The Blue Horse

A reasonable facsimile of my celebratory dance in honor of Franz:

via GIPHY

You may think I am joking, but anyone who has seen me dance knows that this is not that far off from reality. (Note: this is why I don’t dance in public.)

Anyway, at last, a dream I’ve had since college has finally come true, and we now have a Breyer model based on the work of Franz Marc:

The Traditional Spirit is excellent mold choice, by the way. I was thinking they’d go with something more realistic, but props to them following through and selecting one of the more “artistic” molds instead. 

It gives me hope that the cringe level inherent in this theme could be kept to a minimal level, though I am already mentally preparing myself for the inevitable legions of Lederhosen-wearing Diorama Brighties. But if they have an actual Kraftwerk-inspired Special Run planned, I will dance in public at BreyerFest.

I have purchased a number of Traditional Spirit Models over the years, but none of them stuck around long: some were pickups, but most were secondhand purchases bought for resale. I do have a neat idea for a custom, but it’ll be a while before I get around to it, so I won’t be in the market for a body anytime soon.

I almost bought the 2020 Halloween Horse Apparition – aka “the Scooby-Doo Horse” – but the ones I found locally had some condition issues, and by the time I got around to shopping for one online, the prices were higher than I was comfortable paying. 

While he is not high on my Want List, if I do happen to find a decent, out-of-box one at a not-terrible price at BreyerFest, I am definitely snapping it up. (Worth noting: I am also trying to avoid buying anything online between now and then.)

Spirit’s cartoony-ness has never really bothered me other than his eyes. Because of their size in relation to the rest of his head, they can look kind of creepy and bug-like if they are not “detailed out” properly with eyewhites and pupils. (I’m looking at you looking at me, Padre!) Thankfully, that’s not an issue here.

The color turned out really nice, too, and I hope that means we get to see more of it in the future on other releases. Not sure what I’d call the color itself: Blue Point Wedgewood, maybe? 

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.

Apparition

Except for some photos, formatting, and about an hour or two worth of nitpicking/editing – all stuff I can finish the weekend before – the Sampler is done. Now on to the “taking pictures for the photo show” thing.

(This week: Stablemates and Foals!)

Pictures of the Mid-Years are up on the Breyer web site, though nothing is officially for sale yet. Aside from the 70th Anniversary Stablemates – which are already sold out everywhere they went on pre-sale – the one new release that has me the most excited is Apparition:

My first reaction to seeing the 2020 Halloween Horse was “It’s a Scooby-Doo Horse!” 

The second was “I want it!” 

Honestly, this is just about the perfect marriage of mold with an idea: a mold based on a cartoon with a Deco paint job based on another cartoon. Love it!

The “glowing in the dark” part is just a bonus.

Well, technically I was never a huge fan of Scooby-Doo (aside from those goofy “Scooby-Doo Movies” in the 1970s with celebrity guest stars, like Batman and Sonny and Cher.) But still, as an animation fan I adore it, and I’m glad that they’re “leaning in” to the Spirit mold’s aesthetic rather than trying to deny or downplay it.

Though it wouldn’t take that much to get the Spirit mold up to snuff conformationally, I’d rather they just leave the mold as is and find creative ways of utilizing it as is, like they did here with Apparition.

Just like I would have preferred they keep the original #54 Trakehner’s tail the same, the Stock Horse Stallion’s too, and the “bulldog” physique of the Quarter Horse Gelding.

The main problem I have with mold alterations isn’t the negation of history or the adulteration of the artist’s original vision (more the latter than the former with me, but let’s not go there today) but the fact that they are rarely done well.

In short, the alterations look like obvious alterations, and don’t blend seamlessly into the overall sculpt.

That’s my primary beef, for instance, with the Sherman Morgan. While I was perfectly fine with the necessity of changing his original tail – let’s get real people, the original was basically shaped like a turd – the style of the new tail doesn’t match the rest of Jeanne Mellin Herrick’s sculpture, either. I like it better, but it doesn’t quite… fit.

And just like the tail it replaced, it’s the first thing that draws my eye whenever I see a Sherman Morgan. That is exactly the opposite of what these kinds of alterations should be shooting for.

Spirit Stablemates

Since I’ve been on a bit of a Stablemates kick, here is the full lineup of Spirit Stablemates I got in my Customer Appreciation order back in December:

I don’t know why I got the impression that I’d get the entire set (save the chase piece because yeah, right) when I bought an entire box of Series 2 Spirit Stablemates. If I had done my due diligence with my research I would have known that. (In my defense, the past few months have been crazier than usual.)

So now I have an extra half-dozen Stablemates added to my sales list. C’est la vie. 

The one bright spot in this deal is that I now – finally! – have an honest-to-goodness non-Unicorn Deco-fied Breyer Perlino with the addition of the Equuleus, on the Chrome mold:

I know, technically, that Equuleus is the name of a somewhat obscure constellation, but every time I see it, its peculiar spelling makes me think of all the awkward attempts at clever names I blessed my models with when I first entered the hobby, a couple lifetimes ago.

(Many of whom have been since been renamed. At least in public!)

Consequently the name is also a good reminder – as if the painted eyebrows were not enough! – of the target audience for the animated show, which was not too dissimilar to me when I first got started in the hobby mumble-mumble years ago as a tween.

Though as a horse-crazy kid in the 1970s, my path into the hobby was more influenced by The Black Stallion books, Horse Racing, and the Equestrian events of the 1976 Montreal Olympics than by TV shows or movies.

(I was fortunate in that being across the river from Canada, we could watch Canadian coverage of the Olympics, which included way more Equestrian events!)

My path into Breyer obsession was not unusual. In fact, if you look back at the kinds of models Breyer released in the 1970s and early 1980s – the Classic and Stablemate Racehorses, the Classic USET Set, Halla and all the Black Stallion-themed items – I can see now that I was very much their target demographic!  

This is why I can’t get too worked up about the idiosyncracies of the Spirit releases – or any other releases that are obviously not designed specifically for me. They are tailoring their products to future potential lifetime customers.

Spirits

A last minute change to the schedule left me with an unexpected but welcome day off. So I did a couple of my favorite, non-horsey things: baked a cake and organized stuff! On the way to the store for supplies for both, I stopped at the Salvation Army and found some horse goodies anyway:

An Ertl, and a Traditional Spirit and Rain! That makes up for the lack of ponies at the flea market the past two weeks.

I don’t have either the Spirit or the Rain in the collection yet, but since both go for crazy-good money on eBay in almost any condition, and I could really use that money right now, it’s off to Internet for the both of them once some paperwork is done…

I haven’t had many of the Spirits in my possession over the years – just a BreyerFest Special Run Ringmaster briefly, purchased for a friend who couldn’t attend that year – and I have to say that now I’ve been able to examine him in greater detail, I’m actually even more impressed by him.

Aside from the cartoony head and the slightly exaggerated proportions on his lower legs, he’s remarkably realistic for a model horse adapted from a cartoon – and he is also, as they say in the animation biz – very “on model”. That’s a pretty remarkable feat!

As I’ve stated several times before, I’m not all that bothered by the “eyebrow thing”: it’s an affectation that the animators used to make animating the horse’s expressions easier, and a (probable) necessary requirement for the license.

That the hobby, in general, has latched on to them as a perpetual source of griping (like dappling, urgh) is another mildly worrying reminder of the hobby’s tendency toward groupthink.

I already have a Rain – the 2007 BreyerFest Special Run Lady Liberty – and I’d like to add a Traditional Spirit in some form to the herd eventually. However, the two Spirit releases I like most – the 2004 BreyerFest Raffle Horse El Corazon, and the 2013 Live Show Benefit Raffle Zuni – are unaffordable.

I wanted to like the Padre; he was a really pretty shade of Bay, and an affordable and long-running Regular Run. But his big black undetailed eyes were a bridge too spooky for me, and a strange contrast to the care that went into the rest of his paint job.

He’s too popular a mold on his own to be tied up with the Spirit license in perpetuity, so I’m sure they’re be a release more to my liking (and my budget) eventually.

Spirit Days

Interesting day at the flea market – a lot of horse stuff, but not a lot of model horses. The only thing I bought that’s worth mentioning here is this handsome pup:

A Boehm Schnauzer! It would have been even better if it had been one of the Boxers or Bulls the Breyers are based off of, or the Adios, but one doesn’t find Boehms of any variety in the wild all that often, even at my flea market. And the price was more than right.

The Boehm made up, a bit, for the events of the previous day. For a variety of reasons, I wasn’t able to go to either one of the Spirit Fun Days near my house on Saturday. I am a bit disappointed because there is still an awkward, horse-crazy ten-year-old inside me who desperately wanted to sit at a table to talk horses and paint Stablemates.

(Like the rest of you, my life is full of people who nod, smile, and secretly hope for their cell phones to ring when I start talking about horses.)

The new Breyer Spirit line itself seems to be getting pretty positive reviews in general, though the reaction to the TV show its based on is a little more mixed.

It’s not likely that I’ll be watching it any time soon, but that’s more because I’m mostly indifferent to horse-themed film and TV projects in general, and not the quality – or lack thereof.

And also because you have no idea just how far behind I am in my movie and TV watching. I have a DVD I got for Christmas in 2015 I still haven’t gotten around to watching….

But anyway, back to the models themselves.

The Spirit “blind bag” Stablemates assortments – if purchased by the box – apparently contain one of each of the entire set, which is nice. That’ll make it easier for the Stablemates completists.

The “Small Sets” I wrote about earlier appear to be just a shade smaller than the original Little Bits/Paddock Pals. For the purposes of showing, I still think they will be classified as that scale.

Traditional models have had the same scaling issues over the years – like, for instance, the Boehm-inspired Boxer – and even with the models that don’t have the excuse of being copied/translated from other manufacturer designs.

The Traditional Boomerang mold is about as cute as I expected it to be, but it is not likely that I will be able to pick one up, or even see one in person, until BreyerFest rolls around.

New 'Bits?

The latest Web Special Acadia is beautiful, but I only entered once and did not win. He would have made a lovely husband to my Ruffian Goddess Athena, but it wasn’t something I felt I could justify going all-in for. I still want/need a Valegro, but I’ll have to wait for a more affordable one.

(The BreyerFest release Indu is still a contender.)

There are a couple of stores reasonably close by that are holding Spirit Fun Days in a couple of weeks. (Yes, I know I am lucky to have multiple stores to choose from!) If I’m not scheduled to work that day, I might go to check the new releases. Especially the new Traditional-scale Boomerang mold:

http://www.breyerhorses.com/boomerang-traditional-model 

He reminds me of the pinto in one of the stashes of vintage photos I found last year:

So I could definitely see myself coming home with one sooner rather than later! (Especially if it keeps me from breaking out the paint and epoxy and attempting to customize my own.)

The “Small Sets” in the Spirit line intrigue me also. Here’s the Boomerang one, who (coincidentally) is the nicest of the three new Small Set molds, I think:

http://www.breyerhorses.com/Boomerang-Abigail-Small-Set

So, if I’m reading these details right – 3-inch riders, 4-inch horses – these are basically Little Bits scale? So after all these years Reeves is giving us three new, honest-to-goodness plastic Little Bits/Paddock Pals molds?

Sneaky, guys.

Nevertheless, I approve.

The last “official” Little Bits/Paddock Pal mold release was the Saddlebred, in 1985. Unless you count the Small Mare and Foal with the rooted hair in the same scale who debuted in 1997, but are usually associated with the Ponies line. Or the resin Breeds of the World pieces from 2012 that tend to be lumped in with the Gallery/Nonplastics.

Toy Fair and Spirit: Riding Free

One of the things on my personal “bucket list” is attending Toy Fair. It’s not just about the horses (in general) or Breyers (in particular); if you know me at all, my toy nerdery is both wide and deep.

Access isn’t the problem, but time and cost is: I am in Michigan, and Toy Fair is in New York City. So I have to content myself with living vicariously:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WmFPVAWqHM

http://legionofleia.com/2017/02/toy-fair-universal-previews-a-range-of-new-fall-toys/

http://www.northjersey.com/story/money/shopping/2017/02/20/state-play-toy-fair-new-jerseys-got-game/98145012/

The only big news to come out of Toy Fair was the official announcement of the Spirit: Riding Free line, which was just about the worst kept “secret” in the model horse hobby ever. But it’s nice to see pictures of the actual, live pieces now and not just the catalog promo shots.

That being said, this line is not designed with someone like me in mind, though I will undoubtedly end up buying at least a few of the Blind Bag Stablemates and possibly the boxed Traditionals. (The Rain mold looks great in Matte Palomino!) It’ll be interesting to see if the third Traditional scale mold in the line, Boomerang, will eventually get incorporated into the regular line as the Spirit and Rain molds were.

There also didn’t appear to be any Toy Fair-specific giveaways, like the Gloss Highland Pony keychain or the Little Bits Chestnut Saddlebred, but my online shopping has been limited to targeted searches on eBay for box lots and specific (and oddly rather scarce) bodies, so I may well have missed it.

Incidentally, Breyer has been represented at the Toy Fair literally since the beginning of Breyer, as this article from the March 1951 issue of Playthings makes clear:

Blind Bag Stablemates

So I guess there are Blind Bag “Horse Crazy Surprise” Stablemates at some Walmarts now? These are not the blank/unpainted pieces from the various painting kits, but actual factory painted and finished Stablemates, including a “rare” Mystery Surprise that is apparently a G3 Friesian in Metallic Gold Buckskin.

While I like this idea in theory – hurray for more Stablemates! – the only problem with Blind Bags is that once the rarities or mysteries are revealed, it’s not hard to fish them out with a little strategic groping.

That’s why I’ve never been a big fan of the idea of multiple molds in Mystery/Surprise releases, especially at BreyerFest. I could see things getting very contentious very quickly at that particular section of the Special Run table, once the more desirable ones are ferreted out….

It’s clear that this is a first run/trial run of the idea, at least as single-pack Stablemates. This program is both an extension of the Mini Whinnies Blind Bag program and a logical replacement of the Stablemates Mystery Foal Surprise sets – right down to the metallic goldness of the Surprise.

It’s possible that Reeves could get clever about this in future Stablemates Blind Bag Mystery releases and switch it up – for instance, using one of the “common” pieces in the assortment printed on the bag (all older releases, at least in this go-round) in multiple colors as the Mystery Surprise.

Or make them all new releases – as is going to be the case with the Stablemates in the new Spirit: Running Free line, I believe. I haven’t really looked much into that yet; although I admired the character designs and Breyer sculpts, the movie really didn’t do much for me and I doubt the animated series will, either.

(My heart still belongs to Steven Universe!)

I’ll look for the Horse Crazy Surprises if I happen to be in or near a Walmart anytime soon, but other model horse purchases will still take priority. (My first “new” Duchess arrived today!)

Another Odds-and-Ends Kind of Day

I’m so tired today that I feel partially melted. At least we don’t have to deal with massive amounts of snow here. Just the cold, and exhaustion.

Just a few odds and ends before I hit the sack.

That Breyer posted about the 5K Run on their BreyerFest Blog the day after I posted about it here was a coincidence, I swear. That’s not a wink-wink, nudge-nudge kind of denial, either.

Second: I was poking around the usual sales sites and found a couple of unpolished “Let’s Go Riding” Secretariats that were obviously not Samples, so I can confirm that they do exist. Determining whether the polishing occurred during production or before is still difficult.

It’s possible that they had a small stash of older Secretariat bodies lying around that they needed to use up anyway. It’s a not-uncommon practice: the Black Family Arabian Special Runs from the 1970s, the Chalky Dapple Gray Hanoverian from the 1980s, and the Warehouse Reissues were all made from previously molded/warehoused items.

For what it’s worth (small sample size over a short period of time), the unpolished ones do seem to be less common than the polished.

And finally, even when I’m not looking for anything, I find things:

A large Rain Plushie in the Stuffed Animal Bin of one of my regular haunts, on the way home from work today. She was just sitting on top of the heap like she was waiting for me. Plushes were on sale today, too, so I had no excuse not to take her home.

I don’t have a lot of plushies – Breyer or otherwise – because Vita considers all plushies her personal property. In fact, she personally inspects every shopping bag that enters the house in hopes of adding new victims to her toy heap.

Not today, sweetie. This one’s hiding in the closet until I determine a less gruesome fate for her.

Black and White and Red All Over (Again)

I got all caught up on the novel yesterday, but I’ve got a lot of catching up to do with everything else, so I’m probably going to fall a bit behind again. Ah, well.

Lots of news in the Breyer world this week. First up, another Red Pegasus (or Red "Pegassus") has shown up on eBay. It's just as authentic as all of the other Red Pegasusses that have shown up on eBay. Which means, NOT AT ALL.

Sheesh, sometime I feel like I should have a PSA about them, like they do with Smoke Detector batteries, health screenings, or the ones that tell kids not to take candy from strangers.

Listen to your crazy auntie in the basement: bidding on a Red Pegasus is the equivalent of taking candy from strangers.

Just don’t do it, folks.

Some people are anyways, just like they have with all the previous ones, some of whom will absolutely insist on its authenticity, in spite of all evidence to the contrary, and what do I know anyway, because I’m just poor, and jealous, and I don't work for Reeves, or judge or show, and am so unsophisticated that I like to put catsup on my steak …

Fine, whatever.

Next, the Vintage Club is now up for renewal, and the winner of the vote to choose a piece for next year is - the Matte Smoke Five-Gaiter?

Didn’t see that coming. All that online sturm und drang about how matte finishes weren’t vintage enough, and the vote somehow goes to the one selection out of the four that’s NOT glossy?

I kind of figured that the people making the most noise online were the ones who had the weakest understanding of what "vintage" actually meant, but that the voting actually showed some support for that theory is sort of funny.

Still hoping that the Gloss Dapple Gray Man o’ War shows up someplace, though. I want one something bad.

Reeves has also announced a "Live Show Benefit Program" to promote and encourage live showing, especially among youth participants, with a special model - a Black Appaloosa Spirit, named Zuni - as a raffle prize.

Lots of people are jumping up and down at the thought of it, but folks, they’ve tried this before: the Black Proud Arabian Mares from the mid-1980s were also part of a similar program. It’s not something new.

All the rules and stipulations that go along with the program are, though: the show application includes an entire single-spaced page of them, hoping to counter most of the problems that occurred with its previous incarnations and implementations.

The only problem I see with it - aside from the policing - is how they’re going to select the 30-35 qualifying shows. They want to distribute them as fairly an evenly as possible, in terms of geography.

This is an admirable goal, but as anyone whose been in this hobby for more than a couple of weeks knows, some areas have way more shows than others. Plus, they have to go through the additional hoop of being NAMHSA approved.

It’s probably not encouragement enough to get me back into live showing (yet), but I’m not the target audience. I do think the model is super-neat, but that may be because I have been eyeing the Spirit mold lately.

(As I explained before, though, the only one that’s currently in my price range - the Padre - kind of creeps me out. So no Spirits for me, for now.)

Shopping Roundup

I suppose all - or most - of you have found out about the latest Special Run surprise - this one being a Gloss version of Zenyatta’s foal, available on her web site. As of my posting this, there still do appear to be some left out of the 500-piece run:

http://www.zenyattashop.com/breyer-zenyatta-foal.html

Like Pavlov’s dogs, I salivated right on cue and bought one, too. Dark, chocolately bays have been my weakness of late - and in gloss? I was doomed.

Speaking of shopping…

While I love road trips (I’ll be taking one very soon!) I don’t take much joy in day-to-day driving. Getting stuck in traffic jams makes me wish that automotive engineers would stop trying to coax more horsepower out of smaller engines and just devote their time to finally inventing teleportation technology, dangnabit.

I had to do way too much driving for work this week; the only thing that made it bearable was that it gave me a chance to go to stores in areas I would not normally travel to. I like to multitask, so getting a little research done on the way to or from work? Excellent.

The first store I got to hit this week was the Tractor Supply, to check out their holiday selections. Like last year, it’s all Regular Runs, Holiday merchandise, and possibly a smattering of farm store stuff (those trailer sets cobbled together from factory leftovers.) I did really dig the Holiday Horse "Buena Noche", but I’ll save my natterings about him for sometime closer to the holidays.

And I finally managed to get a really good look at the Padre there: I still don’t have a Spirit mold in my collection, and all the other releases in that mold have prices outside of my comfort zone. However, his HUGE ZOMBIE EYES scared me away. Reminded me of that one Adventure Time episode. You know the one (or should):

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

I don’t want a scary-looking horse staring at me while I sleep, either.

While I certainly haven’t been to every Walmart within driving distance of my house, I’ve now been to enough to conclude (for now) that they are only a figment of the Internet. Then again, I didn't see of the Mesteno Mustang SRs in these parts, either, so maybe it’s just a regional thing. (Which doesn’t make a lick of sense to me, since Breyers sell really well everywhere else around here.)

Then, just today, I swung by one of my "local" Tuesday Mornings to check out their latest offerings. Some of them received a small (and unadvertised) shipment of Breyer stock, mostly (but not entirely) discontinued Elvis Collection merchandise.

This store had a couple of Kongs and a couple of Bears; I took a modest fancy in one of the Bears, but I managed to escape without him following me home.

I will admit, it was a close call: my other two Bluegrass Bandits have nonrealistic finishes, and the pretty mahogany undertones they put into what would have been an otherwise nondescript matte black paint job were …intriguing.

Nope. Can’t do it. Gotta save the cash for the road trip. (Yes, it’s model horse-related. And yes, it’s something you’ll all hear about, when it all shakes out. No joke guys, it’s big.)

Stock Market

Good, good day at the flea market today - lots of cheap, cool stuff, just the way I like it. I could have easily blown my whole wad, without much effort, on things like "Pajamas of Oriental Splendor" (seriously, that’s what the box said!), a chunk of petrified wood, or an animatronic Elvis head (no joke.) I decided to stick to my core competencies: Breyers, books, and minis.

(No pic today - it’s late enough as it is, and my time management skills apparently went on vacation sometime last week. Anyone who’s still waiting on a package or e-mail from me, I am working on it!)

Other than the indiscretion with the Valentine and Heartbreaker set, I’ve been so good with my money over the past two weeks. I’ve been rooting around the deepest, darkest corners of my closets before venturing out shopping, and rocking the coupons when I do have to set foot in the nearest enclosed retail compound.

Money is probably my least favorite topic to talk about in regards to the horses, especially in the contentious area of estimated price or value.

I am not completely uninterested in how much certain models are worth, but I am a little disturbed at how obsessed many hobbyists are with tracking prices - creating spreadsheets, graphs and flowcharts, like it’s the stock market. It is, kinda, but I’ve never been one to think of my horses as that crucial a part of my investment portfolio. (If I come close to breaking even, I’ll be happy.) Its mutable nature also turns me away: my time is better spent tracking down the unknown - and there’s a whole lot of that, in Breyer History - than keeping track of the unknowable.

When pressed, I can spit out the necessary numbers for you, and I’m usually not too far off the mark. I work in inventory services, and any one who works in that industry develops an almost savant-like ability to estimate price and quantity with just a quick glance. But as a general rule, I’m more interested in figuring out the "why" than the "how much".

Like with the Traditional Spirits and Rains: I do not particularly care in how much they’re "worth," except for the fact that their going prices are preventing me from adding them to my collection. I already have a Rain - the Lady Liberty BreyerFest SR from a couple years back - but I never got around to getting a Spirit when I could. (Technically I did own a Ringmaster - for about a week. It was a pick-up for a friend.)

I think there are a number of factors in play with the Spirit and Rain prices. One, neither mold has been in production for three years: that’s an eternity, nowadays. Two, there have been limited number of releases on each mold - two for Rain, and three for Spirit - and because of the cartoonish aspects of the molds, not a lot of future releases seem likely. And three, it’s the movie, silly: movie merchandise sells, and animated movie merchandise sells really well. A quick visit to the toy department at Kmart, Target or Walmart can tell you that.

The fact that the models are fairly good representations of the characters as they appear in the film also helps. (As they say in the industry, they’re very "on model.") That would help explain why the secondary market for the Classic and Stablemates Spirit merchandise isn’t quite as superheated. Out of its proper context (box and/or accessories) there’s nothing to distinguish them from any other Breyer Classic Mustang releases. There’s no mistaking the Traditional Spirit and Rain for anything other than what they’re supposed to be.

That’s also another reason why I have to roll my eyes whenever I see a hobbyist kvetching about Spirit’s eyebrows: you know, if it wasn’t for those eyebrows, you wouldn’t be able to sell your MIB Spirit for 150 dollars now, would you?