Curly Eartip Family Arabian Foals

I am bone tired. Things will get better - for the blog, anyway - next week. In the meantime, here's another little quickie: an illustration of what the Family Arabian Foal's curled eartips look like. The curly-eared foal is on your left, and a later version on the right.


There are other eartip versions - the Family Arabian Foal has gone through an insane amount of minor mold changes - but this one illustrates the difference quite nicely, I think.

The curled eartips disappeared rather quickly, and while I wouldn't call them rare, they're not terribly common, either. They were probably gone by late 1961 or early 1962, sometime around or before the introduction of the Palomino and Charcoals. I haven't seen an example of either the Palomino or the Charcoal with the curled eartips, which means they're either very rare, or nonexistent.

I'm not sure why the eartips were changed. My guess would be that they may have created a slight undercut, and caused the molded pieces to snag in the mold. You can just see, in the picture, that the mold lines on the ear don't follow the edge of the ear exactly, but are on the inside of the tips.

Many, but not all of the curly eartipped Foals have the C. Hess signature on the inside right hind leg - I have examples with, and without. Like I said, this mold had a crazy amount of mold changes: the signature probably got buffed out during some mold maintenance and tweaking. (Sorry, no pic of the signature today - my photography skills are just not up to it.)

I have no idea why the Family Arabian Foal - of all molds - went through so many different mold tweaks and alterations. Was there something just inherently wrong with the mold - a consequence of the rush to put it in production because of the Old Mold lawsuit? Or was it just such a popular or high production mold that it required a lot of maintenance - and the routine maintenance is to blame for all the bewildering changes?

I'm thinking more the latter than the former. It is a bit of a headache to keep track of all the subtle changes, but also neat in a way that we may be able to someday (theoretically) date any given Family Foal, to the year.

Micro Managing

I love Mini Whinnies to death, but they're aggravating little buggers from an historical standpoint. It's amazing that these little, teeny-tiny creatures could cause me so much grief.

My first issue: thirty-two “new” molds were dropped on us all of a sudden, none of them with short, punchy, or easy to remember names. It's nice that the mold numbers are a part of the molds themselves, but those numbers are indescribably tiny and not exactly visible while in the packaging or on the printed page. It's going to time before I can look at any given set and rattle off their respective mold numbers.

To keep them all straight in the meantime, I ended up drawing all 32 molds and created a numbered chart. In Adobe Illustrator. Yeah, really. Since they were so small, I simply dropped them on my flatbed, scanned them at an insanely high resolution, and used these scans to create line art that I dropped in my respective word processing files. Voila! Problem solved – and 32 new pieces of clip art to my Breyer art library.

(I have quite a bit of Breyer art, come to think of it. Probably because I'm a lousy photographer and I am especially proficient at creating vector art. Sigh. I miss being paid to do that sort of thing, you know. Does it show?)

My second issue: Reeves has started issuing quasi-SR Mini Whinnies sets to retailers such as Wal-Mart and Kmart. These special run sets are basically just regular run sets in slightly different packaging and/or with pieces taken out, presumably to meet these discount retailers' desired price point. They are special runs: they have been issued special run sequence numbers (aka “acknowledgment”) and do vary, technically, as a set from the regular run sets (more or less.) I doubt anyone except extreme completists and the micro-obsessed are even going to bother searching them out, but the historian in me insists on keeping track of them anyway.

(I even keep track of assortment numbers, for heaven's sake.)


The third issue is: what do I do about their previous lives as the product of unrelated company? Not the history – of course, I'll want to include that, at least briefly, in whatever kind of book I do write. It's where they came from: noting that is no different than noting the previous history of the Modernistic Buck and Doe. (More on that topic, coming soon!)

It's the actual Creata versions of the models I'm mentally wrestling with: do I incorporate these previous, non-Breyer predecessors into the written history somehow, ignore them, or just keep that information entirely separate?

Right now I'm leaning towards incorporating the Creata releases of the Mini Whinnies molds into a web site appendix of really obscure Breyer data - sort of like this blog, but better indexed, and with more lists. A central location where we could archive essential data such as BreyerFest auction lists and notable variations: information diehard collectors are looking for, but which would be impractical to incorporate into a mass-market book.

As much as y'all would love to have a multi-volume Breyer History, there comes a point where you just have to stop and draw a line somewhere. The Mini Whinnies are really pushing up against that line, mighty hard.

Just Say No. To Mullets.

Technical difficulties today. Sorry about that.

I got all excited the other day – I found another test color splash spot Pony of the Americas! Well, okay, he was in the 1976 Dealers Catalog and Collector's Manual, and I wasn't actually looking for him, per se. I was researching another topic entirely, and I just happened to notice that he wasn't the same pony on the white picture box. That's how research works sometimes: you make discoveries while you're busy looking for something else.

I already knew that the POA in the catalog was a test piece – I just assumed that the one featured in the ephemera was the same one that was on the box. Silly me, making assumptions again. (Alas, he was not the same fellow in my collection, either. So that means there were at least three of them.)

I'm not sure why I have this mild obsession with the POA: I remember when it came out in 1976, and there was just something about it that I really, really took a shine to. I think it was its unique appearance: roached mane, short tail, that leopard appaloosa paint job. The POA was no ordinary, generic pony!

Like everyone else, I finally managed to get a look (via the Internet) at a “live” version of the UK SR Pippin on the newly remodeled POA mold. They “updated” it with a new mane and tail. It wasn't necessary, in my opinion; my first reaction was annoyance. They took away the crew cut and gave him an equine mullet!

I don't like mullets. On horses, or people. (I don't have a preference for crew cuts, but on the right person, it works. If I had a preference, it'd be towards the Byronic. For both men and horses. Let's just leave that discussion ... at that.)

I know “big hair” is back in style, for both horses and people, but I never really struck me as either attractive, or practical. And just like people, some look good in big hair, and some don't. The mane is fine – the mold has a nice enough neck to pull off a short mane. But that tail is weird: it's not an improvement to me.

I'm already predisposed to buy the first two near-simultaneous SR releases of the POA in spite of the less than appealing tail – because of the roany paint jobs on both the UK Pippin, and the not-quite-sure-what-it-is Toby. I love roans! Speckled, freckled, or airbrushed, I'm not fussy. And I'd seriously trample people for a freckle-style black roan – you know, like the old-fashioned red roan paint job with big honking freckles, except in black.

And speaking of trampling people, rumor has it that the Toby is an in-tent BreyerFest store special, like the Porcelain Stablemate from last year. This little nugget of information, however, came in the form of a verbal comment from an unidentified Reeves employee: as I’ve explained before, that’s not the kind of information you can completely rely on.

(I’ve received neither a thumbs-up nor a thumbs-down from the powers-that-be to my attempt to organize the Ninja Pit of Death line last year. The issue has been brought to Reeves's attention, but I’ve heard nothing personally. Yet.)

Woodgrains: The Unrare

Continuing our discussion of Woodgrains…

Some Woodgrains are so common (relatively) that they border on the boring. Even the nicest, most perfect examples of the Family Arabians or the Fighting Stallion will rarely break the $100 price barrier. They had the longest production runs of all the Woodgrains - about 7 years for the Family Arabians, and about 14(!) for the Fighting Stallion.

If you found them with their original boxes or stickers - either the Gold Foil Tenite, or the later blue ribbon - that might change things a little bit. And surprisingly, it’d be the Blue Ribbon Sticker that’d bring the higher premium, rather than the Gold Foil.

Gold Foil Tenite stickers are relatively common on Woodgrains - "common" defined here as "not that difficult to find." In fact, most Gold Foil stickers are found on Woodgrains - not exclusively, but darn near it. This may be a consequence of who bought Woodgrains, and why: Woodgrains were marketed more as decorative items than toys. "Play" Breyers would naturally lose their stickers more quickly than "display" Breyers.

According to my research, the Blue Ribbon Sticker Era began ca. 1966 and continued through 1970, more or less. (Leftover stickers were used until they ran out, presumably in early 1971.) The Fighting Stallion and Family Arabians were the only regular run Woodgrains that continued production into the Blue Ribbon Sticker era.

If my hypothesis on the Ranchcraft Woodgrains is true, most of those were also made during the blue ribbon sticker era, but I haven’t seen or heard of any bearing the sticker. My guess would be that since they were being sold to a manufacturer as a "lamp component" the sticker wasn’t seen as necessary. They might also have given lamp purchasers the impression that Breyer manufactured the lamps themselves.

Chances are that your first Woodgrain - most collectors’ first Woodgrains - was a Family Arabian or a Fighting Stallion. They were definitely among mine. I was still thrilled to find them, of course: Woodgrains are rather difficult to find in these parts, for reasons unknown. I still get a bit of a thrill, after all these years, whenever I find a Woodgrain Fighting Stallion. (Gloss Charcoal Fighting Stallions, on the other hand, I could swear they sold them in bulk around here …)

Woodgrains and Rarity

All Woodgrains are not created equal: all are scarce, but some are more scarce than others. And defining what is rare, and what is common, isn’t as simple as you might think.

Here’s a good example: the apparent popularity and longevity of the Ranchcraft Woodgrain Running Mare and Foal Lamp may have skewed our perception of the original Mare and Foal’s rarity. The original, prelamp Woodgrain Running Mare and Foal were made for a relatively brief period of time: from 1962 through 1965, a year or so less than much more desirable pieces such as the Rearing Mustang or Five-Gaiter.

An awfully high percentage of Woodgrain Running Mares and Foal I’ve seen for sale are former lamp pieces: their drill holes and semi-gloss finishes are usually a dead giveaway. True, regular run pre-lamp Woodgrain Running Mares and Foals are fairly scarce, and surprisingly don’t command the kind of prices that that kind of rarity usually brings.

Part of it is the sex appeal: the placid, sweet Running Mare and Foal don’t elicit the same visceral response the wild and studly Mustang does. The fan club for these pieces just isn’t that large. They’re not so rare - like the original regular run Buckskins - that their very elusiveness creates demand, either. They’re not the kind of things a "high spot" collector would seek out.

And the model horse market, at this moment and in this economy, seems to be driven primarily by a small coterie of "high spot" collectors. "High spot" is a term I’ve borrowed from the world of book collecting; it refers to collectors who specialize exclusively on rare, expensive and historically significant pieces, as opposed to collectors who seek to build a more well-rounded or representative collection.

True "high spot" Woodgrains would be items like the Old Mold Mare and Foal, Elephant, and Fury - items so rare and so scarce that virtually no documentation exists for them. The Old Mold Mare and Foal, Elephant, and Fury all easily fetch four-digit figures - and except for the Old Mold Mare’s cameo in the 1960 Montgomery Wards Christmas Catalog, there is a total absence of evidence for their existence, other than, you know, their actual existence.



The Old Mold Mare and Foal were regular run items, albeit extremely short-term ones, made in one or two batches before the mold switchover ca. 1959-60. (Until recently, it was speculated that the Woodgrain Old Mold Foal didn’t even exist, but we know better, now.) Others, such as the Buffalo and Polled Hereford Bull, appear to be special run exclusives for Dunning Industries’ Ranchcraft Lamp line.

But for pieces such as the Elephant and the Fury, I have no idea. My guess would be that they were extremely short-term regular runs, a la the Buckskin Running Mare and Foal, but that’s pure speculation on my part. Until more evidence surfaces, that’s all we have at this point.

Personal Stuff

We’re interrupting our regularly scheduled programming to bring you some personal stuff. Originally I was going to create a separate blog that relates to the non-model-horsey parts of my life - and I will do so, eventually - but since this may directly affect things here, I thought I might as well put it here. I’m not ready to start or maintain that second blog yet, anyway.

In the future, if and when I do this sort of thing again, I’ll specifically label these posts with a personal tag of some sort, so you can skip to the meaty parts if you so desire. I’ll keep it short and sweet, I promise.

As some of you may know, I’ve been having a hard time of it in the "real world." I’ve been underemployed for a rather long time, and I live in Michigan: it’s not exactly been a recipe for success. Combine that with some major family health issues - and well, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that it’s been a struggle to get out of bed a lot of mornings, recently.

In fact, one of the few things that’s been keeping me going is this blog. I’ve always found writing very therapeutic, and giving myself regular deadlines to meet on a weekly basis has probably kept me from losing it entirely over the past couple of months. (The other is the recent appearances of the Legion 0f Super-Heroes on Smallville. You have no idea how happy those episodes have made me. Seriously.)

To cut to the chase: the posts for the next two weeks will not be as substantial as I would like them to be, because I found myself a temp merchandising job. I’m going to be away 12+ hours a day for the next two weeks, and maybe for a few days after that, depending on how it goes. There’s no promise of a permanent or full-time position, but (a) I will be getting overtime, and (b) I’ll be out of the house, doing something other than fretting over my bills or my problems. Nice pluses, both of them.

And I really need the money. Goodness, do I: dental work, new glasses, credit card debt. Optimistically, the paycheck I get from this temp job will pay off at least two of those looming debts. So of course I said yes, when they offered it.

It’ll mean a couple of missed trips to the flea market, and no social life; but I didn’t have the money to spend in the first place, and my social life has already been rendered nonexistent by my current circumstances. It’ll also mean that I won’t be able to tackle deeper, more involved topics I’ve been wanting to, in the short-term. I have a few I’ve been working on, but the rest will be not quite as geeky as normal.

If all goes well, it will also make my trip to BreyerFest this year a little more possible, or at least more affordable (I’ll still need a roommate - I always need a roommate!)

So, there you have it. Back to the regular model horse nerdiness on Wednesday.

Ranchcraft Lamps

Since I’ve mentioned them a couple times recently, in passing, here’s a helpful list of known Ranchcraft Woodgrain Lamps:

• Family Arabian Foal
• Running Mare and Foal
• Running Foal Wall Sconce
• Fighting Stallion
• Longhorn Bull
• Buffalo
• Polled Hereford Bull

There are non-Woodgrain Ranchcraft lamps too, but I haven’t tracked them as closely as the Woodgrains. Among the best known of these are "variations" of the Woodgrains: Family Arabian Foal in Palomino, the Running Mare and Foal in Bay, and the Buffalo in Brown. They’re desirable, of course, but not on the same level as the Woodgrains.

There hasn’t been a lot of research done to date on the Ranchcraft Lamps, mostly because they were not considered official Breyer products, and never appeared in any official Breyer promotional material. Most of what we know about the Ranchcraft Lamps comes from vintage mail-order catalogs and a handful of contemporary magazine ads. Our data is so fragmentary that we can’t pinpoint a manufacturing date: my best guess, from what sources I do have, is roughly from 1965 through 1970, give or take a year either way.

Have you noticed something funny about that time period? Yes, most Woodgrains - with the exception of the Family Arabians and the Fighting Stallion - were discontinued by then. While it’s possible that Breyer sold Dunning Industries a number of leftover Woodgrains from their warehouse, I believe a lot - if not most - of the Woodgrains they used were either special run or post production run pieces manufactured specifically for them.

The best evidence for that is the existence of two Woodgrains that are found only on lamps: the Buffalo, and the Polled Hereford Bull. The PHB didn’t even make it into Breyer’s lineup until 1968 - a couple of years after even the Family Arabians were discontinued in that color!

The Buffalo and Polled Hereford Bull lamps are, of course, the rarest of the lamps: there aren’t more than a handful of either one floating about in the hobby. (The Polled Hereford Bull is high on my "desperately wanted" list!) The rest are slightly to somewhat more common, especially the Running Mare and Foal and the Family Arabian Foal - I’ve found a couple of each of those myself, and I don’t normally find a lot of Woodgrains in these parts.


The Running Mare and Foal Lamp appears to have been either the most popular or best-selling piece: it appears in a 1972 Miller-Stockman mail-order catalog (for sale at a pricey $37.95 - Ouch!) Since a small number of these Mare and Foal Lamps also have USA mold marks, that’s further evidence suggesting that these Lamp-based Woodgrains were SRs or PPRs. The USA mold mark did not appear on the Running Mare and Foal molds until at least 1970 - five years after they were officially discontinued in Woodgrain.

Dunning Industries wasn’t the only company that produced lamps using Breyer models, just the best known. I have other ads, and other mail-order catalogs that feature a wide assortment of lamps from the early 1960s through the early 1990s. Most of these other manufacturers, though, used common, off-the-shelf models. While they do certainly have some appeal - especially to fans of whatever mold they happen to feature - they don’t have quite the same mysterious, romantic cachet as the Ranchcraft Woodgrains.