Don't you think he'd make a fabulous topper? (The tree is actually white with purply lights, not hot pink. We did have a hot pink tree one year, though. Made entirely out of poinsettias. Truth!) Speaking of palomino quasi-Arabians, I just encountered a Breyer Mini-Me situation here. Not an exact match – not even the same sculptor – but close enough to make you wonder. The G3 Target Palomino Arabian, labeled an “Arabian Cross”:
And of course, the Palomino Make A Wish, also labeled an “Arabian-Cross” (from the May/June 2009 JAH):
Most of my horses are loose, but I do try to keep one example of every version of the Stablemates packaging. I've thought that a history of Stablemates packaging might make a nice display someday, when I'm finally in a situation to have all of the horses out and about. There is no rhyme or reason to who gets to stay in the packaging; it just happened to be the G3 Arabians luck. It sits next to my computer, along with a few other Stablemates in their original packaging.
A few days ago, I was just blankly staring at it, when I remembered the big stink some hobbyists made about the Make A Wish mold when it was making the rounds earlier in the year. Something about the typography on some of the signs made it “obvious” that Reeves had made a “huge” mistake and had initially called it an Arabian, but discovered the mistake at the last minute and tried to fix it in the text, inserting the word “Cross” after it, but of course we weren't fooled!
Thus proving yet again that Reeves is full of equine know-nothings, etc. and so on.
Oh, please. Give it a rest. They've been using the “Cross” term to denote partbreds for a while now – anyone remember the Bay Tobiano Peruvian Cross from the #5971 Stablemates 4-Piece Gift Pack, the Paso Fino Cross from the 2005 Parade of Breeds Set, the Duchess as a Buckskin “Thoroughbred Cross,” the #740 Percheron Cross Roy in Black...
The little dash between Arabian and Cross in the Fest promo material isn't sufficient evidence, in my eyes, of a conspiracy to cover up a mistake. It's just clumsy typography that got carried forward. (And there's lots of inadequate typesetting in your average issue of JAH. I used to do that sort of thing for a living, y'know.)
There are enough actual people at Reeves that know enough about actual horses – and the sturm und drang associated with the Palomino Arabian issue – that I'm sure it wasn't an “oops, we forgot that there weren't no such thing as Palomino Arabians” mistake. It was, at most, just a case of someone just making a run-of-the-mill typo correction rather awkwardly.
Especially since they had released a Palomino "Arabian Cross" Stablemate on the G3 Arabian not that long before.
1 comment:
They're getting better, but they've still got some work to do, considering that a purebred Thoroughbred could actually be buckskin. Oh, well.
Overall, though, I think Breyer has improved a lot. Better molds, better paint, attempts to make patterns and colors more realistic.
Post a Comment