Quickstep

I am completely caught up on my sleep, I’ve made a small but noticeable dent in my backlog of TV shows (two shows binged out, six more to go!) and I finished up a couple of sewing projects that had been lingering around here just a bit too long. 

As far as the inventorying goes, I’ve finished reorganizing and relabeling all of my collection bins, and will (I hope) finish the sales bins tonight. After that, it’ll be time to wrangle all the free-range equines currently littering the place. 

I’ve kind of given up on getting anything online to sell for the rest of the year. Aside from my chronic lack of time (a condition that I have been informed will likely last through the holidays) my primary motivation is usually money, and that’s something I’m definitely not hurting for right now.

The only thing I’m hurting for is space, and I’m working on that.

In other news, I got my Holiday Catalog! The cover is half torn off, but at least I got one: last year’s was a complete no-show. Not that I really needed it, except to add it to my massive wall of ephemera. 

In light of the lovely Brunhilde, here’s another “basic, but beautiful” Breyer release worth admiring:

My love of Hess’s Scratching Foal mold is well-known: this mold really is a remarkable work of engineering. Even moreso if (like me) you’ve made a few failed attempts at customizing one and seen what’s going on in its insides. 

Oddly enough, Breyer has rarely done anything extravagant with the mold in terms of paint – perhaps because it almost seems unnecessary? One of the last releases on this mold, the #1369 Quickstep, is a case in point: anything beyond the beautifully shaded Flaxen Liver Chestnut paint job would feel like a distraction.

Quickstep was in production from 2008 through 2009. This mold was also included in the 2009 Fun Foals Collector’s Event, in Mahogany Bay, a couple different shades of Black, and even a couple of them in a Blue Roan. 

And she hasn’t been seen since. I have no idea why, and I’m not of a mind to speculate.

I have all of the Scratching Foals, save for the Fun Foals: those all either too expensive for my comfort, or just plain hard to come by. There are at least a couple vintage Buckskin ones floating around too, but I missed the opportunity to add that one to my collection a long, long time ago.

Manure Occureth

Just a few odds and ends today; I was prepping my next quilt project and discovered it needed way more repairs than I anticipated....

First, I am not as enamored of the latest Test Color as everyone else:

Oh, he’s certainly pretty, but it’s not my favorite shade of Chestnut. If he was a Black Chestnut, or something similar to the Web Special Muir Woods Gloss Red Chestnut, I’d be twisting arms for more entries. As it is, I’ll just be content with my single account.

Incidentally, the Five-Gaiter was not an uncommon Test Color subject in the 1970s and 1980s; he was a much more popular mold back then, before the arrival of much more elegant Traditional-scale representatives of the breed.

(I still haven’t gotten one yet, but if the opportunity ever arose…)

Some Ollie’s Discount Stores have overstock of the Walmart Series 2 Horse Crazy Gift Collection that featured the Bay Django and Grulla Cob/Tushar. The store that’s within reasonable driving distance to my house, alas, doesn’t appear to be one of them.

(I already have the set: I just wanted to see them in the wild.)

The BreyerFest 2019 Leftovers are up; they’ve been up for a few days, but the announcement e-mail finally went out today. So far it appears to only be the “swag” – t-shirts, bottles, bags, hats, whatnot. No word on the Classics, Stablemates Sets or Store Specials (I think Rico was the only one of the Store Specials actually left over?)

Apparently there’s some consternation about the new Unicorn Foals Zoe and Zander. The banner ad and e-mail notification showed a resist/splatter-dappled pair:

But the web site – and apparently, the actual models themselves – are solid:

This doesn’t bother me that much. In fact, I consider it pretty much par for the course: Breyer has a long history of production models not matching their promotional photos. I think my personal favorite mismatch was the Black Appaloosa Scratching Foal with four stockings. His original promo pic from the 1970 Dealer’s Catalog insert:

Looked for that little bugger for years before finally surrendering! (“as shown” – my butt!)

You’d think that the production process would be more streamlined now, and that errors like this could be caught more quickly and corrected.

This might be true, but the same streamlined process that can catch errors doesn’t mean deadlines don’t get missed. In fact, the possibility of being able to change something at the last minute often leads to changes at the last minute – and inevitably, things still get overlooked.

Or, as one of my favorite BreyerFest t-shirts says: Manure Occureth

Liver Chestnut Scratching Foal Oddity

On the left is your standard, garden-variety #169 Liver Chestnut Scratching Foal, a relatively scarce vintage model who was only in production from 1970 through 1971. This release used to be hard to come by, but then the Internet and eBay happened, so not as much anymore.

They still sell for decent price – especially ones with good shading and detail, or with original boxes and stickers – but the big money in the Scratching Foal game is with either Test Colors or some of the scarcer Fun Foal variations like the Black, Dark Gray, or Blue Roan.

But who is the Foal on the right? I’m not sure! It’s either a Test Color that just happens to be very similar to the Liver Chestnut, or it’s a Liver Chestnut with a factory overhaul, and lots of extra dark shading and added black points.

There were a lot of Special Runs in the 1980s that were basically just updates of previous Regular Runs; the first ones that come to mind are two of the Montgomery Ward Christmas SRs: the Dapple Gray Shire from 1982-1983, and the Alabaster Old Timer from 1983.

There were subtle differences that distinguished those SRs from their Regular Run antecedents: the newer Shires tended to have fewer and more random dapples, and the newer Old Timers didn’t have the heavy gray body shading that the original #200 was known for.

So this subtly different Liver Chestnut Scratching Foal could have been a Test for a similar Special Run that didn’t happen.

The other theory is that – like some other Oddities that have popped up in recent years (the Palomino Family Arabian Mares with black points, et al) – it might have been something that a painter enhanced at the factory, either as a gift or for their own amusement.

There’s also the possibility that it was a Cull that Marney or one of her cohorts salvaged at the Chicago factory: it came out of a collection in Illinois within a reasonable driving distance of Chicago, with other oddities that obviously came straight from the factory. And touching up salvageable Culls with a bit of black paint was very much a Marney thing!

One this is certain, though: it’s not a Test Color for the original release of the Scratching Foal. The earliest Scratching Foals – including my Liver Chestnut one, above left – don’t have a USA mold mark, but my new dark and lovely one does.

Test Colors on the Scratching Foal are a bit hard to come by; the closest I came before was a Cull that I purchased off eBay from the family of a former Breyer contractor, also in the Chicago area.

The funniest thing about this situation was that I was making a few additions and changes to my BreyerFest want list, and the Scratching Foal was one of the molds I wanted to focus on this year!

Black Scratch Fever

(Scheduling issues again. The rest of the week is free and clear, thank goodness.)

I think of all the Fun Foals that have come out - barring any last minute surprises - the Black Scratching Foal is my favorite.

I’ve wanted a Solid Black Scratching Foal for a while - a really long while, actually. When I first entered the hobby back in the late 1970s, I read either a rumor or an ad that mentioned an all-black Scratching Foal, and I immediately wanted it with every fiber of my being. (You know, the way any 15 year old girl wants anything.)

I’m not sure why a Solid Black Scratching Foal tickled my fancy so back then. There were lots of rumors of lots of other "Solid Black" test colors - and some actual, genuine Solid Black special runs - but nope, the Scratching Foal was the one I really wanted. It was a foal, it was cute, and it was rare. That was enough to do it, I guess.

(I did buy the Solid Black Mustang and the Family Arabians, eventually. Our special run options were a little more limited back then.)

I’d occasionally run across an alleged one or two, but careful inspection would always reveal the truth: Fake. It was the splash spots on the Foal's butt that would be the tell: painted over, they’d leave a slight raised edge, visible in raking light.

I did get pretty close with one - a cull from the estate of a former Breyer employee I purchased on eBay a while back. Check out that cute roany butt:


I have at least three other Black Appaloosa Scratching Foals - the original one I got for Christmas in 1978, one with a Blue Ribbon Sticker, and one without the USA mark. The one without the USA mark is probably the rarest of the three; the mold debuted in 1970, the same year that the USA mark was added to most - but not all - existing Breyer molds.

The 1970 Dealer Catalog features a photo of a test Scratching Foal with four stockings. Here’s a scan of my not-so-great copy. I have a better copy somewhere, but it’s still lost in the chaos.


I’ve looked in vain for this variation. (How else do you think I ended up with four different Black Appaloosa Scratching Foals?) I don’t think it exists beyond the original test piece, or pieces. Many Appaloosa Scratching Foals have gray hooves; sometimes the gray shading extends up the leg a little, giving the illusion of socks. But that’s as close as most of us will get, barring the appearance of more culls or test colors.

Just one more note here: you might notice the clean edge to the Catalog Scratcher’s blanket. It’s not masked: it’s "neatly" airbrushed. The painter would paint the outline of the blanket first, then paint up to that outline. It's not just a catalog thing: I’ve noticed quite a few of the early Black Appaloosas - the Running Stallion, Lying Down Foal, and the Scratching Foal - came with very neatly airbrushed blankets.

I don’t know if it was a specified technique for a while, or a quirk of one painter or group of painters. A similar technique was used on early versions of Jasper, the Market Hog - but that was probably an instance where they were making do until the painting masks were ready.

The earliest Stud Spiders - the ones sold in the 1977 J. C. Penney’s Christmas Catalog, and into early 1978 - had very neatly airbrushed front socks, too, so I’m thinking that the outline trick was just another technique in the painter’s arsenal of tricks - being able to substitute skill, for stencil.

At least until the production quotas started catching up with you.