Busy News Day

I spent most of Friday sleeping (deservedly!) And the rest of it catching up on the news. Quite a bit apparently happened this week while I was gallivanting around. (Not just model horse-wise, either: the President was in town, and I had no idea! Oh, so that’s why the freeway was shut down. Duh.)

First off, they apparently did change the rules a bit in the Children/Youth Show at BreyerFest - making some of the awards Regular Run models, and not those coveted-beyond-reason Glossies. This is supposed to minimize the temptation to cheat, but on the flip side, it also makes those particular Glossies that are being awarded more rare, and more coveted.

In other words, I think it’ll be a wash as far as remedying the bad behavior. It appears that this change may have come about as a result of the brouhaha over the BreyerWest prizes last year, though some folks at Reeves may be being a little disingenuous about not knowing about the quality and quantity of less-than-ethical goings on at the BreyerFest shows.

(Per the discussion on Blab, which I won’t link to since it’s in a paid section of the site.)

Second, there’s another Web Special coming up this week, for Mother’s Day, called (presumably, from the original e-mail) A Mother’s Love. From the sneak peek photo on the Breyer web site, it’s quite obviously a Flaxen Chestnut Sucesion and Le Fire set, most recently seen in the screen saver they were giving away on the Breyer web site a week or so back.

I’d love to have it, naturally, since other Sucesion and Le Fire sets are insanely expensive and hard to come by nowadays. Since I only seem to get drawn for things when I don’t have the cash to spare, and I will be somewhat flush by the end of the week, my odds probably aren’t all that good.

And finally, there’s news of not one, but two new molds of the dressage horse Totilas, both by Brigitte Eberl. One’s a Traditional, and the other’s going to be done in that five-inch "Breeds of the World" scale that Reeves seems pretty intent on expanding. (There was a Clydesdale previewed at Equine Affaire that’s also going to be a part of that scale/series.)

No pictures of the little resin were offered up, but the pics of the Traditional on the web site look very promising. Some hobbyists are a little concerned because they see it as a tacit endorsement of rollkur. I have to admit it does trouble me a little bit, but I’ve already zoned out of that discussion, since it now appears to have descended into a game of "I hate this abusive training practice even more than YOU do."

Discussions like that, no matter how well meaning, never end well.