The Most Interesting Model Horse in the World

This week will only be slightly better than the last, in terms of sleep/downtime/etc. Nevertheless, I promised you something you won’t forget, and here’s his headshot:

You’re welcome. Here’s the full body shot:

He’s another Friday morning Sample, simply labeled "Mariah’s Boon BF '12". I picked him up initially because, like the Gypsy Vanner, I figured he’d be an easy sell if he merely turned out to be ordinary. (We ended up selling all the other Othello molds we had in our room this year. And we had several.)

He’s not ordinary, obviously. He looks like a Mid-20th Century European Dictator in Juggalo face paint.

The first thing I did when I opened him up at the hotel was to start laughing hysterically. Wouldn’t you? The roommates wondered what was up, so I showed them, and then they started laughing hysterically. After the third or fourth young child fled the room in mock (I hope) horror, I spend most of the rest of the evening having way too much fun at the Clarion frightening other small children and threatening household appliances with him.

He deserves a YouTube channel, a web site devoted to his own memes, and possibly a recording contract. He’s so diggidy-dang awesome I want to build a platform to hang around my neck and stroll around the Horse Park with a sign that reads "The Most Interesting Model Horse in the World". Because he is.

His paint job - aside from his face, and some eartip rubs - is absolutely gorgeous. The masking is different from the production pieces, there’s no black in his mane, and his tail is almost completely gray, so I was almost certain he was a Test piece of some sort.

Then I figured out who he was.

Remember the original picture of the Mariah’s Boon model on the Breyer web site? The one with the mapping? Lots of people got all hot and cranky that the mapped piece was taken down and replaced with an unmapped one, because that meant that we weren’t getting any mapping on the Celebration Horses.

A lot of that grouchiness was for show, I’m guessing. People looking for a moral justification to either not attend or not keep their Mariah’s Boon model. They promised us mapping, and now they’re reneging? Those cads!

Reeves has a hard enough time getting 350 mapped pieces to look good, much less 3500 or more. Removing the mapping seemed like a wise move, to me.

They did end up selling the mapped piece during the Silent Auction that year, and for a tidy price, if I remember correctly.

Okay, so who is MY guy, precisely?

He’s the Revised/Reviled one. Here’s the picture, downloaded from the web site:

And here’s a link to the page, where he’s still visible:

http://www.breyerhorses.com/breyerfest2012_specialruns

I was doing a quick skim of MH$P a few days ago before catching a few rare snores, and clicked on a random Mariah’s Boon sales ad just for kicks. I took a closer look at the photo in the ad - the same one from the web site - and noticed the telltale arched eyebrow, and started laughing all over again.

OMG, It’s Adolf!

You know, it really is a total crapshoot when you buy Samples in the Ninja Pit. They’re wrapped in miles of bubble wrap and packing tape, so you only have a general idea of what you’re buying, and little time or space to reconsider your decisions. You grab, you go.

Sometimes, you get lucky.

Adolf was totally worth sleeping under a tree full of incontinent tree frogs.

And lest you think "Oh, he’s not so bad." Here’s a "Glamour" shot of his blue eye.