Weird Places

Nothing special here, just the standard (initially offered) Surrey and Axle:

When I heard about the variation, I was mildly freaked out that I’d get the Action Stock Horse Foal: even if it had turned out to be a one-in-ten variant, I would have been kind of annoyed, the same way I was a little miffed about having to find the Cremello Uffington secondhand.

A big part of the reason I bought the set was for that Standing Stock Horse Foal. A Few-Spot Appaloosa Lady Phase didn’t hurt, either. I know a lot of hobbyists aren’t fans of Few-Spots, but I am definitely not one of them!

Anyway, crisis averted.

The Standing Stock Horse Foal, incidentally, was one of those “more common” models I was looking for to fill in some holes in my collection, but all the ones I was specifically shopping for were in short supply. Which is super-weird, considering how popular the mold used to be as Breyer’s generic, go-to Stock Horse Foal!

Again, I am not in a rush. I am assuming I will pick up what I need in a box lot somewhere along the way. 

Since I had an unexpected day off last Saturday, I used that opportunity to look at – but not actually buy – some of the newest “Paddock Pals” at my local Dollar General.

I haven’t bought any of them since the initial batch dropped at Five Below a while back, and we didn’t know what the heck was going on. But now we kinda do. It’s what I speculated all along: it’s a budget-priced, entry-level line sold at dollar/discount stores and marketed to younger kids. They even have a web site now with backstories for every single release:

https://paddockpals.breyerkids.com/meetthepaddockpals.html

I like a lot of them, and I may end up buying a couple more in the future, but actually collecting them looks like it is out of the question. 

It’s not just that I don’t have the time or space, it’s that they exist in such a weird place. It’s a completely new scale that’s somewhere in between Traditional and Classic, that’s both realistic in terms of anatomy and conformation, but also not really live showable as-is (without special accommodations). And they gave the whole shebang the obsolete name of a now largely obsolete scale: the Little Bits. 

My brain doesn’t quite know how to process them. 

Stripping for Fun and Profit

Just some random ranting to start my day.

I knew it was going to be a dry year, but the ground is literally cracking, leaves are already falling off the trees, and I legitimately cannot remember when we had measurable rain (my birthday, maybe?) Ugh.

In other annoying news, I attempted to strip a Proud Arabian Stallion body I found loitering on my workbench. But whatever paint the original customizer slapped on him, it’s resistant to everything short of a blowtorch. 

At this point it’s about 50/50 of whether I’m going to toss him in my free box, or keep him on the workbench because dammit I don’t want him to beat me. But I have no idea what I would turn him into, and far too many projects already cluttering up my life. 

Anyway, I was sorting through a pile of ephemera I found while finishing up my saleslist, and and thought this box might be worth at least a quick discussion:

Many hobbyists make the blanket assumption that any obvious paint removal via acetone is an aftermarket alteration, but that’s not always the case. It was one of the many techniques used, especially in the Chicago Era (pre-1985) for Test Color experimentation. 

This was the era prior to use of adhesive die-cut stickers, and creating a painting mask was a very labor-intensive process. Before going through the effort, they’d sometimes paint up models and then apply acetone – they used it to fuse model parts together, so they had gallons of it – to remove paint and alter markings and patterns until they finalized the design.

And as you can see on the box for the Action Stock Horse Foal, these Test Colors sometimes made it onto the box, often to the annoyance of many collectors And very occasionally out in the wild; the irregular star on my Test Color Phar Lap, on the Traditional Man o’ War mold, is very obviously acetone-retouched. 

In case you were wondering, the opposite was also true, but somewhat less common: every once and a great while I’ll find a model that was touched-up at the factory with a hand brushed application of paint. 

The few instances I’ve seen have all been with solid black paint, which makes sense: no need to worry about subtle gradations of color or blending, especially when the acetone-based paint itself dries in a matter of seconds!

It’s pretty remarkable they manage to get the effects they do, working with a finicky medium like that. 

Old Timey Goodness

As someone who eats candy professionally (yes, really!), I may be legally obligated to buy Peanutine:

I had never heard of “peanutine” before, but I guess it is the peanut brittle variation of Saltine Toffee? Interesting. 

In reality, I’m not too crazy about peanut brittle per se – if you need to know, I am currently obsessed with the maple sugar candy I got for Christmas – and I am trying to behave myself this year, so I’ll take a wait and see approach on him. I mean, he’s cute, and I’m glad it’s not another bull, but I was hoping for something just a tiny bit more “outside the box” for a cart-pulling nonhorse, like a Goat or a Dog mold. 

The next Special Run – the Mare and Foal Set Surrey and Axle – might be my first must-buy of the ticket lineup, but not for the reason you might think:

If you could look at my notes for this year’s Sampler sitting on my desk right now, you’d see that the very first article I planned to write for it was (will be!) about the Standing Stock Horse Foal. 

This sort of thing usually happens after I publish an article, not before. So either Reeves and I are on the same wavelength, or some strange time travel thing just took place that I am only now finding out about.

The poor little guy doesn’t get a lot of love, but from an historical standpoint, he’s way more interesting than most collectors realize. I just wasn’t expecting to see a BreyerFest SR of him like, ever: he’s not exactly the flashiest foal mold on the block. He’s kind of like a blank canvas of a mold: how interesting he is is entirely dependent on how interesting his paint job is. 

Which is this case, is quite.

I certainly won’t turn down a few-spot Lady Phase with the package, either. I’m definitely not understanding all the online Lady Phase hate, though. When did she become “one of the ugly ones”? Heretics!

While you could argue that she’s occasionally been overused, she is never not beautiful. 

The next thing you know, you’ll be telling me that Iced Oatmeal Raisin is not, in fact, the best cookie in the world. 

Anyway, I am glad that my intuition about the turn towards “vintage” has been proven somewhat right. And has piqued my interest. Will the Old Timer be turning up soon? I’d definitely be on board with that…

And then they dropped the next Store Special, which was the Troubadour I was expecting, in a colorway I was also (more or less) expecting:

Lovely, but I’m a little reluctant about him for one simple reason: I don’t have a lot of space to spare right now, and he’s one hecking chonk of a model. And I am still holding out for an affordable Stretched Morgan Special Run, as unlikely as that now seems to be. 

Breyer's Body Box

Why am I buying even more stuff on the Internet? Argh! 

I swear, every year I tell myself that I’ve bought too much stuff at BreyerFest, and then I turn around and go on a buying spree for the month afterward. 

Anyway, here’s more stuff I bought in the NPOD – more “bodies” from the Breyer Body Box:

The Classic Black Beauty is from the #2404 Fire Wagon Set; I sort of blanked on grabbing the matching Ginger after finding the Chalky Test Ginger. They Fire Wagon horses are not quite in the same demand as the Classic Clydesdale Drafts from the #2405 Delivery Wagon Set, but they’re still a little on the scarce side, for Classics. 

The Standing Stock Horse Foal has been a source of fascination to me for a while now (I really need to finally finish that custom one I started last year!) This Rocky might be a Sample, but I’m just happy to have him regardless. 

The Classic Andalusian Stallion is the scarce Blockbuster Special Run of Hildago from 2004. I’ve been wanting one, and at two dollars I really couldn’t beat that price. There’s also the slight possibility he might be a Sample too, and that didn’t hurt.

I also purchased a Shadow of Blue – the BreyerFest 2001 Special Run Amber in Black with blue undertones. I already had one, but I had a weird feeling she might have been a Sample or Test, too. I inspected her at the hotel later, but came to the conclusion that I was misinterpreting her overspray as something else. 

I priced her pretty modestly and put her on my sales shelves a few hours later; she was gone by the end of the day. If I had known she was going to sell that easily, I might have bought a couple of the Leah’s Fancy Breyers that were also in that bin for the same price!

Unlike the $5 “bodies” they sold the day previous, there did not appear to be a limit on the $2 Classics and Foals. I decided to limit myself to five, because that seemed like a good number, and there was no need to get greedy. I made my one big “find” with the Chalky Ginger, and I was good. While I’m pretty sure I could have found another treasure or two, but I thought I’d let others get the opportunity to dig.

I kind of wish Breyer hadn’t co-opted the term “Body Box” for this particular offer, though. Aside from the fact that most of these models were better than body quality, it also created quite a bit of confusion at the hotel, with a lot of kids asking for “Body Box” models. What I – and most people at the hotel – had in their body boxes was not comparable to what Breyer offered. 

Glossy Chalky Buckskin

The first thought that came to mind when I saw in-hand pictures of Goldfinch was: holy cats, this is My Girl all over again.

The 2016 Vintage Club release My Girl, on the Cantering Welsh Pony, came in three colors: Gloss Bay, Gloss Palomino, and Gloss Alabaster. When I opened the shipping box and discovered that I had received the Alabaster – my third choice – I was slightly crestfallen. 

I think Gloss Palomino is a highly underrated vintage color, and who doesn’t love a lovely Gloss Honey Bay? But Gloss Alabaster can be hit or miss, depending on its shading, or lack thereof. And as far as shading goes, the initial pictures of the Alabaster My Girls showed a definite lack.

Then I opened up her actual box-box, and fell in love with Glossy Chalky Alabaster. 

I think I kind of love Glossy Chalky Buckskin, too.

If I don’t get picked from what’s going to be a very small waitlist – because people are definitely willing to put themselves in short-term debt if they know they can make an almost-immediate profit – I’ll just have to let it go. 

I have a little too much stuff anyway. 

That’s what I keep telling myself, but there I was at the toy store after I got my first COVID shot Saturday, trying to persuade myself that I really didn’t need Obsidian.

I did manage to walk out of the store horse-free. This time.

(In all seriousness, though, if I do start buying seriously again, I think I’ll start with the homely little Standing Stock Horse Foal. Not a lot of demand, not a lot of rarities, not a lot of Test Colors, Oddities or Whatever.) 

The Horse You Need

The week started with such promise – one of my regular dealers at the flea market told me he had a large collection for me to look at, I thought I had some of the BreyerFest One-Day Stablemates coming my way, nachos were on the menu this week, I found some extra large socks on clearance at Meijer…

And somehow at the end of it, all I had to show for it was a bruised middle finger.

Kind of emblematic of how the whole week went, I suppose.

(I wasn’t doing anything untoward with the finger, it was just me being clumsy and injuring myself in my usual unique ways. The lack of nachos hurt more, to be honest.)

I ended up buying myself a pony a couple of days ago in hopes of assuaging the whole darn week away. He’s not out of the box yet because that’s another story we don’t want to get into today:

I’ve been eyeing this guy for a while, and I had a coupon. I have a soft spot for the homely little Standing Stock Horse Foal, and I found his Splash Spot Semi-Leopard Appaloosa well-executed and very appealing. He’ll look real nice next to my Fun Foals Pintaloosa SSHF, once I figure out where that little guy went.

(Sigh. The current state of my office is largely not my fault, but again, this is not a story we want to get into.)

However, his most important feature was also his most obvious: he was available.

Collecting isn’t always about what you want, but what is accessible. You can’t collect things you can’t get your hands on.

Sure, I’d love to own more Glossy Prize models, or some of those Walmart Exclusive Stablemates, or more Woodgrains, or any vintage Decorators. But barring lucky finds these are all fairly unlikely, at least in the near future.

Weeks like this remind me that I need to stop stressing myself out over items I can’t get in the first place. If they happen, they happen. If they don’t, there are other horses in the pasture.

Rocky was almost immediately available, and when and where I needed him.

To paraphrase a few well-known songs, if you can’t buy the horses you want, buy the horses you need.

Seen It All Before

The past 24 hours just….ugh. There are some things kitten cuddles and puppy hugs do not fix. Especially when you have a dog who only wants hugs on her own terms.

The pickings at the flea market yesterday were modest, with the best find being a set of boxed Japanese miniatures from the 1960s, still in their original packing paper and fluff. (That are also staying here for the time being, because I need their cuteness right now.)

I think I should be good to go as far as inventory for BreyerFest, though; I did a local pickup last week, and I may be doing another later this week, if my work scheduling pans out. If nothing else, my body box will be huge and fabulous.

(Whenever I do one of these local pickups it always feels like we’re doing something slightly illicit, in public. “Nope, nothing to see here, officer, just a little horse trading at the park….”)

Aside from the social aspect of horse trading, which I really enjoy, I also prefer to fund the trip that way. Other hobbyists set aside money, I set aside inventory! It helps rein in my spending impulses a bit: what I buy is limited to what I can sell, and how much room I can make in the car.

It doesn’t always work out, but at least there is a plan.

Since I’m a bit short on brainpower today (work scheduling issues), here’s another not quite random pic of a Test Color from one of Marney’s albums:

A Bay Splash Spot Blanket Appaloosa Standing Stock Horse Foal that looks not too dissimilar from the production release of the #861 Family Appaloosa Foal, from 1992-1994:

http://www.identifyyourbreyer.com/images/00861.jpg

Most of the photos in the album the Test Color’s photo came from are from the mid-1980s or earlier, so I think it’s unlikely that the Test led to the Foal, especially if it was already in Marney’s possession by then.

It’s more likely that the Foal was either just one of Marney’s little experiments – let’s try the Appaloosa’s blanket on the Bay! – or it could represent one of the color options they were exploring for the mold’s initial release in 1983.

In some quarters, Test Colors that are that similar to Production Runs don’t get as much love or money as flashier or more exotic ones. As I’ve said before, I prefer them, not just because they tend to be cheaper (usually!) but because of the historical aspect.