Nikolas

Reeves threw us a curveball this time around with next year’s Celebration Horse: instead of a Draft or Warmblood on an existing mold – as many of us were expecting – we’re getting a new German Riding Pony mold by Brigitte Eberl!

https://www.breyerhorses.com/blogs/breyerfest-blog/our-2022-celebration-horse

The prototype for Nikolas is very reminiscent of the 2009 BreyerFest Special Run Buttercream, on the Idocus mold. That release initially met with a cool reception, but has only grown in popularity in more recent years. 

And also, a little bit, like the Classics Buckskin Duchess released as a “Thoroughbred Cross” in 2006 through 2008. From personal experience she appears to be one of the tougher Duchesses to find, at least in good condition.

New mold introductions are nothing new for BreyerFest; the first was the Celebration Horse Rejoice in 1998, and one of the best known is (of course!) Eberl’s legendary Alborozo in 2008. 

It has been a few years since we’ve gotten an entirely new mold for the Celebration Horse, but it makes perfect sense that they’d enlist Brigitte Eberl to bring it to us. 

(I hope this means that we’ll get a Brigitte Eberl seminar, yes? In person, or at least online? Because I want to pencil that in as one of my activities if that’s the case.)

My only minor concern at this point is that there is definitely going to be some grumbling about the size this mold: as is the case with the paint, some hobbyists put a lot of weight into the weight of the materials used to make it. 

In this case, the fact that my Internet time is very limited right now is a blessing: not that I don’t think there’s some merit in discussing the issue, but now is just not a good time for me to engage in it.  

More stuff has arrived at my door – including Gingerbread! – but the boxes will have to remain unopened until the weekend. I did get a chance to open my Dahlia and she… was unsurprising. But more about all that next time.  

It's A Day

Apparently the new standing Stablemate Warmblood mold is a mare, but the rest of my criticism about that One-Day release still stands.

It’s overt and heavy-handed pandering to an audience that might pay off in the short term, but will be costly in the long-term. If you become increasingly reliant on a smaller but more intense clientele, that clientele eventually begins to think it can dictate the business of the company itself.

(Looks in mirror. Yup, you too!)

Anyway, since I had already planned on focusing most of my resources to finishing old business, rather than starting new business, I’m going to regard my displeasure at the thematic aspects of this year’s Special Run lineup as a potentially positive development: buying fewer models means I have to spend less money – and time! – dealing with them.

Let’s see, what else to do we have going on today, aside from the birthday (which is a national holiday, incidentally, sort of).

I am somewhat relieved that the “My Strongest Suit” model Beau is already sold out, though I am curious about the piece runs on these more recent first-come, first-served Web Specials. I know other factors are in play – the choice of molds, colors and finishes, and in the case of Beau, the two different mane options – that are helping with the quicker sellouts, but I’d still like to know, you know?

I actually like the latest Test Color “raffle” piece, the Autism Yearling Hope in a Gold and Pearl Appaloosa covered in primary-colored puzzle pieces:

She’d make a lovely birthday present, and I see a lot of people posting the same yucky-faces they did when the actual production run release came out, which would make you assume – wrongly – that there will be fewer people entering for her.

What’s interesting (but not entirely unexpected, to me) is that the original production release is starting to pick up a little traction in the aftermarket, presumably either from collectors who don’t give a hoot about realism or showability, and/or from people who have a personal or familial connection to autism.

I fall into both categories, but I’m still dealing with some time and space issues here, it’ll happen when the time, place and money are right, and not a moment sooner.

Unless the Test Color happens.

I have a bunch of photographs to take and some deadlines to meet, so that’s all for today, folks.

Brunello and Stuff

First, the stuff.

I made the mistake of wandering into some online discussions about Geronimo a few days ago, during some rare downtime. I keep telling myself not to do that, and one of these days I’m finally going to listen!

Reading new mold discussions always makes me want to go out and buy the model, just to give it a hug. I can’t afford to do that right now!

http://www.breyerhorses.com/brunello

Anyway, most hobbyists know by now that the early release Brunellos with the Tryon blanket were not just the standard release, with blanket: nope, instead of the braided mane and tail that the Regular Run release was supposed to have, these Brunellos have the standard loose Idocus mane and tail.

And what should have been a moderately interesting blip in the Breyer SR radar – a Regular Run release with limited edition accessories – suddenly became much more interesting to many more people.

Supposedly some of this 400-piece run are (or were, until recently?) still available through Tryon Tack, but I’m still on my rigorous budget right now, so I have been trying my darndest to resist calling them to find out. I really like the Idocus mold, but I am not sure I love him enough to stray off my budget.

From what I’ve heard, they were made because the braided bodies weren’t ready in time for the event? I want to believe that, but with Breyer you can never been sure if that was a genuine answer or a wink-wink to those of us who obsess over every little thing.

Ironically, I do collect the “Regular Run with Accessories” category of Special Runs, though not in a directed or organized way. Many of the early Sears and JC Penneys Christmas Catalog items actually fall into that category. If I happen upon them at a reasonably good price, I’ll jump on them. But I don’t get too upset if they go above and beyond my price threshold, unless the model itself is interesting or especially pretty.

This is often the case, because many of those sets also featured newly released molds in their earliest iterations. The dark and pretty Legionario that came up in my discussion of the dorsal-striped Legionario a little while back was just such a creature:

I also like to collect them because the box art is so interesting and fun – like that Classics Race Horse Set one that had me strutting around the house a little while back:

Until recently, most hobbyists didn’t collect this sort of thing either, unless they were mold or series completists. Now that that’s become more of a thing (because most of us can’t afford to have it all!) they, too, have become more of a thing.

So Far, C'est Bon

I am absolutely exhausted today; this week had way too much drama in it, even for me. Most of my day off tomorrow will be spent "quilting it out", both literally and figuratively.

As for the blow up occurring on Blab right now, I’ll leave my thoughts and comments on that on Blab itself, once I’ve collected them. (More sleep is required.) All I’ll say on the matter here is that I don't give up hope easily.

As for more positive news and thoughts, the initial BreyerFest 2015 information dump has been made, more or less on time and with pictures that are halfway decent. A few of them, ici:

http://www.breyerhorses.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=6975

My only disappointment with the Sunday Raffle Horse - a Buckskin Blanket Appaloosa Wyatt - is that it means we won’t be getting a more attainable Special Run of the Wyatt for BreyerFest. It doesn’t rule out a more-affordable-anyway Mid-Year or other SR release during the year, but whenever you get your hopes up even a little, there's a bit of a sting.

The Bay Strapless Store Special Oration is lovely, and a good match for both the actual horse, and for the mold. He is similar to the Pottery Barn SR of the Strapless, but the Oration has the braided mane and tail, while the PB Strapless has the loose versions of both. Although I prefer the loose mane and tail versions, I might be willing to concede on that point. I never seem to be in the right place at the right time for the Pottery Barn one, anyway …

The Early Bird Raffle Horse is also nice, a Palomino Sabino Idocus named C’est Bon:

If I do win one (ha!) I am so naming him Simon Le Bon, just because. He reminds me a little of the Store Special Palomino Halla from a few years back, but I like C'est Bon better.

There’s no mention of the prizes for the Diorama and Costume contests, yet. (I didn't see it when last I looked, at least.) For a costume I’m thinking something involving swords, since I don’t often get to use my mad college fencing skills in real life. (I attended Wayne State University: it was almost a requirement!) Or maybe not; whatever I choose to be will depend on whatever the flea markets and thrift shops offer me.

As far as the Diorama Contest goes, I got nothing so far. It’s become such a frustration for me that I’m thinking of just letting go of the notion altogether. Intellectually, I know it’s nothing personal; they don’t like my style, and I am not my style. If I’m a German Expressionist artistically, I’m never going to win at a French Impressionist show.

Reversal of Fortunes

In between dealing with my current transportation challenges, a work schedule of nothing but double shifts, and weather that can truly be described as "frightful", I may be somewhat scarce on the Internet for the next week or two. Any surprises the world of model horses springs on me will probably not be experienced in real time.

("There was a Special Run for what? When? Oh, nuts…")

New horse purchases will also be scarce for a while. The money situation is okay, but I do need some time to get used to the new budget - now with car payments!

I sure hope that pretty Dapple Gray Marwari Reeves was promising us as a Collector’s Club Exclusive doesn’t show up until the spring bulbs start sprouting. 

Another loose end I failed to tie up was the arrival of the wild splash spot Knabstrupper variation, who I picked up shortly before Christmas whilst I was shopping for some last minute baking supplies. The store had a number of them to choose from - he's not a popular little bugger in these parts, I guess. So here he is next to neater little brother:

Yes, that’s an Idocus Snowman standing guard. He arrived several weeks ago; I went to a local farm store chain to pick up something else entirely, and they just happened to have a really, really nice example on their shelves. Since I knew that they were in short supply - and he was on sale - I bought him just in case someone I knew was looking for one.

No one mentioned anything, and since the new car decision had to be pushed up a couple of months, I changed his status here this week from "hold" to "sold - to me".

He looks great in that color, and I love the growth rings that they painted on his hooves. (But his eyes are just plain black dots. Very odd.) I am somewhat amused by his manly assets; it’s far more common for a Breyer "stallion" to actually be a gelding (or genderless) than the other way around. 

Letting Sleeping Molds Lie

This is the kind of week I’ve been having: the post I was working on for today just vanished, completely and utterly. I was typing along, making a few grammatical corrections, and then the file just disappeared. It left no evidence behind of even existing: no recovered files, work files, error messages, nothing.

Great, just awesome. As if I wasn’t already in a pretty cranky mood. It’s mostly due to work, the circumstances of which I’d rather not talk about in public. All that can be said is that I’m very much looking forward to Friday.

The horses have also been the furthest things from my mind. I did get a package on Monday that I’d like to talk about, but it won’t be until Friday before I get a chance to even open it. The anticipation is probably the only thing keeping me from randomly smashing things with my fists.

I did see, in passing, that the old Trakehner mold has a newly resculpted tail, for the upcoming Hickstead release. I haven’t had a chance to take a good look at the photos yet, much less see one in person, but I have to say that I’m feeling a little apprehensive about the whole thing.

I understand the need to freshen up molds to keep them viable, but with the Trakehner, I’m not quite seeing the point. We already have another, more modern standing Warmblood mold: the Idocus. Why try to make the Trakehner into something they already have?

I have nothing against change: my entire life has been defined by the fact that I seem to do nothing but. What’s jarring to me is the dissimilarities in the style of these more modern hairdos compared with the molds they are applied to. As someone who was trained as an art historian, I find conflicting styles within a single artwork jarring and obvious: that’s one of the things we look for. Sometimes, it’s the only thing we’ll see.

Hess’s sculpts, particularly his pieces from the mid-1970s onward, tend to be loose and impressionistic, in stark contrast to the tighter and cleaner styles that are more in fashion today. I may be committing a great heresy by even mentioning them in the same sentence, but I think the only current Breyer sculptor who comes close to capturing that impressionistic feel is Brigitte Eberl.

(Before some of you get your knickers in a knot, remember that style and quality are two completely different things.)

Anyway, like I said, I’m not quite seeing the point with this particular change in the mold. I’m a little concerned that the tail isn’t going to look like it "goes with" it, the same way the new tail for the Stock Horse Stallion doesn’t look quite right to me. I am a little too fond of the old Trakehner mold, and I don’t want to find myself reduced to obsessing over his tail.

Back to work, again.

Ravel, Zenyatta, and Returning the Favor

I was in a slightly out-of-the-way farm supply store (not a TSC) for work yesterday. (It’s not far away at all, just in a direction I very rarely go.) I was a little surprised at the sheer size of their Breyer selection: there were cases and cases of Rising Suns, S Justadreams, and Zenyattas just stacked on the floor. They even had a bunch of the Costco Deluxe Stable Sets - the ones with the Palomino Duchess and the "Mini-Me Dallas" Johar.

Anyhow, after work I found myself going back to take a second look at some particularly attractive Idocuses. (Idoci?) I grabbed a couple to compare - a deep, dark bay one, and a very pretty lighter bay with just the right amount of metallic undercoat. For a moment, I found myself thrillingly contemplating the possibility that I had run across a super-cool variation, until it finally dawned on me that I was comparing an Idocus with … a Ravel.

In my defense, I had been running on about five hours of sleep over the past two days. Nor had I seen a sufficiently large enough sample of Ravels and Idocuses in person to discern the amount of natural variations in the two releases, and the point at which they would start overlapping.

I would have bought them both, regardless of the status of their finishes, had I had the money in the budget for them. But, I didn’t. I did sort of tuck the nicest Idocus of the bunch in the back of the shelf, just in case I change and/or lose my mind in the next few days.

One thing that might draw me back to that store is that huge stack of Zenyattas. Wasn’t she supposedly sold out at the warehouse? Well, I found out where they were stashing them!

The real kicker was that they had been on sale since before Christmas, if the date on the sign next to the stack was any indication. Even the not-sale price was pretty darn reasonable. I’m going to assume, given the nature of the area the store is located in, that the only horsepower the local heathens truly appreciate is the kind that comes with four wheels and a tonneau cover.

I’ll admit I haven’t been all that into the horseracing scene lately either - to the degree that I was in the late 1970s, anyway - so the apparent shortage of Zenyatta models wasn’t a huge concern of mine. She’s pretty, and I do love the color, but I’m well stocked here on Lonesome Glory molds. If I have to buy another Lonesome Glory, it’ll be either the Phar Lap (because of that beautiful color), or the Red Rum (because I was so in love with the real thing, back then.)

It did feel a little weird leaving that huge stack of them behind. I know that the arrival of a fresh batch of Zenyattas to dealers is imminent, so buying a few to gamble on eBay would probably backfire on me the way it always does whenever I attempt to speculate.

However, as a way of returning the favor(s) done for me on the Diamond Jubilees, I’d be more than willing to pick up some for anyone out there, for cost + tax + postage. Cost + tax would be either $28 or $35 each, depending on whether or not they’re still on sale. (I can’t imagine why not, but maybe someone at the store might have heard about that little "Horse of the Year" Award a certain someone picked up this week.) Postage would be actual cost plus insurance, of course.

Oh, and in case you were wondering, I didn’t find any Diamond Jubilees in the store, thank goodness. That would have made for a decidedly untidy workday - and a completely different kind of blog post.

Valiant

My Valiant finally arrived! (After a millennium-long wait. That's what I get for paying with a check!) I don't see anything significantly wrong with him – I've had pretty decent luck with my Connoisseurs so far – but the slightly scaly look to his dapples was a little off-putting at first.

Then I got over it.

I was going with a superhero/comic book character naming theme for my Idocuses, and his shimmery scales actually inspired my choice: I'm calling him Namor (aka The Prince of Atlantis, The Sub-Mariner, etc.) I like how he even seems to have that slightly skeptical of surface-dwellers look in his eye.

My Buttercream Idocus is named Lemon, which was the anagramic pseudonym for the character of Mon-el, from an early Silver Age Legion of Super-heroes story. (How's that for obscure?) The name for my Bay Idocus in my future remains unnamed; it will have to wait until I actually purchase him.


(Apropos of nothing, there was also short-lived comic book company called Valiant. One of the founders of the company? Jim Shooter, who began his career in comics by scripting stories for … wait for it … the Legion of Super-heroes! Also interesting: one of Valiant's titles was XO Manowar. It had nothing to do with horse racing. Prince Valiant has horses in it, though. But back to the story.)

Buttercream was another victim of “bad photography:” he looked so much better in person than his photographs let on. A high piece count, combined with a slightly higher than average price, a very diverse group of line specials, and budget-minded shoppers all conspired against him.

Maybe they'll end up glossing a batch up and dumping them somewhere, like the Tent, Grab Bags or on Shopatron. The Gloss Bay Show Prize Idocuses are stunning, and I think Glossy Buttercreams would be likewise. Actually, with the current craze for glosses, it might make good economic sense for Reeves to gloss up all their unsold matte-finished SR leftovers. It might go a ways towards solving the issue of what to do with some of those contentious “exclusives,” even if it is veering awfully close to Peter Stone variation territory.

(Glossy Burbanks? The mind reels!)

Actually, I kind of thought that that was what they were going to do with Buttercream in the first place – the price and the piece count suggested to me that they might have something else cooked up for him. Nope, just a little poor planning and bad photography on Reeves's part, nothing new.

Idocus and the Replacement Theory

Wow. I won a Valiant - third Connoisseur in the last six tries, and with just one subscription, too! Wish that kind of luck would rub off on the rest of my life.

I wasn’t all that impressed with the Idocus resin I saw at BreyerFest last year - he was pleasant enough, but seemed a little stiff looking. I finally got a look at a plastic one in person a few months ago, and changed my mind: being molded in plastic actually improved him. (Though I know some sculptors will never, ever admit that’s the case.)

He’s like the Trakehner mold’s sexier brother with a better haircut. Mon-el to Superboy, in comic book geek-speak. (With Smallville renewed for two seasons, there better darn well be at least one Mon-el episode in the works. But I digress…)

With the Idocus, though, I am reminded of something I call my "Replacement Theory": every so often, Breyer either consciously or unconsciously "upgrades" a model with an entirely new, but strikingly similar one.

The first "replacement" mold was the Western Prancing Horse: he "replaced" the Fury-Prancer. The Fury-Prancers were discontinued in 1961, and the WPH came out in 1962. They’re similarly posed, have molded on tack and removable saddles - and even their names are similar!

The second "replacement" mold was Man o’ War: he "replaced" the Race Horse. The Race Horse was discontinued in 1966, and the Man o’ War debuted in 1967. They’re both standing chestnut Thoroughbreds with molded on halters, neatly groomed manes and long tails. And the Man o’ War’s original name: Race Horse ("Man o’ War"). Here's a scan from the 1968 Collector's Manual:


Cue the spooky music!

See where I’m going with this? Is Idocus the "replacement" mold for the Trakehner?

Probably not, only because I don’t think the original Trakehner mold is going to disappear down the memory hole like the Fury and Race Horse mold did when they were replaced. (The Fury mold did continue on its own for a few years after - but only as the Fury, and that may have been a contractual thing.)

The original Trakehner mold, as far as I know, is just fine - physically, and aesthetically. What’s going on here is that Reeves is just adding another standing Warmblood to their repertoire - something in a sleeker, more modern style, much like the Rejoice was sort of an updated and more modern looking Saddlebred-like horse to complement the Five-Gaiter, who certainly hasn’t disappeared. (Hello, Gala!)

(No nattering about how neither one is a good representative of a Saddlebred - work with me here, people! We’re talking a matter of type, not quality!)

This isn’t my only silly Breyer theory. Most aren’t worth talking about, though, or even have much relevance to discussions of history. Though I might get around to discussing the "15 Year Rule" eventually, since the flea market season is in full swing…