortunately, on places like eBay, a lot of sellers don’t know or don’t care: they just want to make a sale. The more diligent ones do what sellers selling items outside of their comfort zone usually do: they photograph everything, including the location of the mold marks. 

Although there are instances where the presence or absence of certain mold marks is historically important, usually it isn’t, so most of us roll our eyes when we see that photo included in a listing. Yeah, I already know that’s a Breyer, doofus.

But in this case, it’s what made the difference for me. I immediately saw it and jumped on it like a cat on a can of tuna. 

I’m beginning to wonder if the FAF was the first – or one of the first – molds to receive the mold mark, before they decided that putting it on the inside hind leg was the way to go. The change happened very quickly, and before they revised the curled eartips: curled eartip FAFs with the standard leg stamp are a little uncommon, but not super-rare. 

(The Shetland Pony also received a belly-stamp around the same time, but it never got removed or repositioned).

Theoretically, the Belly Stamp Foals should only exist in the original four Family Arabian/Old Mold colors: Alabaster, Bay, Woodgrain and Gray Appaloosa. Palomino and Charcoal didn’t show up until later; how much later I am not sure, but I do know I still haven’t found any evidence of Palomino or Charcoal FAFs with the curled eartips.

I haven’t done a comprehensive, point-by-point study of the Foal to figure out what else was changed or corrected from the first state of the mold to the second. Having a sample size of only one is also not helpful, because you don’t know if the variations are the result of a molding or production change, or just something idiosyncratic to that particular Foal.

The Foal’s legs are definitely not in the same places as most of my later examples, but that could just mean the cooling boards weren’t ready yet and everything was assembled by hand, as was the case with the original In-Between Mares around the same time.

Even though Breyer had been producing horses for nearly a decade by the time this Foal was manufactured, she does feel a little – primitive? Maybe they had rush orders to fill, and even though they didn’t have a production process or even all the equipment “ready”, they just got them done by any means necessary?

(I work in a production facility: some of the crazy stuff we do to get product out the door...)

The real question, though, is this: just how rare are these Foals numerically? 

Well, the first problem here is that we don’t have any production records from this period to establish a lower limit. We also have to consider that the mold change happened very early, maybe/likely after the first production run; this first production run could have even been a test batch! It’s been over sixty years now since they were produced, so a lot of them have gone to the model horse graveyard by now, too. 

So my guess (and experience!) would say that unless several come out of the woodwork like the Woodgrain Old Mold Foal did, I’d say she was pretty rare. I do think these Foals are probably a little more common than we realize, because most hobbyists have been unaware of this variation’s existence, until now. And now they will look!

I’d love to have a complete set of four, but I’m happy with just the one, for now.

Rousing the Envy Beast

While it is true that I’ve seen – and owned – a lot more rare Breyer models than the average person, and it does take considerable effort to pique my interest in Collectibility classes in general, I occasionally see things that make me go all grabby hands, at least mentally.

Was it a Marney Test, a Decorator, a Raffle Model, or even an Auction piece that roused the Envy Beast in my heart at BVG Live this year?

Nay, it was FAM: specifically, a Gray Appaloosa Family Arabian Mare with the B mold mark!

As I’ve discussed before, I consider the existence of non-Palomino Family Arabians with B mold marks (made roughly from 1979 through 1982/3) good evidence that the rumored Walmart Gray Appaloosa Family Arabians were not a rumor after all. 

It now looks like all – or a good portion! – of the Family Arabians sold via the Bentley Sales Company Discontinued Lists in the late 1970s and early 1980s may have been a part of a failed rerelease or Special Run program, and not just ancient warehouse overstock that Breyer pawned off on the Bentley Sales Company, who (being just a short drive away from the factory in Chicago) got all the good warehouse detritus Breyer had to offer.

That realization has made me look at this January, 1983 Bentley Sales Company Discontinued List flier in a completely different light:

(Click to embiggen)

Special Runs. Those Family Arabians were all Special Runs and we had no idea. *Mind blown.*

In case you’re curious, the prices on this list are more or less the same prices for the equivalent Regular Runs of the time – there wasn’t a “mark-up” for discontinued items, at least through Bentley Sales. Most of this stuff really was warehouse overstock, and Breyer really didn’t have a way of marketing items like this to collectors other than selling it off to mail-order companies.

There was a bit of a mark-up for some Special Run items that were made specifically for companies like Bentley Sales, but it wasn’t huge because most of their customers were younger and poorer: the market wouldn’t have supported it!

Anyway, now that I seem to have all – or most – of the Low-Relief Family Arabian Mares, the B-mold Mark ones are next up on my want list. 

(Actually, I’ll just settle for one. I’m not picky about color or condition.)

Low Muscle Family Arabian Mares

Most Breyer molds have been modified at some point in their production life. Some of the changes can be chalked up to maintenance and repairs, and others are a result of changing tastes or breed standards.

And sometimes, we have no idea why changes are made at all. I suspect that some of the changes – like the alterations to the Clydesdale Stallion – might have been an instance where additional details were added to a mold to camouflage a serious repair. 

We know that the Family Arabian Mare has a complicated mold history. In addition to the In-Between Mare – the mold that briefly bridged the gap between the Old Mold Mare and the Family Arabian Mare, and looks a little like both – there’s a third variation of the mold who is so rare she only appears to exist in the 1960 Dealer’s Catalog.

It should not come as a surprise, then, that there appears to be yet another mold variation of the Family Arabian Mare. 

I happened to notice the difference while I was cleaning my most recent FAM acquisition, the Dark Sorrel. At first I thought her slight lack of detail was due to her possibly being bloated, like my Sorrel Family Arabian Stallion but nope, she just has… less molded in detail, particularly on the left side of her neck and (to a lesser degree) on her right shoulder. Here’s a comparison of that section of the neck in question, compared to my other Sorrel FAM’s neck:

(More on that in a bit…) 

That really pretty, really early Gloss Alabaster Family Arabian Mare I acquired earlier in the year also has this same lack of mold detail on her neck and shoulder! Since that one came with that pretty nice Old Mold Appaloosa Stallion, it’s safe to assume that this means the Mares with less detail – I’m calling them “Low Muscle” FAMs – are obviously an early, or the earliest mold variant of the FAM. (Barring the discovery of a “left mane” variant, if one ever actually existed outside of the catalog.)

What’s really interesting is that my other Sorrel FAM has the neck muscle striations and extra shoulder detail. This means that the Sorrel Family Arabians had to have occurred early on in the mold’s history, and spanned the transition between these two variations.

What this also suggests is that the Matte Sorrel Family Arabians were the first Family Arabians, outside of the Woodgrains, to be released in Matte, and were issued concurrently with the Gloss releases in Alabaster and Gray Appaloosa. 

I still happen to think that they were a variation of the Bay, rather than a separate release; whether it was for a specific customer, a random thing, or something else entirely is still a matter of debate.

It will be interesting to see if I can find any Gloss Charcoals or Gloss Palominos in the “Low Muscle” variation. I’m pretty sure that those two colors were not released on the Family Arabians until 1961 at the earliest, so it seems unlikely. 

If they do, the timeline will have to be revised. Of course.

So anyway, guys, y’all now know why I’ll be obsessively checking Family Arabian Mares over the course of BreyerFest. It’s all about the research, folks….

The Sorrel Family

Here’s the evidence that I am not totally crazy:

Behold! An entire family of Dark Sorrel Family Arabians!

And here’s the Five-Gaiter that came with the Foal, many moons ago. That was such a deal!

The Western Prancing Horse and Fighting Stallion that I have in this variation are on the lighter side, incidentally. 

The fact that there’s a lot of variation in all of these variations is an excellent argument for the idea that these were not a one-off Special Run items, but things with extended production runs. 

That’s obviously the case with the #114 Bay Western Prancer, who appears to have been made in this variation for most of his production run. 

It’s a little less clear with the Fighting Stallion. Based on the fact that early ephemera pictures depict the Sorrel variation, I think he was made in that variation at the beginning of his production run, but switched over to Breyer’s early version of “Bay” (reddish-brown body with black mane and tail and black hooves) pretty quickly. 

This obviously throws the chronology for Gloss Bay Fighters into question, but I do not want to get into that contentious issue today.

So where does that leave the Family Arabians? Good question! I tend to fall into the “it’s a production variation” camp, rather than “previously unknown/undocumented Special Run”, because two of the other Sorrel variations turned out to be just that: variations, not independent Special Runs. 

The questions then become: when, and for how long? Those, I am not so sure about.

Back to the paperwork!

Variations of Variations

I was super excited to do a Buy It Now about a week ago on what looked like a most excellent upgrade of my Five-Gaiter Sorrel Family Arabian Mare. Someone had drilled holes in the corners of my original Mare’s mouth to accommodate tack, and while she’s otherwise in pretty darn nice shape, one that was not holey was definitely high on my want list.

Not only was the one I just scored hole-free, she also had eyewhites. She was a little yellowed and dirty, but those are easy-peasy fixes.

There was only one problem with this attempt to upgrade. Can you spot it?

Variations, argh! 

The lighter mare is definitely the odd one: most Sorrel Family Arabians, including the Stallion and Foal that I have, more closely resemble the darker one. 

In fact, I don’t think I’ve even seen any other Sorrel Family Arabians that are as light as my first Mare. Then again, not a lot of these come up for sale, so that could simply be a sampling error on my part.  

So it appears I now own two Sorrel Family Arabian Mares. For the time being, anyway. 

Incidentally, my Foal is darn near perfect (she came with a drop dead gorgeous Five-Gaiter with eyewhites in similar condition), but my Stallion is a little bit rough, and slightly bloated. It goes without saying that I’d like to upgrade him, but like the new Mare, it’s going to have to be another chance encounter. 

Black and White and Gray All Over

And now, George Pérez. I mean, I’ve known that one was coming since late last year, but it hits hard in a different way, because I actually met him once. It is one of my most delightful convention memories, in fact. 

He was good friends with some artist/creator friends of mine. I was sitting with my friends in the Artist’s Alley at the Motor City Comic Con one year, just goofing around as they were fielding questions and sketch requests. George, who was one of the featured guests that year, just walks up to the table and starts singing show tunes. And my friend Mercy starts singing show tunes back. 

What a strange and magical moment it was: stuck in the middle of an impromptu Broadway medley with George Pérez! 

(No pictures were taken to record the event, alas. I think I would have been too dumbstruck to take any, even if I had brought my camera.)

This whole weekend was kind of downbeat, when I think about it. First, most of my seedling have shriveled up and died for reasons I absolutely cannot fathom. I’ve had seedling failures before, but nothing like this. All I can hope for at this point is that I can salvage something. Anything, really.

After (finally!) finishing up my sales list inventory, I also came to the sad conclusion that I will not be able to bring everything to BreyerFest as I had hoped. There’s just too much stuff – nearly nine pages of it, and that does not include the most recent collection pulls! So I’ll have to make some hard decisions on what I can and cannot fit in the car. Selling things online is currently not an option, at least until late Summer or early Fall. 

On a more cheerful note, here are two other pieces from the collection that brought me my Charcoal Running Foal:

A few years ago I discovered that I did not possess a complete Gloss Charcoal Family Arabian Family, as I had thought. I was hoping to find a complete family to purchase at some point to remedy this situation, but like so many things, I never got around to it.

Although the Foal above is not an exact match for my Mare (who is currently in storage), I really doubt that I could find better, and I am not going to try: bright white, perfect pinking, minimal molding flaws.

I’ve had several Alabaster Family Arabian Mares – both Gloss and Matte – and this example is also one of the best I’ve seen. Quality vintage Alabasters on any mold are challenging, but on Family Arabians even moreso, since they were tailored specifically for the toy market. 

I’m not at all worried about matching up my Alabaster Family Arabians, though. I have an insane number of Alabaster Foals – Matte and Gloss – as a consequence of a research project that went a little too far (don’t ask!). My Gloss Alabaster Family Arabian Stallion is actually an Old Mold Stallion with a crazy amount of shading – the kind you normally see on vintage Fighting Stallions, Five-Gaiters or Rearing Mustangs – and I just don’t think it’s likely I can anything that can even remotely match him. 

He does have a matching Old Mold Foal for company who is also pretty nice. My Old Mold Mare is… potentially upgradeable, and I’ll leave it at that. (You would not think that the Alabaster Old Mold Mare would be such a tough nut to crack, but she is for me.)

Live Show Stuff

My showstring is apparently half Morgan, half Warmblood, with a smattering of Mustangs and Arabians. At least this show has separate classes for Morgans – the last one I attended in person did not, which made things complicated. 

But Tests are also being handled completely differently this time around, which means I had to reconsider some of my choices there. I had to cut a few anyway…

If there was a class for damaged or homely Tests, on the other hand, I’d totally clean up! I love you, my Fragment, the Splatter Dapple Gray Family Arabian Mare with a missing leg and ear that I found in a body box lot on eBay:

And let’s not forget my delightful trio of “gently used” Classic Quarter Horses – two Mares, and a Foal – that cost me less than ten dollars, combined:

The Mares I found in the Bentley Sales “clearance” boxes of miscellaneous models they were selling at the 1985 Model Horse Congress. The boxes consisted largely of loose (or casually bagged) things they found as they were cleaning out the Chicago factory, post-Reeves purchase. 

I found the Foal in those same boxes at MHC a year later; I was hoping to find the father of the family eventually, but that never happened. And likely never will: if he were to turn up now, he’d probably be unaffordable anyway. 

It looks like I partially got my wish with the BreyerFest shows: Breakables is online, as well as a Boot Camp-style show for Adult Novices. 

The Boot Camp is obviously out for me – I’m definitely not a Novice! – but I am seriously considering Breakables. I only have a few dozen show-worthy models to curate, compared to the few thousand (!) of the plastic kind. And I’ve always wanted to show this little fellow somehow, somewhere, without the anxiety of actually taking him out on the road: 

(Any clues what he is? What’s left of the sticker is not helpful!)

With less than 50 pieces worth showing, the indecision and waffling that goes with winnowing 2000+ down to a manageable 50 is… simply nonexistent. Conceivably, I could get everything done for that show in the space of a weekend. 

It’s something to consider, if the BreyerFest Open Show ceases to be a possibility (I am still thinking about it.)

Anyhoo, I’m heading offline again. Only about half of my show documentation is done, which is – believe it or not – better than I was anticipating at this point. And I am still undecided about bringing sales items; it will all depend on what the situation looks like on Thursday. (I took Friday off of work for last minute prep and stuff.) Toodles!

A Reintroduction

I am not completely happy with it – the curses of an artistic temperament, alas – but this year’s Sampler is up! 

It’s been up since early Thursday morning, but I wanted to do my shopping trip yesterday and I didn’t have time to make my formal announcement. My “trip” was unusual, but I’ll talk about it another day when I’m feeling a little less out of sorts.

(How unusual? At one point I was stuck in traffic behind the 2023 Corvette! That is not a typo, and no time travel was involved.)

As a bonus, I’ll offer up color versions of the pictures accompanying the Early Micro Runs article. I was originally going to include them in color in the Sampler, but I decided to keep it all in black and white instead. 

(By the way, printed copies will be available next week: I’m kind of wiped right now and I just want to chill for most of the weekend.)

It really is kind of remarkable that I have pictures of all these things, especially since I physically own none of them. I was present for raffles of the Rose Gray Proud Arabian Mare and the Red Bay Cantering Welsh Pony, but didn’t win either of them, naturally. Even back then I was not so lucky.

Oh, and for those of you joining us for BreyerFest, howdy! The current content has been a little BreyerFest-focused because it’s that time of the year, but it can – and does – change. 

I try to post about ten times a month (every three days or so) and while most of the content is about Breyer History, it sometimes veers off into other topics I am interested in, including: quilting, comic books, art history, old movies, gardening, and the weird stuff that only seems to happen to me (yes, I’m one of THOSE people!)

I’ve been collecting since 1974, been involved in the hobby since 1978, and I’ve done work for Breyer – off and on – since I published my first article in the original Just About Horses in 1985. I still occasionally do work for them, but as you’ll see, I’m also not afraid about calling them out when they sometimes do dumb things. 

I’ve done everything in the hobby from live showing to customizing to pedigree assignment (we called it “breeding” back in the old days!) but my first love has been researching and obsessing over model horse history, particularly Breyer History. 

I will confess that I don’t know everything, I am occasionally wrong, and I am sometimes a bit of a drama queen (if you didn’t already get that from the blog title). 

I also occasionally – and absolutely unintentionally, I swear – talk about models before they’re released. This is super-awkward because there are some things that I’m not supposed to talk about. 

Like the Corvette, time travel is not involved, and I make no claims of psychic abilities: I just know the market and the product well enough to be able to make better predictions than most. Whether I realize I am doing it or not.

And in case you’re going to ask, my social media presence is a light one. I have a pretty busy offline life, and other than this blog, my Internet activity is not a priority. 

I also do not have a Facebook account, and hope to keep it that way. Long story short: aside from the fact it is not a good fit for the way I socialize in general, I also happen to think that Facebook’s business model is doing more harm to the world than good, so I try to keep my interaction with it to a bare minimum.   

Close To Home

The diorama is… getting there. All of the components are (essentially) done except the body; all I need to do now is finish the horse itself, and then glue everything together. 

I am surprised at how well the customizing is going, especially since it involves a lot more sculpting than I am normally comfortable doing for a diorama project, especially in such a short period of time. Here’s the only clue you’ll get before the big reveal:

And also a bonus, this was the other project I have (temporarily) abandoned – a FAM that was going to be a Staffordshire Pottery Horse:

I have a bunch of Family Arabian Mare bodies that I will eventually turn into an assortment of art projects – this was a plan well before the announcement of this year’s BreyerFest theme – because those bodies are cheap and nobody does anything with them except as armatures, and I think that’s a darn shame. 

There is a lot of potential there that just needs a little imagination to realize it.

Regardless of the outcome (I haven’t consulted the Magic Eightball yet!) this diorama project has been a very therapeutic creative distraction. And there are only so many weeds to pull in the garden.

I know a lot of hobbyists are a bit bummed that there won’t be much to do during the second virtual BreyerFest except sit in front of a computer screen and watch videos. To be honest, I’m kind of looking forward to luxury of a couple of obligation-free days of doing mostly nothing. I might even bake a cake!

Then there is also this sad news to deal with:

https://www.breyerhorses.com/blogs/news/my-collector-story-janice-cox

When you consider just how large and complicated a topic as Breyer History is, it is both surprising and unsurprising that there aren’t actually that many of us doing the legwork of uncovering, analyzing and publishing Breyer History.

The loss of any hobbyist – whether we’re someone well-known, or unknown – is always a diminishment. But this one hits close to home. 

The Second IBM

When it comes to collectibles, rarest is such a loaded word: in a hobby where 25-30 Test Colors are distributed yearly, even being unique doesn’t guarantee value or even interest.

For an item to be truly valuable nowadays, there has to be more to it than mere rarity or uniqueness.

Prior to the early 1990s, Marney Walerius’s original Gray Appaloosa In-Between Mare qualified on both counts: it was not only (apparently) unique, but historically significant as Breyer’s first failed attempt at replacing the Old Mold Mare in their product lineup after the legal dispute with Hagen-Renaker.

Then a second piece – a Woodgrain, this time – showed up in California in the early 1990s, and turned the hobby on its head. What was once an unattainable oddity was now, hypothetically, available. It was no longer a thing that could be acquired and owned by one person sequentially, it could actually be something that could be collected by multiple hobbyists.

So ironically, by being less “rare”, the In-Between Mare probably became even more valuable!

I don’t have any idea about the exact number of In-Between Mares floating around the hobby, because of the simple fact that many hobbyists have a hard time distinguishing the Family Arabian Mare from the Old Mold/Proud Arabian Mare: a mold that bridges that gap could also be sitting in many collections completely unrecognized.

It is just not rare enough that I still have hopes of finding one on the secondary market, someday: a “new” one turns up on the market every four-five years or so, more often than some other items I can think of (#82 Donkey with Baskets, ahem.)

I had a momentarily breathless moment a few weeks ago when I spotted a Woodgrain FAM at a local flea market, from a far enough distance that I thought my moment had come, but she wasn’t so it didn’t.

I didn’t have the $1000 to hit the “Buy It Now” option on a Woodgrain IBM on eBay a few years back, and I certainly don’t have the money to buy the one up for auction now.

Not that I hadn’t given it some thought: the Woodgrain at auction is that “second” piece I mentioned/pictured above. I would love to have something with that kind of provenance and historical import, but alas, my bank account still says Not Today.

Clearing Out the Picture Files

I can’t think of anything interesting to say today. So I’ll clear some random pictures off the hard drive. After the recent dusting and reorganizing, I took a few extra pics for the times when words fail. Like today!

Here’s one last “glamour” shot of those Gloss Alabaster Family Arabian Mare and Foal before I decide their fate:

If you don’t remember, this is what they looked like when I got them:

They did turn out pretty darn nice, didn’t they? But I already have a very good set of Gloss Alabasters – with stickers! – and no (physical) room for sentiment, so they’re likely headed to Kentucky in a few weeks.

(You could use this post as part of their provenance, if you’re in the market!)

They’ve been in my bedroom window for the past several months, so I will miss seeing them every day. But I’m sure I can find someone else in need of a sunbath soon.

Here’s a pic of the original Little Bits #9025 Clydesdale, produced from 1984 through 1988, and released in a couple different shades of Bay since then. I’ve been wanting to talk a little bit more about the Little Bits/Paddock Pals, but I haven’t been able to come up with anything interesting or clever to say.

The photo turned out nice, though. Of all the Little Bits molds, the Clydesdale does seem to be the most photogenic, isn’t he? I’m not sure if the front stocking was intentionally masked, or someone’s fingers got in the way.

I bought him when he came out in 1984, so the latter, probably. Quality control was, in spite of rumors to the contrary, not necessarily better back then. Speaking of…

Always makes me smile. I know something like that isn’t likely to slip by QC today; not because it would not be well executed, but newer collectors are more likely to see it as a flaw, and not character. (Not mine, but been offered.)

And finally, since the hobby was all agog a while back over the Family Arabian Mare with the Mahogany Bay Proud Arabian Mare paint job, for equal time here’s a pic of a Test Color Proud Arabian Mare wearing the Family Arabian Mare’s version of the Bay paint job, black hooves and all:

Since this photograph (one of Marney’s, of course) is dated early 1971 – before she was officially released for sale to the public – this probably represents a True Test Color, as opposed to things that were painted just because.

Pretty girl! I wish I knew where she was. Purely out of curiosity: it’s not likely I’d be able to afford her than that Mahogany Bay Family Arabian Mare!

And that’s all for today, folks.

The Spotty Halla

Like everyone else, I am completely smitten with the Live Auction Appaloosa Halla:

The auction piece was created on one of the handful of pre-Bolya Halla bodies Reeves still had in the warehouse. Halla, in this form, is essentially extinct: the way the mold was altered means it isn’t coming back to its original form.

It’s theoretically possible to recreate Halla by doing a 3-D scan of an original – either the original sculpt if it is out there somewhere, or of an earlier plastic one.

Possible, but not likely: although the real-life Halla is still considered a legend in Germany, and the Hess mold is a dead-on portrait of her, a new Halla would have be an entirely new mold.

Newer collectors prefer newer molds, and the money that it takes to develop a new mold is probably a better long-term investment than re-creating an old mold that had only a modest fan base to begin with.

Speaking of Appaloosas, here’s a picture of my “Old Mold” Appaloosa Stallion, which is basically the Family Arabian Stallion without the full mold stamp: some have a fragmentary copyright horseshoe, some have none. This one has a fragmentary mold mark:

Since the Family Arabian Foal had enough mold changes over the years that we can almost date them to the year, I thought I’d try to do the same with the Family Arabian Stallion.

I gave up, eventually. There are definitely lots of subtle changes beyond the mold mark, and his boy parts definitely got reworked in the 1970s and beyond, but they weren’t enough to create a year-by-year timeline.

You could more accurately date the Stallions by their paintjobs. You don’t need to see a picture of the mold mark area to know this guy is early: the hip blanket and finely speckled spots already tell you that. It’s the same coloring/patterning you see on the Old Mold Mare and Foals, and can be seen in early examples of the Family Mare and Foal, too.

I’m not sure exactly when it switched over to the splashier and more irregular spots and the white belly stripe, other than it happened pretty early. This speckled variation isn’t necessarily rare – most Family Arabians of any type and stripe just aren’t – but it’s definitely the scarcer of the two Gloss Gray Appaloosa variations.

The fragility of the gray paint does make it difficult to find them in good or better condition. Other than a factory smudge, this guy is near-perfect, which is why this handsome fella one of my favorites among my Family Arabians.

Another Oddball FAM

Here I thought I was doing pretty good earlier this week when I picked up an inexpensive box lot of unicorns through a local auction house. Even after taking out a few treasures for myself (the Hagens), I should be able to make a nice little profit from the rest of the lot at BreyerFest.

Then I saw what that Mahogany Bay Family Arabian Mare went for on eBay. Yikes! If only I could be that lucky.

Well actually, I have been, but my problem is that the really good stuff tends to stick around. The ability to own a rare and beautiful thing tends to trump whatever financial considerations I have – and it’s usually easier just to sell off things I am not as emotionally invested in, horses or otherwise, until the need passes.

Ironically, one of the models I had been waffling on has been my other Oddball/Test Color FAM, here hanging with a couple of friends:

Isn’t she lovely? She’s basically a mid-1970s Matte Palomino with a Palomino mane and tail, a simple yet surprisingly effective alteration. I assume she was another Factory Employee Take-Home, possibly a Cull that was fished out of the reject bin and finished for gifting.

I picked her up pretty cheaply several years ago on eBay, before Family Arabian Mares of any stripe were a thing. I remember being a little apprehensive about paying that much money for what was essentially a glorified Matte Palomino FAM.

It doesn’t seem as foolish a deal now. (Less than two percent of the Mahogany Mare’s selling price, if you’re curious.) She is staying: she only happens to be on my sales shelving unit because I am still in the process of reorganizing here.

I have to say, though, that I am as shocked as anyone that the Family Arabian Mare – who has been, historically, the least appreciated of the three Family Arabian molds – is now a “hot” item.

This is good for her, though not so good for me. I might have to find another lightly collected, underappreciated and cheap Traditional mold to obsess over now, or at least until this craziness blows over.

FAMs as PAMs?

Several years ago I acquired a Matte Dapple Gray Family Arabian Mare in a Body Box lot. She was missing a leg and half an ear, but I didn’t care:

I knew there was at least one other Dapple Gray Family Arabian Mare like her out there, and where there are two, there are usually more. I assumed that she was either a Salesman’s Sample or very early production piece of the Proud Arabian Mare, produced before the Proud Arabian Mare mold was ready for full production.

I also assumed that meant there had to be at least a few Mahogany Bay Family Arabian Mares out there too, either sitting unnoticed in someone’s collection, or passed off as a simple variation of the Bay.

(Any Matte Alabasters that would have/could have been produced would have been virtually identical/indistinguishable from the original Matte Alabaster FAMs, save for a little extra body shading, perhaps.)

So it wasn’t a complete surprise when a Mahogany Bay Family Arabian Mare showed up – on eBay, of course. What was odd about it was that it came with the original White Cardboard Picture box, and a not-quite-matching Bay Proud Arabian Foal.

Oddballs and obvious Samples have turned up in retail boxes before, especially the enclosed cardboard ones of the 1970s and early 1980s. It might have been done to round out the production quota for the day, or (according to a rumor I heard from Marney herself) to give the hobby community a few little surprises to go hunting for.

But if these Oddball Mares were Samples or simply very early production items, you’d expect to find them with Corrugated Shipper Boxes: the Proud Arabian Mare debuted in 1972, but the retail-friendly White Cardboard Picture Boxes didn’t appear until 1973.

A random thought occurred to me a while back, now bolstered by this Mahogany Bay Mare and her box: what if these Mares were straight-up goofs? What if – like so many hobbyists – one of the factory painters simply confused the PAM mold with the FAM mold?

If so, it was obviously a mistake that was caught early. This is a darn shame, since I have grown rather fond of Mahogany Bay as a color.

I had the strange misfortune of actually finding the Mahogany Bay FAM auction very shortly after it was listed, and fumbled around the page for a few anxious seconds desperately looking for the “Buy It Now” button that was not there.

So I will simply have to be content with my three-legged mare…

In The Background

I found this at the local Salvation Army yesterday, on my way home from work:

I received this exact kit for Christmas way back when. I remember because I made a few “improvements” to the rather sorry design of the horse, making him look a bit more like the Family Arabian Stallion. I could do that because I had lots of leftover yarn from other latch hook kits I had received as gifts.

I got a lot of latch hook kits as a kid.

For the holidays, I’d hand all the relatives heavily annotated Breyer catalogs, but that rarely resulted in actual Breyer horses. Oh, they’d catch the hint about horses, but since I was the “artistic” kid, that meant… horse-themed craft kits.

Let’s face it: the horse world is confusing to people on the outside, whether it’s in “real-life” or in model-horse form. Unless you had another horse-crazy relative who understood, most of them figured it was Mom and Dad’s job to sort the Breyer stuff out. It was just easier to get you that craft kit they found at Kmart.

There was also never a reason for your other relatives to learn the ins-and-outs of the Breyer world, either: in spite of – or maybe even as a consequence of – being nearly ubiquitous, Breyers were always considered part of the background, much like the Japan clinkies you can just see on the box of this latch hook kit.

Breyer has never achieved the same cultural status or significance of Barbie, or Hot Wheels, or Legos. (Remember Jessie’s song from Toy Story 2? With the model horses that weren’t Breyer-shaped but were clearly meant to be Breyers? So close, yet so far... ) They never really achieved “fad” status, either, outside of the early successes of the Western Horse and the Davy Crockett set.

In fact, it was their relative lack of licensing success that probably saved them. Hartland found themselves scrambling in the 1960s as television Westerns faded from popularity, but Breyer continued to do what it had been doing all along: providing generic, license-free figurines for horse-crazy set.

Even that wouldn’t have been enough to carry them through: Breyer considered ditching the whole “Breyer Animal Creations” line in the late 1960s, but rumblings from the nascent hobby community persuaded them elsewise.

Through the 1970s, Breyers still had a solid, though peripheral, place in the toy industry, in spite of their best efforts to break through. In publishing terms, they were midlist items: they sold consistently, sometimes well, but they were never the bestsellers the industry or the country would talk about.

One of the numerous reasons why Breyer was sold to Reeves International back in the early 1980s was because of this issue: they wanted to develop the brand to achieve a bigger and more public presence in the toy and collectible market.

One of the ways to achieve that was to create Breyer merchandise that was not strictly models. We are not talking just about accessories like tack, props and stables, but “fun” and more ephemeral things. Breyer did have some products along those lines in the 1970s and early 1980s, like the Puffy Fun Stickers and the Coloring and Activity books:

http://www.identifyyourbreyer.com/images/8100.JPG

And in more recent years we’ve seen a lot more of these types of items both on the web site, and at BreyerFest: pajama pants, tote bags, notebooks and license plate frames, anyone?

But there was never been a coherent or coordinated plan to it all.

This is why I’ve been sort of puzzled by the negative reactions to the hiring of the two DreamWorks executives, and to some of the products they’ve “soft launched” on the web site. I am especially fond of this fabulous tote bag:

http://www.breyerhorses.com/vintage-breyer-tote

This kind of branding is nothing new: it has been a goal for a very long time. All they’ve done now is hire professionals they’ve worked with before, with real-world expertise.

Ironic t-shirts at Hot Topic? Breyer-themed pillows and comforters at Target? A “Stablemates” cartoon? Latch-hook kits with a more faithful rendition of the Family Arabian Stallion?

Those are the kinds of things I think we will be seeing in the near future, as they try to develop Breyer into a brand that doesn’t just acquire licenses, but becomes a license worth acquiring by others.

In effect, they’re trying to create non-horse Breyer things a younger me would have appreciated as gifts from well-meaning friends and relatives, in addition to the horses themselves.

In short, the horses themselves are not going anywhere: they are the core of the brand. We are just getting more Breyer-branded stuff.

Ruffled Feathers

It was another excellent day at the flea market – not “Hagen-Renakers in a shoebox” great, but no complaints. Most of it is heading for the sales boxes, if I can make it fit. This little bit of ephemera, however, is a keeper:

A vintage postcard from the South African Feather Company – a company that manufactured custom plumes for horses. And other (less innocent?) things, I presume; I found it in a box of risqué postcards, photographs and other naughty things in brown paper envelopes (which is apparently not the cliché I thought it was!)

(And in case you were wondering, most of it was 1950s-level tame.)

Speaking of feathers, there’s been some rustling thereof with the posting of this Auction Lot:

Many hobbyists were assuming that the Polo Pony version of the Smarty Jones mold was going to be the Bollywood Surprise, since Reeves has been dropping hints about a Polo Pony SR since the beginning, with nary a one in sight. Since it has been a while since they put one of the Surprise rarities in the Auction...

He seemed a little unlikely to me, since last year’s BreyerFest Early Bird Raffle was the Smarty Jones Polo Pony Polomar. It still might be a Polo Pony of some sort, but it might be on a completely different mold that has multiple mane and tail options.

(So maybe now Strapless? My speculating skills have been pretty off lately, so take that for what it’s worth.)

Anyway, still prepping. And still not anywhere near ready, but whatever gets done, gets done. (Actually, the diorama is almost done – it’s just the centerpiece item that needs to be finished.)

Incidentally, here’s my Vintage Club Family Arabian Stallion – I got Florentine!

I was hoping for a Gold Charm – I’ve been hoping for Gold Charm Family Arabians for years! – but the Florentines in this batch have been very nicely done.

Although Wedgewood Blue is my favorite of the four original Decorator colors, I have no preference when it comes to the modern interpretations. As long as I end up getting a nice mix of Blues and Golds, I’m good.

It’d be pretty awesome if they, at some point, offered the Mare and Foal up so we could complete some family sets. I’m not sure that’s going to happen, though: the Foal has its fans, but the poor, homely FAM gets little love outside of my house….

Comfort Food

Since I’m deep into “BreyerFest Crunch Time” and I’m running on not that much sleep, here’s a picture the most relevant finds from an amazing flea market Sunday:

Not going to lie, the most exciting find of the bunch (for me) was the Gloss Palomino Family Arabian Stallion. He’s not particularly rare, or in superior condition, though this one does have really nice color and shading (Gloss Palomino is one of those few colors that can get away with the overspray).

No, it’s because I didn’t have many Family Arabians on the sales list, outside of my Body Box, and the Vintage Club Family Arabian Stallion Ali just came out.

Even prior to the Vintage Club announcement last year, the fortunes of Family Arabians have been on the rise, and I haven’t had any issues turning them over on my sales list. There’s apparently such a “shortage” that the past few years I’ve even had people asking for them at BreyerFest.

I’ve been trying to keep a few in reserve this year, but the temptation to sell plus the lack of local finds have left me with a serious Family Arabian deficit.

This hasn’t always been the case – even now, I’d wager, there are people who’d be more than willing to dump all of their excess Family Arabians at my door and run.

(But seriously, don’t. I’m already at “how am I going to fit all these things into my car?” territory, and my latest box lot hasn’t even arrived yet. Yikes!)

It’s a combination of things working in the Family Arabians favor: they’ve come in a ton of different colors, they’re still relatively cheap (with some exceptions), they can be challenging to find in good or better condition, and oh-so-many variations.

They’re not the prettiest, or the most correct, or very typey, and outside of a few rarities (the Sorrels, the Solid Blacks, vintage Chalkies, etc.) not very valuable. But most of us have had one, two, or a dozen in our collecting lifetimes, and the sentimentality tends to trump all those qualms.

I guess they’re sort of like the comfort food of the model horse world.

The Five-Gaiter is older with very neatly painted ribbons and is also going on the sales list; the Hartland Buckskin Polo Pony has some marks and some seam splits, but might be staying as an upgrade.

Soap and Sunshine

Here’s an updated picture of those two Gloss Alabaster Family Arabians that came in an especially dirty box lot a while back:

Originally I was going to leave them as-is, as an “ultimate” example of grubbiness, but after nearly a year of their sad faces peering over the monitor in my office, I had to do something.

They still have a ways to go in the unyellowing process, but here’s what the other side still looks like, to give you an idea of how far they have come:

You might think that’s bad, but it’s a considerable improvement over what they originally looked like before they even hit the bathtub:

They were literally so grimy you could not even tell they were Gloss! The grime was so thick in spots that it actually came off in chunks, which kind of freaked me out a little bit at first. Was something else coming off as well?

Nope, just years of neglect.

And it really didn’t take much serious effort, beyond a little soap, sunshine, and patience. (No actual bleach in this case: it tends to do more harm than good on Gloss Finishes.)

In the weeks that they’ve resided in my bedroom window, I’ve kind of gotten attached to these two; they were slated for my sales list after rehab, but right now it’s 50-50 on whether or not they’ll stay.

I already have a really nice Gloss Mare, and several superlative Gloss Foals (because of my obsession with tracking ear/mold variations on the Foal mold), so I shouldn’t. Since Family Arabians have been trending up of late – especially now, with a Family Arabian Stallion in the Vintage Club lineup this year – finding them a new home shouldn’t be hard.

Dimensional Stability

I was doing a little cleanup in the office yesterday and noticed something on my research shelf of Family Arabian Foals:

The variable heights aren’t the big news here: most of us know that Cellulose Acetate is susceptible to shrinkage, both during and after molding. It’s more a quirk of the manufacturing process than a concern, unless it is also accompanied by paint discoloration, distortion, and oozing that indicate the model may be suffering from the dreaded “Shrinky Syndrome”.

What’s interesting is the composition of the tallest member of this little crew: according to his “B” mold mark, he’s molded from the Cellulose Propionate plastic.

It hadn’t occurred to me before, but that makes a lot of sense.

Breyer briefly experimented with this slightly different Tenite cellulosic plastic in the late 1970s and early 1980s, with mixed results. It was more widely available and had greater dimensional stability, but was also more brittle and difficult to finish/work after molding.

Better dimensional stability means less shrinkage and warping.

What that means for us is that this Foal is the most accurate depiction, dimensionally, of what the interior of the Family Arabian Foal’s mold actually looks like.

I now find myself almost intrigued enough by this idea to seek out other Propionate models and cross-compare them with their more standard Acetate counterparts.