Pointy Breakableness

FYI: I didn’t get that good a look at the new weird plastic Stablemates on Saturday because aside from being distracted by the very attractive Sable Island Horse, the place was extremely busy I didn’t want to stick around in the place too long, with things being the way they are right now. 

I did give them a quick look over but I didn’t buy a set, so I didn’t get a chance to get an in-hand feel to assess what plastic it is. I’m assuming it’s something a little softer and less breakable in little hands than the standard ABS is. 

My general impression of them is that they’re being marketed as toys for young children, and directly competing with Melissa & Doug. And as such, they are perfectly fine for what they are. 

People in my orbit who are the actual target market for this – parents and grandparents of young children who are equine-curious – have responded positively to it. Sturdiness, cuteness, and having a half-dozen ponies to play with are bigger factors in their purchasing decisions than realistic or high-quality paint jobs, especially since they’re going to get dinged up from the get-go.

I also like to think of it as a hobbyist starter kit: if and when some of the ponies get lost, individual replacement ponies are right there in the same aisle. And once they get a taste of “real” Stablemates…

Anyway, the Universe is playing hardball with my spending moratorium and I found this earlier this week at my local Salvation Army. I swear I was only there to check out the fabric and craft supplies, but lo and behold, there was a Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron Forever Friends Resin Diorama sitting right there on the knick-knack shelf:

I do not, generally, collect Breyer Gallery items. I am big and preternaturally clumsy and anything remotely breakable is at a high risk of being damaged. That is why I am perfectly okay with buying broken Clinkies at the thrift store or flea market: someone else broke it for me and got the stress and heartache out of the way!

I was going to leave it behind initially – look at all that pointy breakableness! – but then I remember what happens to delicate things at this Salvation Army. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if the damage it already received happened at the Salvation Army before I even got there. 

So I rescued it. I am now going to put it someplace (presumably) safe from both me and Vita until I am able to either get the repairs done, or sell it to someone else less accident-prone.

More Pre-Broken Breakables

I’m so not in the mood for writing right now. The whole world’s in a funk, and has apparently taken me with it.

The same could be said of the flea market. There’s been a strangely tense vibe there; the quality of the merchandise remains good, but some of the newer dealers seem antagonistic to the concept of haggling. Hey, if I wanted to pay antique mall prices, I’d go to the antique mall, not to an open-air flea market wedged between a cemetery and a softball field.

Nevertheless, I did manage to find a few good things this week:


A Lomonosov Cheetah Cub, an H-R Mama Hippo, and a rather tragic Beswick Dachshund with eight breaks - including her neck! She was only a dollar, and it was obvious that her previous owner must have loved her something powerful: she had enough Quake Hold stuck to her bum to stand a Nataf on its head.

At the very least, she’ll make a nice test subject whenever I get around to teaching myself china restoration. Oh, and I did find one other piece, at the local Salvation Army on Monday - a piece of Kaiser! More specifically, a painted bisque 377 Goose Girl:


I had to stop in to check out the shoe department - the Vita Monster ate ANOTHER pair of work shoes - and I did a fly by of the collectibles department, just because. At first I thought it might have been a fake or a knockoff, but nope, it’s the real thing.

Yeah, this is a tonier than average area for a Salvation Army, and the quality of the merchandise is a shade better than average, but a piece of Kaiser sitting on the shelf next to dollar store knick-knacks? Definitely not a normal occurrence, even around here.

She’s not mint - one little curl of her hair is broken off, but who am I to complain? She was only a dollar more than the pair of shoes I found. (Yes, they wrapped them up in separate bags. They're not heathens, y'know.)

I did do a quick run through the rest of the store to make sure there weren’t any other Kaiser pieces floating around. Fortunately not: if I had found, say, a Kaiser horse next to some tacky Hobby Lobby resin Jesus figurine, the cognitive dissonance would have probably killed me.

(Nothing against religious tchotchkes per se, it’s just that I’m a bit of a snob about them: if it’s not a Hartland, or doesn’t glow in the dark, I ain’t interested.)

I suppose I should throw a little Breyer stuff in here.

The BreyerFest Porcelain SR Aurora was nicer than I expected - not enough to motivate me to buy one this year, though I wouldn’t rule it out in the future. If I hadn’t found all that I had found in the Pit this year, I might have bought a few of the other leftover Porcelains there, including the Party Time, and especially last year’s Dances with Wolves.

The only problem with buying more Breyer Porcelains is that it would necessitate me doing a major reorganization the china cabinet, and I’m really not up for that. I’m having a hard enough time getting done all of the other things I need to get done.