Shopping Spree

Sorry, just being busy again – plus I had some work stress I had to deal with, so I’ve been spending my free time working on the garden and chopping another Mesteno to bits. 

(If anyone lives nearby and wants some of my leftover perennials, feel free to stop by and grab a bucket or two. You can’t have the Mesteno, though: he’s actually looking promising!)

The annual book sale that I go to was something of a washout this year; I had high hopes for it, since I missed out last year due to partying my butt off in Chicago at Worldcon. Unfortunately they now start the sale in the afternoon, rather than the morning. Since I work nights, not much was left for me to pick over the following day, other than a few quilting books. 

On the bodies front, things are looking up: I managed to make a few box lots purchases, and another kindly benefactor may be sending some not-so-lovelies my way. 

I purchased two of the Spooky Stablemates: they were still available when I logged in after lunch, and I managed to completely miss the glitches in the beginning. As long as I get two different, I’ll be content. 

I’ve also managed to do a little bit of upgrading, most significantly a near mint and complete Davy Crockett Set:

My previous set was missing most of his accessories; the person I purchased him from back in the 1980s confessed that he used them to complete his Hartland Horse and Rider sets. While I was happy to get the set regardless, I remember how dismissive he was of Breyers in general, and the impression that I was somehow doing him a favor by taking it.

I got that feeling a lot from Hartland collectors I met at flea markets and antique shows back then. It was doubly weird because I never got that vibe from model horse hobbyists that specialized in Hartlands, and at that point I had a pretty decent-sized collection myself, though very little of it was either the Horse and Rider sets, or the Baseball figurines.  

I have downsized the Hartland section of my collection pretty significantly since then – just one shelf of larger horses, a bunch of Tiny Mites and Barkies, and all the glow-in-the-dark religious figurines I love so much – and the local supply seems to be mostly exhausted anyway. Any new pieces I’ve added recently have been in lots of miscellaneous horse type things I’ve bought locally, or on eBay. 

But back to the Davy Crockett. In spite of the fact that they made a ton of these sets – they were made to capitalize on the Disney-generated Davy Crockett fad, in 1955 – they’re remarkably hard to find in mint and complete condition. 

And most importantly: at a price I could afford. This one popped up on eBay at a killer price, and I could not say no.

The Stablemates Riders

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dear Flea Market: The Cowboy Cull

Originally I was just going to whinge about the new Unicorn Stablemates and how I am super annoyed that I will probably just have to order a box of them from somebody just to get some at a halfway decent price, but then I went to the flea market and this happened:

I found an authentic ca. 1950s Breyer Cowboy Cull.

With his hat.

(That was the best part. I didn’t even see it when I picked him up, and the vendor was “Don’t forget his hat!” If he had pulled out the guns or a box, too, you would not be reading this because I would be in the hospital right now still recovering from the shock.)

Seriously, flea market: we need to talk.

I thought we were safely out of range of Chicago for this sort of nonsense to happen.

The closest I’ve heard of such things happening was Lansing and Lansing is, at best, two hours away. We’re close enough to Canada that the occasional Beswick or Royal Doulton piece wanders by, and that I’m totally cool with and grateful for.

You might remember that I found a New Jersey Cull (the Quarter Horse Gelding Splash) here last year, which is why I’m understandably a little freaked out about this.

The rest of the flea market shopping experience was fairly normal. A few body-quality Classics, some craft supplies, a few groceries. I did end up leaving some stuff behind, including a pretty decent Gray Plastic Donkey, because after the Cowboy I was pretty much “I can’t even, anymore.” 

Technically there’s not a huge market for this thing: Culls are a bit of a niche item, and so are the 1950s-era Rigid Riders.

So a niche of a niche is what, exactly? Is it like a nook or cranny?

Since I dwell in that subniche – I own a Test Color Roemer, over a half dozen Black Stretched Morgan variations, and a three-legged Dapple Gray Family Arabian Mare that I’m not even sure I know what she is anymore – it’s a moot point. It’s not going anywhere.

Interesting way to get “model horse holy week” off to a start!

I have to go finish packing now. It is not going well, but I’ll manage.

When Breyer Met Mego (no, the other Mego)

It was another weird and wonderful day at the flea market, the kind that makes me wish I had a booth at one of the local antique malls so I could justify buying stuff to stock it!

I passed by most of the horses – they were either overpriced, or simply not that interesting – but I did find one interesting bit of Breyer-related ephemera from the same vendor I purchased that photo album from:

Dinah-Mite paper dolls!

Dinah-Mite was Mego’s version of Barbie, whose biggest selling feature was that she was – as you can see from the cover of the book – far more posable and versatile.

She didn’t last long – she was discontinued ca. 1975, in favor of Mego’s better-selling Star Trek, Superhero, and Planet of the Apes lines. But not before she acquired some interesting accessories, including a horse “Golden Pal”, who was a motorized knock-off of our friend the Palomino Family Arabian Stallion:

http://www.megomuseum.com/dinah/v_horse.shtml

And a boyfriend “Don”:

http://www.megomuseum.com/catalog/1974/images/dinahmite2.jpg

Both of these accessories were not originally her own; Golden Pal was originally the Planet of the Apes “Action Stallion” and Don was simply a Mego Superman in civilian clothes. Mego was thrifty (and/or creative) that way.

So why am I going on about this obscure doll from the early 1970s? It’s because the original, elusive, rarely-seen Breyer Rider Doll from the 1976 Breyer Rider Gift Set was… a repurposed Dinah-Mite:

Or at least, the prototypes were.

There are all sorts of stories floating around about why the original Breyer Rider Gift Set never materialized; the original one I heard was that there was a safety or manufacturing issue involved. But if the plan was to just repurpose/reissue Dinah-Mites – and not merely hijack a few for the prototypes – something else might have been going on.

There are enough Mego resources online to solve that riddle, but like so many other things, I haven’t had the time to find out.

Stablemates Riders

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So cute!

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

Why Kit Carson?

Because there was a television show, that’s why:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0043169/

The Adventures of Kit Carson was a relatively popular program from the earliest days of the Western television boom; over 100 half hour episodes were produced from 1951 through 1955, and ran in syndication for several years afterward. It was popular enough to merit a Coca-Cola sponsorship:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDpeLTgtzcM

Just about the only thing the television show shared in common with the real-life frontiersman Kit Carson was the name. The real-life Kit was a rancher, trapper, soldier, Indian guide, explorer - a veritable 19th century superhero. On television, Kit and his Mexican sidekick "El Toro" spent most of their time like any other "White Hat" Westerners - righting wrongs and fighting crime on the frontier.

It’s quite obvious to me that Breyer’s Kit Carson is based on the character from the television show, and not the historical figure. The Breyer set replicates Kit’s signature look from the show - clean shaven, a fringed buckskin shirt, neckerchief and cowboy hat.

The show did have some merchandise associated with it - comic books, neckerchiefs, possibly a cap gun - a modest line up from a time just before the great Western TV merchandising boom. It doesn’t appear that Breyer actually pursued a licensing agreement with the show, however. The production of new episodes had ended by the end of 1955 anyway, so it could be that they weren’t pursuing any new licensees by that time.

Kit Carson was also just as much a public domain character as Davy Crockett, so maybe they didn’t feel it was necessary to arrange one. The mold had already paid for itself, several times over, and it’s doubtful that a license would have been worth the effort to acquire.

All of the Horse and Rider Sets were discontinued by 1960, at the latest: they’re nowhere to be found in the 1960 Dealer’s Catalog. It’s possible that they could have continued production through 1959, but I don’t have any company catalogs or pricelists from that year to confirm or deny.

By that time it was clear that Breyer was moving more towards a critter-only lineup; it’d be nearly twenty years before they’d bring rider figurines back, in a slightly more kid- and hobbyist-friendly form.

Breyer's Davy Crockett, Part 2

Sorry about the brief hiatus. I was feeling a little bit down the past couple of days, with the crummy weather and all that. Finding out that the rerelease Man o' Wars finally sold out at the WEG didn’t help, either.

(Everything I needed to say about the crazy-stupid prices some of the rereleases have been bringing on eBay, I said on Blab. I said what I felt, and I meant it. It didn’t win me any friends, I’m sure, but so be it.)

So, let’s get back to Davy Crockett.

As I demonstrated in my last post, we’ve finally determined that Breyer’s Davy Crockett was a 1955 release, and was probably a part of the fad spawned by Disney’s Davy Crockett episodes on Disneyland. Now comes the question: what happened after that?

Disney had come up with a couple of new Davy episodes by the fall of 1955, and would re-air all the Davy Crockett episodes for some time to come, but the fad was pretty much over by the end of 1955. Crockett-themed merchandise was still selling - but not at the insane pace it was at the height of the craze, and not enough to justify continued production.

That probably included Breyer’s Davy Crockett, too.

It’s certainly possible that Breyer continued production of the Davy Crockett somewhat into 1956 to fill late Christmas 1955 catalog orders, but by the spring of 1956, the Davy Crockett mold has already been rebranded - repainted, retooled, with a new horse and accessories - as Kit Carson:


So while we can’t determine when Davy was discontinued with absolute certainty, it appears that he was almost exclusively a 1955 release. The Kit Carson set remained in production considerably longer, through at least 1958; he appears in both the Pricelist, and the Dealer’s Catalog from that year.

In spite of the longer production run, the Kit Carson is a harder set to find than the Davy Crockett. It’s not so odd, when you give it more than a moment’s thought: Breyer’s Davy Crockett was released at the height of the fad. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if all of Breyer’s resources, for the summer of 1955, were dedicated exclusively to meeting the demand.

There’s some tangential evidence of that: the 1956 Breyer line. Breyer released not one or two, but at least five new molds in 1956:

• Brahma Bull
• Horned Hereford Bull
• Lassie
• Rin Tin Tin
• Robin Hood

The money to make and market all of these molds had to come from somewhere, and the most obvious source is the windfall from the Davy Crockett.

What about the MasterCrafters Davy Crockett Clocks - where do they fit in? I’m not sure. The theory that they might have engineered another models for mold tradeoff, just like the Western Horse, is still a viable one. It would have been much quicker - and neater - to simply make the necessary arrangements between each other, rather than get the banks involved in the first place.

If that’s the case, then it would mean that the Clocks and the freestanding Davy Crockett figurines could have been released simultaneously, allowing both of them to cash in. And in Breyer’s case, cash in enough to significantly expand the business.

Ah, if only I had more evidence!

We’ll finish up next time, with Kit Carson. (More to him than meets the eye? You bet!)

Breyer's Davy Crockett, Part I

I had a monstrous migraine today, so I’m going to have to split the Davy Crockett piece into two parts, since I didn’t have the time or energy to edit it down to one.

There’s never been any doubt that the Davy Crockett was a Breyer release, but outside of the box the occasional set turns up in, there’s no official company document that specifically says so. The set appears in mail-order catalogs in 1955, but no mention of the manufacturer is made in the catalog description.

We have a 1956 sheet that mentions the Kit Carson - basically the same mold, with a new paint job and accessories - and Kit is also shown in the 1958 materials (Dealer Catalog, and Pricelist.) But poor old Davy is conspicuously absent. It’s almost as if he didn’t exist - except for the fact that he rather obviously does.

I finally found the "evidence:" the original announcement, in the "New Toys on Parade" section of the August 1955 issue of Toys and Novelties:


The August 1955 date is interesting. Most of the announcements I’ve found for Breyer’s new releases have been in the January through March range - right around Toy Fair time. Now it’s possible that the magazine might have had a backlog of pieces to run in the "New Toys on Parade" section, but I rather doubt there was a five or six month delay in this case. I think Davy really was a Mid-year release, and a rushed one, at that!

It had been long assumed - but not proven, until now - that Breyer’s Davy Crockett was a part of the onslaught of merchandise marketed during the infamous Davy Crockett fad of 1955. Here’s a pretty good summary of this brief, intense mania that caught everyone - even Disney, himself! - by surprise:

http://mercurie.blogspot.com/2010/03/davy-crockett-televisions-first-fad.html

(Warning: it’s gray text against a black background, and may be a bit hard on the eyes.)

Seeing the huge profits the "first responders" were making, just about every toy manufacturer rushed their own Davy Crockett-themed merchandise to the market. Licensing wasn’t really an issue - as an historical figure, Davy was essentially in the public domain. As long as you didn’t use anything specific to the Disney show itself - like the theme song, or Fess Parker’s likeness - you were free to make whatever Davy Crockett merchandise you saw fit. Such as this rather creepy vinyl doll, from the same page the Breyer Davy appeared:


The fad was well underway by February, when the third episode of Davy Crockett aired on ABC’s Disneyland. If Breyer’s announcement was printed in August, it had to have been sent in by July, and photographed by June - which means that it took them four months, five months tops, to get their Davy Crockett from concept to execution. Impressive!

If you needed anymore proof of the awesomeness of Breyer’s primary sculptor and moldmaker Chris Hess, there it is.

The Davy Crockett fad was pretty much dead by Christmas 1955. And so was, I believe, the production of Breyer’s Davy Crockett. I’ll discuss that, and a whole lot more, in my next post.

Beer Mountie

In case you missed it in the comments, we were able to determine the identity of that big, funky horse on the wooden plank: he was a "backbar sign" for the Burger Brewing Company of Cincinnati, Ohio. I’ve found a couple of links, including this one:

http://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/burger-beer-horse-backbar-statue-figure

I haven’t had time to track down a copy of the book this piece is in, so I can’t give you any more details like the date of manufacture, or the manufacturer. Hartland did a number of advertising pieces for the beer and liquor trade, so I wouldn’t be surprised if they had something to do with it.

Breyer did briefly make a brief foray into the beer and liquor trade, as well - with the Drewry’s Mountie.

The Drewry’s Mountie is distinguishable from the regular run piece by only one feature: small decals of the Drewry’s logo on the back corners of the horse’s saddle blanket. The logo consists of, rather redundantly, a Mountie and his horse. (That logo was eventually replaced with one featuring a large capital D, when the Canadian Government let it be known that they didn’t want the RCMP associated with a cheap, American-brewed beer. As far as I know, all of the Mountie figurines feature the Mountie and Horse logo.)

Drewery’s originated in Canada (thus explaining the original logo), but then moved production stateside to South Bend, Indiana. It was popular in the Midwest - Indiana, Illinois, and Michigan, mostly - but like most regional beer brands, was bought out by a series of increasingly bigger breweries, and eventually ceased to be.

The exact nature of this piece is unknown. Was it an advertising or backbar sign, a promotional gift with purchase, a little something for company employees? When was it made? Was it a commissioned piece, or did the beer company buy up batches and affix the decals themselves?

I know nothing. This not-knowing bothers me more than it usually does in this case because there’s some family history tied to it.

My thrifty Grandmother’s second husband, Art Kuhl, worked for Drewry’s in the 1950s as a delivery driver. During the summer, Dad sometimes accompanied him on some of his deliveries. Somewhere in the family archives - I don’t know where, so you’ll just have to take my word for it - there’s a picture of Grandma leaning provocatively against the beer truck, a bottle of Drewry’s (presumably) in hand.

The Breyer Horse and Rider Sets have always been pretty high on my want list; it should go without saying that the Drewery’s Mountie occupies the top spot on that list.