Shrinky Misty

This sinus infection is totally kicking my butt, so here’s a picture of that Shrinky Misty to entertain you in ways I cannot:

When I am not pondering the mysteries of model horse history, I design and (not as expediently as I wish) sew quilts. It’s my philosophy that with the right combination of pattern, texture and design you can get literally any two colors to work together in a quilt.

This model is making me rethink this philosophy. Highlighter Orange and Tan? I don’t think so.

Like Chalkies, Shrinkies are not necessarily limited to or defined by a specific time period. You can find Breyer models that have shrunk, warped and turned a peculiar shade of something else from just any time in Breyer’s past. It’s just that the ones from the late 1980s are more abundant, more readily available, and turned weirder faster than the rest. 

In fact, all Breyer models – be it five years from now, or 150 years from now – will eventually shrink, warp and discolor. 

There are plenty of models from the 1950s and early 1960s that still look as good as they did when they were manufactured, so don’t freak out just yet. The speed is dependent not just on the chemical composition of the plastic, but on the environment they are kept in.

There was definitely something that went wrong during the “Shrinky Era” of the late 1980s: this was shortly after manufacturing moved from Chicago to New Jersey, and a lot of “institutional memory” was lost in the transition. I suspect it was either a bad batch of raw Cellulose Acetate, or something went slightly awry with the plastic mix that did not get caught immediately because the old pros weren’t around to do periodic quality checks. 

I still haven’t decided whether or not to keep her. She seems pretty stable for Shrinky (no active oozing, doesn’t smell that bad), but I really don’t need another crazy Misty variation. If anyone wants to make an offer and make this decision easier for me, feel free!

Turkey Day

So this long-lost package greeted me today when I got home:

This is not a frozen turkey: there were four horses in there and fortunately/miraculously none of them appear to have been damaged in any significant way. 

But still, yikes. This is not a good way to start out the week.

In other news that was not news because last week was last week, the 2020 inductees to the Toy Hall of Fame were Baby Nancy, Jenga, and Sidewalk Chalk.

I understand Baby Nancy: the original write up was a little too detailed and well-written for me to not think it was a foregone conclusion. History, and all that.

As far as games go, I thought Yahtzee or Risk had a better chance than Jenga, but Jenga does have an appealing (yet deceptive) simplicity to it. It takes two minutes to explain, if that, and there are no notepads to tally or rulebooks to follow. 

But Sidewalk Chalk? We got beat by craft supplies? Sigh.

Okay, I’ll admit that I kind of got my hopes up just slightly, based solely only the fact that one of the hosts of the morning radio show I usually listen to very briefly mentioned the hobby in passing when discussing the Toy Hall of Fame story a few weeks back, during the voting phase of it. 

Then again, that guy is/was a toy train nerd, has a daughter that is the right age, and the two primary independent toy stores in this area both have extensive selections of both Breyers and Trains.

In other words, it was probably just an exceptional circumstance. 

But still, it’s an optimistic sign that we’re not as peripheral to the public consciousness as some hobbyists believe, and that this campaign was not as quixotic as it originally seemed. Heck, Lisa was outed as a model horse collector on The Simpsons last year: 

https://www.laughingplace.com/w/articles/2020/05/10/tv-recap-the-simpsons-season-31-episode-21-the-hateful-eight-year-olds/

There was a shot of an extensive (20+) model horse collection in her room, and she gave one of horsey friends “a toy horse, with a hat” for her birthday! (Any model horse hobbyist who watched that episode immediately whispered Old Timer.)

I’m kind of curious just how far Reeves is willing to go to continue pursuing it, though, since they obviously saw it as part of their 70th Anniversary marketing strategy. 

Off to bed now; I have a sinus headache that’s not going to get any better staring at a computer screen.

The Choices Given

My Gambler’s Choices are…

…the Glossy Winx and the Appaloosa Valerio! 

The Winx was what I was hoping for, but the Appaloosa Valerio is a surprise, because I usually don’t get the Appaloosa option with Gambler’s Choices. I thought it’d be either the Rose Gray (who I think is the prettiest of the four) or the Unicorn (weird, but awesome in its own way).

Like most of the Valerios out there, he does have the “squish” problem with his neck, which some hobbyists are assuming – and as someone who did work for a plastics injection molding plant for five years, I nod in agreement – is probably a consequence of him being molded out of Cellulose Acetate instead of ABS.

As someone who sometimes goes out of her way to collect mold oddities, it doesn’t bother me in the least. Though I do hope that they resolve the issue for the 2021 Deluxe Club Membership Stablemate Alborozo, because I know my fellow hobbyists are not as forgiving. 

The only (slight) disappointment about the 2020 CCA offer is finding out about the other Glossies that they only hinted at. And that one of them was the Sable Island Pony. 

Dang it! I was afraid of that.

I’m definitely not considering trading my Winx for one, because her gloss is nice and thick and her shading is top notch and I love the Emerson mold. But I might consider trading either of my previous CCA Glosses (the Pinto Wixom Jake, or the Pinto Roxy Kodi) for one. Eventually. 

Or for a Gloss Catch Me. The ones I have seen are pretty nice looking, too.

Ah well, probably better to savor the choices I have been given, and not worry so much about what I haven’t.

In the meantime, I will be spending the rest of my weekend cleaning up and sorting out the horses that are now out of the car. Turns out that that most of the them are in better shape than I expected (yay!) except for one of the sets I was hoping to keep (boo!) The Bay Old Timer looks pretty good, and is more appealing than I remember, though it might be the nostalgia talking.

There’s also a freakish neon yellow and tan Shrinky Misty in the lot too that I shouldn’t keep, but I find myself… hesitating. The weather is going to be nice all weekend, so pics may be coming of her, next time.

Another Funky Old Timer Variation

(FYI: This is as political as I am ever going to get here, and as you will see, it’s just barely.)

Like a lot of folks, I’ll be checking out of most media for the next couple of days because I need a break. I live in a battleground state where even my smudge of a town has seen several campaign stops, and I think it’s probably best that – having done my civic duty – I just retreat to my workshop for the next couple of days to decompress and be, you know, productive.  

There’s an applique quilt project I pulled out of storage last week that needs to be completely redrawn (I’ve found that commercial quilt patterns from the 1970s are almost always wrong in some fundamental way.) 

And there is, of course, that big box of (mostly) body-quality Breyers still sitting in the car that I need to get out of said car before I take it in for an oil change later this week, because I’ve had to deal with enough awkward conversations recently. (See above)

One of the pieces in this lot is (supposedly) a fairly decent #206 Bay Old Timer. I had one years ago and sold it, because it was produced at a time when Breyer Bays were not all that interesting. Then I found another who was a lot better, and a variation too, but I sold that one also because I needed the money and Old Timers are reliably good sellers, even the boring ones. 

But I’ve been thinking a lot about the Old Timer mold since last year’s Web Special LaFitte, so if this one turns out to be in reasonably good shape, I may keep it. 

The lot that the Indian Pony came in also included a Dapple Gray Old Timer that I was originally going to send directly to my sales list, because I have a lot of Dapple Gray Old Timers already and didn’t think I needed another. 

Guess what? It’s probably staying:

The gold trim on the harness and headstall are painted on one side… but not on the other!

It’s kind of neat, though, to confirm one little production factoid with this horse: details were painted from side to side, and not from the head down. At least with this particular painter, whoever he or she was. 

The Details

Going through my receipts yesterday (I hadn’t touched them at all this year – Bad Andrea!) I discovered why I was feeling so overwhelmed over the past two weeks:

I’ve bought over 100 models in the past month and a half! 

The majority of them came in four large box lots of 15 to 25 models apiece, but a fair share of them also came from Breyer’s recent sales promotions and club offerings. (I am counting the Anniversary Stablemates Displayer as one item for the moment, not 24, because I haven’t opened it yet. This is my logic, and I have spoken.) 

Recent developments have taken some of the financial pressure off me having to sell things online, but having models in every nook and cranny of my bedroom, my office, the bathroom, and even my car(!) is starting to wear on me, psychologically, so I’ll have to do something soon. 

One of the complications I’m running into is that a number of the pieces I’ve bought in the box lots are – or may be – possible upgrades, and that part of the process is going to be a massive time suck. 

I’ll dig things out, compare and contrast, make hard decisions, get lost admiring some treasure I had in storage that I now want to display and then have to choose who goes back into storage. 

One collection I bought is particularly challenging: most of the models are from ca. 1969 through ca. 1974, and some of them have details that lead me to believe that it might be a salesman’s sample lot. The paint jobs are exceptional, and there are some oddities that definitely give me pause – like a partially chalky Saddlebred Weanling, and a Buckskin Mustang with factory painted black hoof bottoms (all four, not just the front two!)

But it’s also entirely possible that this collector was simply very particular about handpicking; many stores were still displaying sales pieces in glass cabinets or behind sales counters during this time period. For those that didn’t (or couldn’t) the clear plastic Showcase Collection was also an option in the early 1970s.

As I’ve mentioned before, Breyer shifted away from gloss finishes and unrealistic colors in the early 1970s due to both consumer and hobbyist demand. They started experimenting with more naturalistic colors and spending more time adding subtle details wherever they could, like these individually painted tendrils in this Buckskin Indian Pony’s mane:

(In case you were wondering, yes, the Buckskin Indian Pony was in that lot and no, you can’t have her.)

Unfortunately, it’s the little details like these that tend to get dropped when (inevitably) production can’t meet demand. This holds true even for more recent releases: this is why I tell people to hesitate just a bit before they dive into customizing the newest/latest molds and models. You might end up doing something you’ll regret later!

Incidentally, if you are looking for something to customize, that’s one section of the sales list that’s (almost) sorted out, so it’ll probably be the first thing I list online sometime in the next week or so. Mostly older Hess molds, Love Classics and some Mestenos, if you’re curious. 

The Story of Julius

Dear Reeves-type people: I am completely exhausted and you can stop with all the reveals, new stuff and special offers now. I’m sure everybody at the warehouse would also be relieved. 

Aside from the Vintage Club and Premier Club reveals and another web exclusive Unicorn, take a gander at the New Products page for the latest Good Grief What Now. Not shown on this page: the fact that the 70th Anniversary Traditionals are now also selectable by mold, so if you still need a Palomino Hamilton, now’s your chance.

(I’ll wait for that shiny black one.) 

The Vintage Club is currently taking renewals from current subscribers and will start taking new subbers on November 4th. I have no idea if they will release pictures of any of the other releases in the club, and I am not at liberty to give you any hints anyway. 

Except (a) I expect it to sell out quickly, and (b) I don’t think you will be disappointed. 

As for Julius, the first reveal in the VC, I have a little story to tell about him:

It has been one of my greatest joys – and favorite hobby accomplishments – to name actual Breyer releases. When it came time to find a suitable name for a Vintage Club release on the Georg, one name became very obvious for me.

I named him after my Uncle George (my grandfather’s youngest brother), whose given name was actually Julius.

All of the male siblings in the family were... hell raisers, to put it mildly. The inside joke was that if anything went awry on the family farm, they’d blame it on “George”: that was the name the brothers called each other, much to the consternation of their father. (The brothers actual names were Joseph, Charles and Julius.)

Truth be told it, was Julius who was the biggest troublemaker of the bunch, so he eventually he became “George”. Our grandfather Charles passed away when we were fairly young, so George became our surrogate grandfather, even though he had a son who was two years younger than my brother, which caused all sorts of confusion in school. (We lived in the same town, for a while.)

My brother and I didn’t even know that George’s actual name was Julius until years later, when we wondered why everyone else at holiday get-togethers called him “Julius”, instead.

(There was a lot of that in my family, actually. Both sides. I learned very early on that identity can be a very slippery thing.)

All the men on my Grandfather’s side of the family were stout and big-boned: if they had been horses, they would have been Drafts. The name Julius also has an old-fashioned, old-world feel to it that suited the Georg mold very well. 

There have also been a number of Breyer releases that have unintentionally named after other relatives of mine, so it seemed appropriate that one be intentionally so.

Controversy

Oh goodness, where do I even begin?

The topic of color is just as controversial one in both the live horse and model horse community. 

Some of it is comes out of old and often debunked beliefs and institutional prejudices about certain colors and patterns (Pintaloosas, double dilutes, narrow ranges of acceptable breed colors, excessive white rules, etc.) 

And some of it is genuine concern about the health and wellbeing of the horse itself: flashy color sells, and sometimes horses with obvious and/or potentially harmful characteristics will be bred because they’re a pretty color or sport an eyecatching pattern. (And some of the colors themselves are harmful in and of themselves, in a genetically homozygous form.)

Any time a model is released in an atypical color – for the breed, or just in general – there is always a backlash.

My first concern when they announced next year’s BreyerFest theme – one that I initially dismissed because surely they were smart enough not to go there – was that they might pick a Celebration Horse that might fall into that latter category: pretty, but problematic.

What I was hoping for was that Reeves would carefully thread this needle: we wouldn’t just have colorful representatives of breeds known for their flashy looks, but also horses that didn’t fit the “mold”. That would have included not just rare colors on more common breeds (Pinto Trakehners!), but unusual patterns and oddities (Brindles and Chimeras), visually striking examples of rare breeds, and also horses or breeds that thrived or succeeded outside of their more usual or expected roles or overcame great obstacles or disabilities. 

And also, at least one actual Zebra, a couple of Decorators including a Rainbow-colored one (duh!) and one or two rarely used older molds because they are also “of another color”, metaphorically speaking. 

Well, that’s what I would have gone with or proposed, if I had been asked.

When I initially saw the Celebration Horse model, my first reaction was “Oh okay, an Appaloosa. We haven’t had many Appaloosa Celebration Horses, so that’s seems like a logical choice.” The model looked nice, though very similar to last year’s Holiday Connoisseur Ambrose. I figured there would probably be a little bit of backlash over that, because any time any release is followed by a somewhat similar release, there’s going to be trouble.

But that was not where the trouble really was. I saw pictures of the actual horse the model was based on, and the first words out of my mouth were “Oh, dear…”

Although I have made it very clearly and obviously known that I am not a stickler when it comes to model horse anatomy – plastic has no genotype – that does not extend to the real thing. 

Horses should look like horses, and function like them too. I, too, cringe at what has become of some breeds in recent years, especially Morgan and Quarter Horses. Give me those old Foundation-bred horses anytime!

There is, undoubtedly, some after-the-fact enhancements that make the real-world horse look even more exaggerated in his photos than he does in person. Sadly, it is these exaggerated looks that often win and sell: that’s part of what got the Tennessee Walking Horse breed into the sorry state that it has devolved into. 

It becomes a vicious circle that results in horses being bred to a type that either can’t, or shouldn’t, exist. 

Do the owners of these horses actually love them as horses, or do they only see them as investments? It’s complicated: some do, some don’t, though most exist in a state somewhere between the two. 

I’m not going to speculate on the owners’ motives or where they exist on that scale: I think it’s unfair to do so, especially since I do not know them in any sense of the word. I do understand why he was withdrawn from the event as the Celebration Horse. I saw the tone of the conversation on Facebook, such as it was, before it was pulled. 

I have no doubt there were some comments that veered into volatile or threatening territory: provoking and stoking strong emotions is a behavior endemic to Facebook, and one of the many reasons I try to avoid it.

There’s also been some speculation that this incident proves that the Powers-That-Be at Reeves are “not actually horsepeople”. I know for a fact that this is not true: some of our very own work for them on, by salary and by contract. 

But what did happen to get to this point? It was probably a combination of factors. 

I think part of the problem is that they were allured by the horse’s celebrity owner, and the possibility of using his celebrity status to draw more attention to the event. They’ve been using that strategy since the 1970s with releases like Stud Spider and Lady Phase, and to great effect at BreyerFest. 

It’s also somewhat obvious that the folks at Reeves tend to favor English and International disciplines over Western ones, and may not have been as aware of some of their attendant controversies. They probably had assurances that the horse was N/N for HYPP, and that was enough to allay their initial concerns.

Regardless of how they got to this point, the issue is now: where do they go from here?

First: the model itself likely never got beyond the Test/Sample phase, and production for Celebration Horses doesn’t usually begin until well after ticket sales do, so they don’t have a warehouse full of unsellable models to deal with. 

Second: who becomes the Celebration Horse now? I’ve always assumed – since the Mego incident in 1995 – that Reeves has had backup plans for Celebration Horses who are unable to attend for any given reason. 

If they had backup choices, they’re going to be recontacted this week, obviously, and whatever contracts need to be renegotiated, they will be. It’s also possible that another guest performer who may have already been confirmed – but not yet announced – could be bumped up to “Celebration Horse” status, which could save a lot of time, money and aggravation.

If I had a choice, what I would do is take the negative and turn it into a positive, with a Tennessee Walking Horse as the Celebration Horse. I’d use the Bluegrass Bandit mold as opposed to the Midnight Sun (of course) and utilize this very visible platform to highlight the efforts to redeem and reclaim the breed from the Big Lick. There are a lot of very colorful TWHs out there – another thing the breed is known for! – and that would definitely help “retcon” it into the theme. 

Anyways, that’s my thoughts on the matter. Not exactly how I thought my first “official” post about BreyerFest 2021 would go, but there it is.