Missed Opportunities

I must confess I’m feeling a bit burnt out, Breyer-wise: the Chicago trip was a big emotional drain, and in the past few days all I’ve wanted to do is watch cartoons and make quilts.

The Internet chatter is not helping my mood: it sounds like a lot of people are about fifteen minutes away from declaring the Chicago event an “Epic Fail”.

It was flawed, yes, but I wouldn’t go that far. I wasn’t party to any of that discussion, but the event felt like it had some issues from the get go.

The Special Run situation is the one getting the most discussion, and it certainly could have been handled better. Issuing them in equal quantities (80 each?) would have tempered the obvious resale motives that were in evidence during the sale on Sunday.

I actually liked most of the Specials: this was meant as a hobbyist-centric event, so I was expecting a nerdier-than-average selection. I had suspected that we’d be seeing the Family Arabians again in some form, so I was very pleased to see the Mare and Foal set “Addison and Clark”.

Can’t get any nerdier than that! (Okay, I’ll spot you the Modernistic Buck and Doe. And Benji and Tiffany, too.)

We haven’t seen either of those two molds as a production item since 1997’s Galena and Julian. Is this a hint, perhaps, that we’ll be seeing more of these two in the near future? I hope so.

From the somewhat dismissive tone of the discussion on Friday night, assumed that I’d actually be able to get the ones I wanted, regardless of my position in line. My first choices were among the less popular: the Family Arabian set (of course!), and the Appaloosa Performance Horse “Ferris”.

What struck me most about the event, though, weren’t the models but the missed opportunities: first and foremost, the reasons why the location was so significant to the model horse hobby in the first place.

Chicago is the “birthplace” of the Breyer Molding Company. It was also the home of Model Horse Congress, the BreyerFest-before-BreyerFest held by Marney Walerius, the first among us to work in a semi-official capacity for the company. The modern hobby, essentially, was born there.

Outside of a single bus trivia question, there was no acknowledgment of Breyer’s connection to Chicago. Heck, we weren’t even anywhere in the vicinity of Chicago. The only connections the event seemingly had to Chicago were the names of the models themselves. That seemed very strange to me, especially as a history-oriented hobbyist.

The resources were available. There are still plenty of us from the “Chicago Factory” days around to assist, if needed be. We could have pointed out some of the sites of hobby-historical interest, provided a slideshow, wrangled some of local hobby celebrities out of their retirements, or even just serve as raconteurs or tour guides.

I could go on; I won’t. I don’t regret going: I made the most of the opportunity and had a good time, for the most part. Things went more right than wrong; the biggest sticking points with many attendees – the model selections, and the food – were not an issue with me at all. The Dancing Horses trip thing was cheesy, but we still had fun with it; I just imagined that it would have been exactly the kind of thing nine-year-old me would have eaten up with a spoon.

Whether I go to another one of these events will depend on the circumstances. A lot of things had to happen to make this happen, and I’m not sure if that can be replicated.

As far as getting the models I wanted…

Like about 25 percent of the attendees, I found myself consigned to the back of the line where our choice was limited to the Glossy Dapple Gray Desatado, or the Glossy Dapple Gray Desatado. When you price the highest piece run item (144 for the Desatado Four Stars) the same as the lowest piece run item (50 for the Make a Wish Burnham) that’s what’s going to happen.

We tried to make the best of the situation by spinning it as an opportunity to handpick: one of mine was a little darker than average, and is quite lovely in person. Nevertheless, he was my fifth choice of the five.

I still had the Mustang (Beautiful!) and the Stablemate (Blue Roan Appaloosa, yes!) and lots of wonderful memories to go with them. I figured it was just my special kind of luck again that would tease me with special runs seemingly designed to my quirky specifications, and put them just out of my reach.

Then a lovely thing happened. One of the many beautiful souls among us offered to trade her Addison and Clark for one of my Desatadoes. She couldn’t bear to see my sad face, she said.

I thanked her over and over then, and I thank her again here, in public: you are the kind of hobbyist I like to think we are all capable of being.

And one of the reasons I stick with the hobby, in spite of the grief it sometimes dishes out. Just little griefs, they are; as they say, you can’t have a rainbow without a little rain.