Metallic Bay Adios

That was an unwelcome surprise: I found a giant black spider on the envelope of my BreyerFest tickets as I pulled them out of the mailbox yesterday! I freaked out and immediately dropped all my mail on the ground, because spiders. 

The last time I had that close of an encounter with a spider, I got bit and thought I’d have to go to the ER. So my reaction was not entirely unjustified.

I am happy to report that both me and the spider survived the incident unscathed, as did the tickets. (No footprints!) The rest of the mail was also fine, including a lot of vintage Wyoming travel brochures I bought off eBay.

In less traumatic news, I was not draw for a Sparrow, but that’s neither a surprise nor a heartbreak. If I want to speak of heartbreak, there’s another Test Color Drawing, for a Metallic Bay Adios:

I wasn’t expecting this, because he’s not particularly flashy or groundbreaking (another Bay Adios, of all things?) but gosh, he is so pretty. I think I need him. 

Adios was a pretty popular guy in the 1970s and 1980s with both the general public and hobbyists: not only was he a portrait model twice over (Adios and Yellow Mount), he was also one of the more anatomically correct models of the era, and tended to show pretty well. Everyone had at least one Adios mold in their showstring!

Consequently, bodies were plentiful at the factory, which resulted a number of Test Colors and Oddities. You experiment with what’s available to you, after all…. 

The most desirable of these Oddball Adioses at the time, of course, were the Black ones. 

Contrary to hobby belief, the Black Adios was never formally considered a Special Run of any sort: they existed in a fuzzy gray area somewhere in between Test Color, Factory Custom and Gift/Prize Model. 

Some of them were painted by Marney as gifts to hobbyists who were lucky enough to get a factory tour: Black was the easiest color of all to paint, and since it covered a multitude of decorative sins, it was also a good way to use up some of the Culls in the regrind bin.

But she also painted up (or rescued?) some for resale. I remember seeing at least a couple in the Test Color boxes she casually placed on some empty show tables at Model Horse Congress in 1985, the ones that made everyone in attendance go into full meltdown mode.   

I was never lucky enough to get a Black Adios, though I came pretty close: our local hobbyist group was planning a trip to visit the Chicago factory in mid to late 1984, but the tour got canceled at the last minute, probably due to the pending sale to Reeves International. 

Considering how much of a legend the Black Adios has become nowadays, I think I have a better shot at getting the Metallic Bay one. 

Technically, I do have a Test Color Adios, or at least I think he is (yeah, it is one of those things) but I’ll cover him another time, when I actually have a little more to spare.

Purple, Blue, Yellow

Back to work – and a “normal” sleep schedule – tomorrow. I certainly don’t lack for more things to do, but I found myself watching carpet cleaning videos last night, so it’s probably about time to go back to the real world. 

I did find a Blind Bag Unicorn Croi yesterday – on sale, even! – but it’s just the purple one. That’s fine, because I was sincerely doubting I’d find any of the Crois at all, because these people are vultures around here, I swear:

The rest of the series – except for the Chase pieces, because that’s not happening – I’ll pick up later from the enterprising souls who purchased entire boxes. Groping blind bags in farm stores has lost its appeal, especially since success in these parts is so slim. 

I have way too little time in my life to be running around half of Michigan looking for “rare” Stablemates. In fact, it sounds more like work than anything else. No thanks!

I was moderately amused by the “Best Holiday Shopping Spots for Breyer Fans” e-mail that Reeves sent out a few days ago; just going by this e-mail alone, you’d conclude that I lived in a vast wasteland with no Breyers within our borders. I can assure you that is most definitely not the case. I can handpick almost anything I want within an hour’s drive except (of course) the accursed blind bag Stablemates. 

In other news, I did get the Copenhagen Brighty, fancy that:

And the Yellow Mount Mini Me is the no-spot variation:

I had no preference on either of these: they were all equally “rare” anyway, and I have no illusions about completing my sets, regardless. (Flipping the negative on theYellow Mount box was a nice touch, by the way!)

I am glad, though, that aside from the Chalky variation, I’m pretty much “full up” on my Traditional Yellow Mounts. Vintage Club releases tend to boost the aftermarket prices of their respective molds and inspirations (good gravy, have you seen the prices for absolutely ordinary Brighties nowadays?) 

What’s funny is that up until a few years ago, I didn’t have any Yellow Mounts, at all. I had had several over the years, but they were all either subpar or just not what I was looking for. 

Aside from the Chalky variation, I think all I really need now is a better no-spot variation and one with a dorsal stripe. A Presentation piece would be nice, too, but it’s rare enough to not be a must have.   

Yellow Mount: The Grail

Originally I was going to pass this one more post down the road because of my scheduling issues (guys, I have two months worth of TV shows to catch up on: imma gonna binge watch my way through Black Friday) but I figure I’ve teased you enough. Here’s the first “grail” I purchased, a few weeks back:

At last: a mint, near-perfect Yellow Mount with Blue Ribbon Sticker. Isn’t he beautiful?

As you know, I rarely pay “market price” for vintage models: it’s just not in me to do it, even when I have the funds available. I also have the advantage of living in an area where I can find stuff real cheap; I’ve found that if I wait long enough, I’ll find almost anything, eventually.

(Except Decorators, Presentation Series models, and Liver Chestnut Quarter Horse Yearlings. The last one baffles me.)

Anyway, a “perfect” Yellow Mount’s been on my grail list for a while, and in the run-up to Mr. Perfect here I’ve acquired a couple of pretty decent fellows, including one that’s possibly a painting sample of some sort. But other models (and other things) took priority – and whenever a beautiful Yellow Mount did show up on my radar, I’d put in a token effort and let it go whenever my bid or offer was inevitably superseded.

I figured one would show up locally, eventually. It would probably take a while, since Yellow Mounts aren’t nearly as common around here as Adioses are.

In short: while I wanted it, it never felt like the time to fight for it, until this one came up. Since I had the funds, and a serious need to buy something special (I’ve been so good!) I bid my max… and got him.

Yellow Mount debuted in 1970, the last year that the Blue Ribbon Sticker was in use, making Yellow Mounts like this one among the earliest examples made in a pretty lengthy run (from 1970-1987).

He does have the USA mark; the USA mark started showing up on Breyer models at some point in 1970, since many new models and releases that debuted that year came without it – like my Liver Chestnut Quarter Horse Yearling, who I had to buy at BreyerFest one year because I could never find one in these parts, either…

(… though she didn’t cost me nearly as much as the Yellow Mount!)

I’m not sure if I’ve ever actually seen a Yellow Mount without the USA mark, but I wouldn’t rule out the possibility. If I did find one, it’d just be another addition to my Yellow Mount collection, and most definitely not a replacement for this guy.

Kiowa

There was a last minute change to my schedule the other day that actually left me with (gasp!) a small window of time to myself. That I promptly used to open up my Kiowa, because I had heard rumors that they were Chalky. (And also because the box was dented in troubling ways, and I needed to know if I had to make time for the phone calls. Fortunately, no.)

Chalky, he is! I cackled with the glee of a comic book super-villain. If it’s one thing that drives Vintage collectors mad, it’s Chalkiness. I doubt it’ll persuade some of the bigger grumblers to change their opinion of him, but you have to gives Reeves a little credit for giving us a little bit more than we expected, right?

As others have pointed out, his paint job is probably the closest and most faithful reproduction of a "Vintage" color since the program began.

The Brown Pinto Indian Pony did come in a Chalky variation; it’s one of the scarcer and more desirable Chalkies, too. I lucked into a Chalky Brown Appaloosa a while back at BreyerFest, but the Pinto one continues to elude me, mostly for financial reasons. The only Chalkies that go for more money are the Proud Arabian/Old Mold Mares, Test Colors and a few Rarities/Oddities. Some of the Family Arabians, too, depending on the mood of the market. 

The Indian Pony Pinto colorway was a scarcely used one as it was - and most of the ones that were not the Indian Pony are extremely hard to come by, like the Ford Pinto Family Arabian Foal. (Another one that eludes me still, in spite of being in the Metro Detroit area and surrounded by auto industry retirees.)

I’ve always interpreted this color a little bit differently than other hobbyists: I don’t see it as an attempt at creating more realistic Pinto paint job. They were already doing that with the Yellow Mount who, with his elaborately masked markings, came out the same year the Indian Pony did (1970).

It wasn’t a case of "let’s try two new techniques and see what sells better", either, but two different artistic approaches. With Yellow Mount, they were attempting a realistic portrait. With the Indian Pony, they were going for something more painterly and impressionistic. The mold - and presumably, the initial colors - was based off the works of the artist Charles M. Russell, who is specifically called out by name in the earliest press release mentioning the Indian Pony.

As I’ve mentioned many times before, there should be room enough it the hobby for all lovers of equine art - not just those who favor the most strictly realistic ones.

Shades of White

Okay, so now the scuttlebutt is that the Shetland Ponies I mentioned last post might/will be a Vintage Club release, so the reference to last year’s e-mail photo was probably the correct one.

I am a little ambivalent about the concept only because, duh, there never were any Decorator Pintos. There were rumors of Decorator Pinto Test Colors floating around back in the day, but I found those rumors even less substantial than the Christmas Decorator ones.

(I swear Reeves does these sneaky reveals on the "Kid Tours" just to mess with us, knowing the kids are going to be fixated on the newer molds in more realistic colors.)

I found some charged batteries, so here’s the Calf I mentioned previously, with his Regular Run cohort:

So now you see why I am not so eager to send the little bugger back!

Yes, I know my Regular Run Calf is yellowed, but it looks worse than it actually is because the Oddball is very stark white - not Chalky or Opaque White Plastic, but I could see how some people could mistake it for such.

That sort of thing happens, from time to time: someone at the factory - possibly by accident - came up with the perfect mix of virgin (fresh) plastic, plasticizer, and colorant. I have an Alabaster Western Pony that’s so white it almost glows in the dark. (Discontinued in 1970, if you’re trying to do the math at home.)

It’s been recently reported on Blab that someone found an older Chestnut Belgian that was actually made of a mix of standard white and Chalky white plastic, which only really reveals itself when held up to a strong light. (Ooh, swirly!)

This does not surprise me at all. Breyer was experimenting with whatever plastic they could get their hands on in the early 1970s (the Chalky Era), and it undoubtedly included many different colors of white in addition to all those funky reds, browns, grays, purples and greens.

In the sometime questionable light of a factory, the mixing of these various whites would become an inevitability, if not an economic necessity. 

It’s even happened more recently, with some of the Stablemates molds: at some point, the Glow-in-the-Dark plastic that was used to make the Giveaway Andalusian Keychains was mixed in with the standard white stuff, giving some later releases a faint luminescence.

Other colors sometimes got swirled into the standard white plastic, especially in the Chalky Era, but they generally got painted over - either by a solid dark (or black) paint job, or with a Chalky basecoat first. Reeves does this even today, as many faux finishers have discovered first hand.

And…I just opened up my Yellow Mount that I bought from That Guy, and guess what? Aside from being one of the nicest Yellow Mounts I’ve ever seen, his plastic is also snowball-white.

Interesting.

(His variations are pretty subtle - tan instead of pink shading, more gray on his muzzle - but I bought him mostly because I wanted a nice Yellow Mount at a nice price. Done, and done.)

When, Not If

My standard work procedures involve me pecking away at several small projects simultaneously, based on my levels of time, interest and energy, with the goal of finishing them all within a relatively narrow time frame. (That’s similar to how work works, too - we run multiple work flows with the intent of finishing them up around the same time.)

It doesn’t always work out, but it works out well enough most of the time that there’s little reason to change it.

Most of the time. Every once and a while I get into a fit and I just have to see a project through from start to finish, RIGHT NOW.

Anyway, that’s my excuse for not opening up my Commander, even though I got him late Thursday afternoon. If I opened him, I’d have to deal with him, and until a few hours ago, I couldn’t. I have to work tonight (a new account, too, I think) so I’ll probably have to put off his unveiling until tomorrow morning, when my mind has room to roam.

One minor distraction I did allow myself was the one-question Vintage Club survey asking members about our preferences: Do you want Vintage colors on Vintage molds, or Vintage colors on Newer molds?

Y’all should know by now what I picked. There was also room to comment, but I didn’t: trust me, Reeves already knows. 

I am not philosophically opposed to Vintage colors on Newer molds, I’d just rather see them released in a different context or program - either as a extra release, like Gus, or as a part of some other program. (A "Retro" Club?)

The molds they selected to show us as examples were quite interesting, especially the Vintage/Vintage pieces:

 For balance, here were the Vintage/New pieces:

No promises were made about the models depicted in the survey - they were being used merely as examples of the kinds of items they were discussing.

Judging from the reactions I’ve seen to the Charcoal Adios, though, I think it’s just a matter of when, not if, on that pretty boy. (Next year’s "Exclusive", maybe, if he ain’t the next release?)

I liked the Gloss Honey Bay Pinto Yellow Mount more than I thought, too. When I initially saw him in that group shot they sent out last year (the one with the Morgan now known as "Halo") I thought "Nice, nothing spectacular". He looked like a glossed regular run Yellow Mount with added black points. (Something they've done in the past, by the way - anyone remember the BHR Bay Running Stallion, made out of leftover 1988 JAH Special Run? And the Small World Trakehner?)

No, he’s an actual Honey Bay, complete with four stockings and black hooves, just like an honest-to-goodness vintage Honey Bay.

And just to let you know, I’d buy either of the Nokotas in a heartbeat, especially the one in the Splash Spot Black Leopard. I like the mold, but I’d dig that color on anything. (As long as they actually do the Splash Spots as Splash Spots, of course.)

Not Dun Questing

The book sale was surprisingly low key this year. The overall selection was good, but there weren’t a lot of horse-themed books to be had. I might go back on Monday for the box sale anyway, because they did have lots of vintage astronomy books, another odd and unprofitable obsession of mine.

(I also really like old Botany textbooks, and Latin Grammars. Mostly for the really beautiful illustrations.)

Oh, and just to let you know, I’ve finally made a decision on who gets to be my next official one True Grail, now that I’ve found the Man o’ War of my dreams.

It’s Yellow Mount.

I’ve had many Yellow Mounts over the years, but none of them ever worked out for me. The color wouldn’t be quite right, or there would be condition issues, or the masking would be just a bit too fuzzy for my tastes.

The earliest variation, with the blue ribbon sticker, dorsal stripe, and pinkish hooves would be ideal, of course, but they’re way more difficult to come by than the early Man o’ Wars. It’s been years since I’ve seen one like that up for sale, and the price it went for was definitely not to my liking.

I’d settle for a Presentation Series piece, or a nice Chalky, or even a late example with no forearm spot and dark greyish hooves. I suspect I’ll end up with most of them, by the time the quest runs its course.

All it means in the short term is that I’ll be spending a little extra time ogling Yellow Mount-infested listings on eBay and MH$P. I did have him on my want list for BreyerFest this year, but I was tapped out - of enthusiasm, and money - fairly early.

As I noted above, the earliest Yellow Mounts had dorsal stripes - a subtle acknowledgement of the fact that the real Yellow Mount was actually Red Dun, not Chestnut. Breyer called him a "Chestnut Paint’ right from the get go, though. From the 1970 Collector’s Manual, the year he debuted:

I don’t know if this was a simple mistake, or if Breyer "simplified" the color for the general market. Yeah, the really horse-crazy kids would know what a Red Dun is, but an average consumer has a hard enough time telling a Bay from a Chestnut. It had only been a couple years earlier that Breyer itself had even figured out the difference!

It’s not that big a deal nowadays - in fact, trying to upsell an older mold with an exotic color is all the rage these days. (Remember the "Silver Dapple Dilute Dun" on a more recent release of the Adios, Frappe? Of course you do!)

The Yellow Mount lost his dorsal stripe early on - like so many other early decorating changes, a matter of cost. What’s interesting, though, is that while the Yellow Mounts eventually morphed into a somewhat standard Chestnut, a lot of Breyer Chestnut paint jobs of the 1970s looked more like Red Dun than Chestnut, particularly the Stablemates ones:

Go figure.

The First Overo

I’ve been the recipient of all kinds of news over the past several days - good, bad and disconcerting - so I’m feeling a little out of sorts today. Nothing I need to make public yet, though a few friends might be on the receiving end of some entertaining rants very soon.

(Ever hear the term "roving right fielder?" That’s what I’m feeling like, right now.)

Now here’s something that I bet most Breyer collectors haven’t given much thought about: who - or what - was the first Breyer overo pinto?

It’s not who you think it is:


Yes, it was the #113 Black Pinto Western Prancing Horse, introduced a good seven or eight years before Yellow Mount arrived on the scene in 1970.

That’s assuming that the white mane and tail on the WPH were not intended as the consequence of his pinto-ness. I think it the white mane and tails on most early Breyer pintos was just another weird quirk in their painting standards, kind of like the solid leg on tobianos thing has become today. No one I knows refers to plain, straight-up Charcoals as even the most obscure kind of pintos. (Though I’m sure someone could come up with a reference photo somewhere.)

(BTW, even I’m starting to get a little annoyed by the solid-legged tobiano thing. I’m pretty laissez-faire on the issue - it’s the boilerplate griping from other hobbyists every new release sparks that’s really starting to cheese me off. It’s not cute or funny anymore, Reeves. Controversy doesn’t always automatically lead to more sales.)

Yes, Prancing Horse’s markings are more abstract and stylized than the standard, real-life overo, but so were most Breyer pintos, prior to Yellow Mount. That stylization was a result not of ignorance, but of the existing state of their painting technology back then; fancier, more detailed paint masks were more expensive to make, and easier to break.

The investment of time and money into the painting mask for Yellow Mount was another signifier that Breyer was moving towards catering to the hobbyist market, and their demands for greater realism.

I don’t think Breyer ever referred to the Western Prancing Horse as an "Overo" Pinto; they didn’t start using the terms Overo and Tobiano until the 1970s, and even then they applied it either inconsistently, or incorrectly.

That Seventies Catalog

Let's talk about that jobber/distributor toy catalog I mentioned last time. It's the Orgill Brothers and Company 1977 Illustrated Toy Catalog, and it's like a window into my childhood toyland: everything from Barbie, to Bicycles and Breyers, and Beyond! (Literally - Space: 1999 action figures!)

Jobber is a slightly antiquated word for a distributor or wholesaler. A middleman. They'll sell dozens of lines from dozens of manufacturers to simplify and streamline the retailer's ordering process – for a price, of course.

Every page of it is full of awesome, but the Breyer pages are going to be our focus, naturally. There's nothing out of the ordinary in terms of the selection – a couple dozen Traditionals, a few Animals, the Classic Racehorse Assortment, Stablemates Assortment, a few Gift Sets. No secret, previously unknowns special runs or oddball items that I can see. (The Donkey and Elephant are present, but that's overstock from the previous year's Election/Bicentennial promotion, and not really a huge surprise.) Just the kind of horses you'd find in your locally-owned hardware store, the market that Orgill primarily caters to.

Yeah, I did buy some of my models at hardware stores back then! Didn't you?

What's nice about a catalog like this is the ability to compare the wholesale prices with the suggested retail prices. Midnight Sun would cost the retailer 4.39, with a suggested retail of 6.59 – a 33% markup. That's about the same markup Orgill was making: per Breyer's own wholesale pricelists, the cost to the distributor for that same Midnight Sun would have been 2.97!

I have no idea what the markup is now: I'm neither a distributor nor a retailer. Even if I was, there would probably be some contractual mumbo-jumbo about the pricing structure that I would bar me from discussing it in a public forum anyway. But we're talking about 30 year old prices on merchandise that's been long discontinued.

For those of you pining for the days of the Six Dollar Traditional, don't forget that this was in 1977 money. As a genuine chronological youngster of that time period, I can assure you, Six Dollars was not a small sum. Saving that kind of money took herculean effort, especially when you're constantly tempted by one dollar Stablemates and 35 cent comic books.

The most fascinating part of this catalog, though, is the photographs: a I mentioned in my previous post, some of them are OLD, and many don't match the product that's being sold. Here's the Running Stallion:

The Alabaster Running Stallion was discontinued, oh, around 1971. The text under the photo notes that it's the Appaloosa you'd be buying. Likewise with with the Indian Pony, shown here in long-gone Buckskin version:

My favorite is the Fighting Stallion; the stock photo used to illustrate the Alabaster is actually that of the Gray Appaloosa, dating back to at least 1961!

We have our share of vintage prototype pics, too, including our old friend Yellow Mount, taunting us yet again:

Several of the newer items – like Lady Phase, the Charolais Bull, and Hobo – have more contemporaneous photos, so Orgill obvious had access to them. So, what was up with the outdated, incorrect stock photos?

The answer is simple: this catalog is pre-digital. It had to be manually pasted up. Every chunk of text and every photograph had to be physically cut and pasted into place. Lines had to be hand-drawn with a technical pen. Mistakes and cut lines had to be touched up with white paint, with a paint brush. If you look closely at the scans, you can still see a few blotches and cut lines.

It's about as much fun as it sounds. I managed to get into graphic design at the very tail end of the “manual” era, so I did get to experience that fun first hand, briefly. (My first semester in art school included a digital prepress class – in Aldus PageMaker! It was my favorite class, by far. I miss doing digital prepress, I really do...)

So the overworked table jockeys who had to put the toy catalog together probably reused old pages, or cut and pasted chunks of old stats into the new pages. Wherever there was a possible discrepancy, they'd paste in a line of text underneath to cover their behinds, just in case.

I'm sure that shortcuts like this probably led to at least a handful of post-production runs on some of the models in question, unless Breyer got lucky and just happened to run across a box or two of old stock hiding in the factory somewhere. No matter how thoroughly the search, there's always a box or two of some old somethings lurking in the warehouse. Look at the kind of stuff that still turns up in the Ninja Pit every year!

Stock Photos and Stock Horses

I did a quick box count last night and realized that I was one-third done with my big “descriptors” project – considerably further along than I had anticipated. It helps that I'm not working, I guess. I have lots of time to occupy, and I might as well do it constructively.

The not-working part is not by choice. And not something I want to talk about right now.

What I do want to talk about is the catalog photography problem. No, not the recent phenomenon of lackluster lighting and color correction, but Breyer's bad habit of reusing and recycling old stock photos.

It was a particularly bad problem in the 1960s and early 1970s, when the product line changed at what now seems like a glacial pace: models and colors were issued not for months or years, but for decades. It made sense for Breyer to get as much use out of the stock photographs they had on file, rather than retake photos of the same models from year to year.

The only problem was that these paint jobs didn't necessarily stay the same over time. Markings changed, or the color or shading may have been tweaked over the years. Sometimes only the prototype of the model was available for the initial photo shoot, and the production model was significantly different. The Yellow Mount was famous for this discrepancy. For years, Breyer used photos of the prototype, which looked little like the actual production model. Here he is again, in the 1975 Collector's Manual:

He was his actual normal self in other PR materials, including the picture box he came in – here illustrated in the 1975 Dealer's Catalog:

Many of us were quite disappointed back in the day when we realized that the model we received only bore a passing resemblance to the one we saw in the catalog – because it was the photo in the catalog that we had formed our hopes and dreams on!

It's a huge problem when it comes to documenting color and mold changes. Most of the photographs in the 1968 Collector's Manual weren't taken from models that were fresh off the line: they were stock photographs that had been sitting around, sometimes for years. They retook a lot of them for the 1969 Manual, but a lot of those same photos were still being used in the 1975 Collector's Manual, even though many paint jobs changed dramatically in that timespan. We have to rely on other sources – contemporary photographs and accounts, and non-catalog promotional materials – to date those changes.

Stock photos are still useful research tools; look at how far it got us with the mystery of the Sorrel Fighting Stallion. It helped establish an earliest possible date: that model in that color had to exist by 1963. Stock photos cannot be used to establish a latest possible date, because as long as the photos exists in some form, somewhere, it may get used. For example, I have a very amusing toy jobber catalog from 1977: some of the photos they use to illustrate then-current Breyer products date back to the 1950s! (And don't necessarily match up to the product advertised!)

I'll have to talk about that wonderful old toy catalog another day – it really is worth its own post.

The stock photo problem doesn't happen as much as it used to, because the turnover is so high that individual releases don't have the opportunity to change over time. The markings or masking might be a bit different, or they might switch the finish from matte to gloss, but the photographs they release are a lot closer to the final production pieces than they used to be. We still hear griping and moaning about the models don't EXACTLY match the photographs, but compared to what we had to deal with in the 1970s, those complaints seem almost comical.