Since I mentioned it in passing last time, here’s a close-up
of the original Adios’s teeny-tiny star:
(The spot on his nose is just a rub, not some rare or obscure variation.)
You might notice that this example has extra black shading
around his eyes, because he’s an early release of this model, ca. 1970,
with a near-complete Blue Ribbon Sticker. Some examples even have fully
blackened ears; mine has black ear tips, but I wasn’t quite able to pick them
up in the light of my office.
The only thing that would make this guy any better – besides
a sticker in slightly better condition – would be if he didn’t have the USA mold mark, but that’s a pretty rare trick to pull off for an Adios, sticker or no.
Early Adioses with Blue Ribbon Stickers seem to be a bit of
a hot commodity lately, so I am not going to think about upgrading, unless one
miraculously drops into my lap at my local Salvation Army or something.
Adios was not the first Breyer “portrait” model – as true Breyer aficionados know, Lassie and Rin Tin Tin can claim that title, both being released in 1956. (I think Lassie came out a couple months before Rinty, but that topic deserves a post in and of itself.) And then there is the Circus Boy set, which came out in late 1956 or early 1957: the actual “Circus Boy” is a fairly decent depiction of a young Mickey Dolenz in his pre-Monkee years.
Adios isn’t even the first equine portrait model: that title would go to the Fury Prancer release of “TV’s Fury” ca. 1958. The second? That was the #47 Man o’ War in 1967.
But other than being “a black horse with white markings”,
Fury looks little like the actual Fury; and as much as I adore the Traditional Man
o’ War, it wasn’t until 2010 that the WEG Reissue accurately portrayed his
actual star and stripe.
Adios is thus the first equine portrait model that made a real effort
to look like the actual horse, both in form and in the paint masking.
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