A Doozy of an Oozy

I got through another section of my inventory without any major surprises – other than one of my Little Bits Drafters spontaneously and spectacularly going “oozy” on me. What looks like a white plastic bag underneath him is actually the now-soggy tissue he was wrapped in:

(It looks like crime scene photo, doesn’t it?)

It was one made during the “Shrinky Era” – the late 1980s to early 1990s – so it wasn’t a completely random occurrence. Just a messy and inconvenient one.

Incidentally, everyone else in that box was absolutely fine. But just a few months ago, the Oozy One was fine too.

I got lucky with Shrinkies/Oozies: the late 1980s/early 1990s were exactly the same time period I was least active in the hobby, and buying the fewest models.

It had nothing to do with quality or production issues: I was busy with other things at the time, and simply taking a break. (In the SF/fannish communities, it’s sometimes called “gafiating”, or Getting Away From It All.)

Consequently, when other hobbyists started talking about models shrinking and oozing, I had very little first-hand experience with the phenomenon, beyond the Black Horse Special Runs – the Indian Ponies and Proud Arabian Stallions, specifically.

I’ve made up for it since then, and I’ve even bought a few Shrinkies intentionally. (I am sure some of you remember... The Toad?)

But that Little Bit Drafter caught me by surprise. I had last seen him back in June when I was pulling items out for my display at BreyerFest, and I noticed nothing amiss then. The weather has been unusually warm and humid this year – two things that adversely affect Shrinkies – so maybe that kickstarted the process somehow.

He has been the only one, so far, and the boxes that I’ll be going through next are mostly newer items and vintage items outside of the “Shrinky Era”. The only other surprise I can see lurking in those boxes is exactly how many more Bay Jumping Horse variations I still have. (How many did I buy over the years? Yikes!)

Being a Little Bit/Paddock Pal, he won’t be difficult or expensive to replace, though I am just a wee bit hesitant all the same.

The little Oozy One isn’t going anywhere, either. Since he already happens to be here, I’ll use him as a test subject for possible treatments. If there’s some way to stop it, or at least slow it down significantly, that’d really come in handy. There were some really nice Special Runs during that era, and I would hate to see them all meet an earlier-than-necessary demise.

If you have any yourself, just keep them cool and keep them dry in the meantime. And tuck a few extra paper towels in the bag if you have to keep them in storage, just in case.

Another Science Experiment

I decided the first big project of the week off: the herd culling I’ve been griping about. It’s going well so far; I’d say I’m about halfway through the boxes I wanted to get through. It’s not going to result in a lot of "Big Money" sales, but I'll do okay. Some oddballs, variations, some items with better than average shading, things like that.

There will be some good stuff from this year’s NPOD sales also - nothing that I’ve already featured here, just a few rarities and Samples I had been wavering on. Nothing wrong with them, per se, just not enough room in the stables.

One of the non-NPOD oddballs I’ve decided to surrender is this old Classics Sagr:

Yes, he’s a Shrinky AND a color variation. The variation is not his neon-bright red chestnut coat - that’s a consequence of the shrinking process - but the white mane and tail. Later releases of the original Sagr had a mane and tail that were almost pale enough to pass for white, but this Sagr’s mane and tail were genuinely unpainted white, back when the Sagrs still had distinctly flaxen ones.

I picked him up at one of Marney’s Model Horse Congress garage sales in the 1980s: I can’t recall which year, though I’ll look that up when I finally get around to listing him. (Possibly as early as this week, depending on how the rest of the week, and the culling, go.) He is a Variation, and he has an excellent Provenance, so I won't be giving him away. But he leaks and he reeks: he oozed rather profusely when I took him out of his bag to inspect him, as you can probably see from the preternatural shine to his head.

I’m not expecting a lot out of him, monetarily, unless there happens to be a run on leaky Sagrs that I am not aware of. As to the reasons why he is leaving my collection, I already have one creepy/weird Science Experiment - aka "The Toad" - on premises, and I don’t need another to tend to.

(Note: everything is going on MH$P first, before it hits eBay. All those nonpaying bidder stories I’ve been reading have been making me nervous.)

Metropolis, and Vinegar Syndrome

I was flipping through the channels on the TV machine last night, looking for something to keep me company as I labored on my quilting project. Wouldn’t you know it, the restored version of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis was on TCM.

I just about plotzed with joy, until I realized that I had already missed the first hour. I’ve made a point of not watching a film that I’ve already missed a significant portion of, unless I’ve seen it before. While I’ve seen Metropolis - several times, actually - this near-complete version, with nearly a half an hour of previously lost footage, might as well be a completely different film.

That film and I have a history. It was one of the first films I obsessed over. An influential science-fiction masterpiece of the silent era, the original cut lost shortly after its original release? It seemed so romantic, mysterious and alluring: I pulled my first all-nighter in my early teens just to watch a blurry, incomplete print on a fuzzy UHF channel. (Only rich folks had VHS machines back then.)

I didn’t see it again until college, when an electronics company gave a presentation about their latest newfangled video player, using the Giorgio Moroder version. I had only seen snippets of that version in the video for Queen’s Radio Ga Ga, one of my favorite music videos then or ever.

That song eventually inspired Lady Gaga, and then Lady Gaga inspired me at this year’s BreyerFest.

Let that be a demonstration of my ability to weave Breyer into virtually any conversation about anything.

Actually, there’s a much less roundabout reason here for discussion old films and the restoration thereof: vinegar syndrome. The topic of shrinkiness and ooziness came up again on Blab a few weeks ago, and much mention was made of "vinegar syndrome," which is the term that film archivists use to describe the breakdown of film stock. Film stock that’s made of almost exactly the same stuff that Breyers are made of.

"Almost exactly" is the operative phrase here. While the base materials are the same, the manufacturing processes and plasticizer ratios are different, as are the conditions each product is subjected to. Even the most banged-up of carpet herds lives a far more genteel life than any given film print.

I know from personal experience: I worked in a movie theatre for several years. That whole "frame melting on screen" thing? Saw it live, ladies. (We had old projection equipment, so I got real handy with the splicer.)

The irony of it all is that acetate film stock was invented as a more stable and less explosive alternative to nitrate stock, which had a habit of spontaneously combusting. (Metropolis's original negative was on nitrate stock. The fire that destroyed it, however, was not spontaneous.)

Breyer shrinkiness and ooziness are undoubtedly the effects of a form of vinegar syndrome, but it’s also obvious that the Shrinkies of the late 1980s were outliers, rather than the norm. There are far more models that are just fine, and will continue to be for some time to come.

We don’t really know what the shelf life of an average Breyer model is, or will be. It took about 25 to 30 years for vinegar syndrome to become a problem in the film industry, but it hasn’t been all that much of a problem with Breyers - yet.

Some of that can be attributed to the fact that hobbyists are already doing everything "right" in terms of mitigating acetate degradation - storage in cool and dry places, away from extremes of heat and light. We’re only about 60 years out on this product, and only time will tell if vinegar syndrome becomes a more widespread problem.

For what it’s worth, I’m not worrying too much about it.

The Incredible Shrinking Appaloosa

As I was compiling my BreyerFest saleslist yesterday, I discovered that I had three different Appaloosa Yearlings. I didn't realize they were all that popular around here: the Thoroughbreds and Adioses I find I understand (I live in an area that used to have a small but thriving horse racing industry.) But Appaloosa Yearlings? Go figure.

I have a disproportionately large collection of Appaloosa Yearlings in my own private collection, but that's because it seems to be one of those models – like the Black Stretch Morgan, or the Chestnut Saddlebred Weanling – that comes in endless variations. My post today, however, is about only one of those Yearlings. This one:


I purchased her several years ago at BreyerFest. Even in the low light endemic to the host hotel, she stood out: she was one weird girl. Nearly gray, with pale yellow spots. I had to have her! For comparison, here's a relatively normal/average Appaloosa Yearling:


And believe it or not, it's a variation that actually comes with an explanation: my gray girl is a Shrinky!

I almost totally missed out on the Shrinky phenomenon originally: most of the Shrinkies collectors discover or seek out nowadays date to the late 1980s or early 1990s, a period in which I wasn't really buying all that many new horses. (There's a long, interesting story about how I ended that hobby “hiatus,” but another time, sweeties, another time.) The only ones I recall having were the BHR SR Indian Ponies: my Bay one was particularly … oozy. And at the time, I attributed it to something else entirely.

I don't know what precisely causes the shrinking: something is slightly off in the composition of the Tenite, or in the molding process, that causes models to shrink, warp, crack and (sometimes) ooze. I haven't put any time into discovering what the precise problem is – it is again, another consequence of a lack of time and way too many topics to cover.

Just because some of your models are slightly taller or shorter than others of the same mold doesn't automatically make them Shrinkies, however. Tenite is a semi-synthetic material that's subject to environmental factors, and you're going to have some minor variations in size and shape as a result.

There are several other indicators of a models status as a true Shrinky, and this very pale girl of mine taught me that.

A while back I took a picture of this girl as an avatar on Blab. She was a bit dusty in spots, so I gave her a quick lick in lieu of walking over to the nearest sink and rinsing her off. I wasn't expecting her to taste so … nasty! I had to run to the sink anyway and rinse out my mouth!

I had licked some of my Breyers before in similar situations and had not experienced that before. Sometimes I'd feel a bit of a tingle, but nothing quite so dramatically wrong. What on Earth was going on?

I compared her to my other Appaloosa Yearlings and noticed that she was somewhat shorter than the rest – not dramatically, but noticeably. I then recalled a Spanish-Barb Buckshot I had in my collection that was slightly smaller than average, and of a somewhat unusual color – more pink than chestnut. So I pulled her out of storage, and gave him the lick test too.

Same result. Grossness! And out of that grossness came an epiphany (of sorts.)

I had noticed on eBay and elsewhere a number of unusual looking chestnuts – ones that were more pale, peachy pink than actual chestnut. Most of theme were on models from the late 1980s or early 1990s. They were pretty distinctive: why hadn't I noticed these guys before, when they came out? Was it another case of me being insufficiently observant?

No, it was probably because the paint finish hadn't yet started reacting to the messed up chemical composition of the Shrinky plastic. It took a few years before Chestnuts turned pink … and Bays turned gray!

My Appaloosa Yearling was not a variation, in the strictest sense. She was a Shrinky.

Shrinkies do still occur from time to time: last year at BreyerFest, my friend Bernie showed me a smallish, slightly off looking Diamondot Buccaneer who, one lick test later, revealed his true nature. And he was made several years after that first, now notorious batch.

I'm not advocating a wholesale licking of your collection to root out your potential Shrinkies – there are some that definitely don't need that test. (Especially if they're oozing!) But if you're curious, and have nothing better to do in the privacy of your own home ….