Saturday, August 25, 2018

Fine Apparel

I haven’t gotten around to these yet, I might as well now…


Yup, the Breyer socks that I coveted. I ordered them as an extra on top of an order I placed, but the rest of the order was canceled, so I ended up getting a box with just… socks.

Normally the arrival of new novelty socks in the house is something to be celebrated, but I’m actually a bit bummed because the whole point of my waiting to get the socks was to add them to an order to mitigate the postage costs.

In spite of my best efforts, I still ended up paying for postage on a box with nothing but socks in it. Fooey!

On the other hand, I suppose I could just wear them as an ensemble with one of my Volunteer T-shirts to offset the cost:


Let me tell you, I was probably just a little more excited about the t-shirts than was necessary. Gosh, this is what real conventions do! I haven’t gotten around to putting one into my regular t-shirt rotation at work, but I’m sure I will at some point.

The first Breyer “wearables”, of course, were the Bolo Ties of the 1970s, sculpted by Bob Scriver – yes, the same man who later brought us Buckshot. Incidentally, I recently I found the online listing of Scriver’s personal archive, and the references to Breyer materials related to the Bolo Ties intrigue me. If I ever make it out to that part of the country, I will have to plan a visit:

http://archiveswest.orbiscascade.org/ark:/80444/xv34613

After that, there was that odd belt buckle offer in the Winter 1979 issue of Just About Horses that was more of a Peter Stone vanity/side project than a Breyer thing, and then… nothing much for years.


It has always surprised me that Breyer – even after the acquisition by Reeves – was not quick to capitalize on the hobbyist desire for branded apparel.

It even took them a while to get the ball really rolling on BreyerFest swag. I was unimpressed by the earliest BreyerFest shirts, and ended up making my own for a couple of years.

Aside from the design challenge it presented, I kind of wanted to make the point that it didn’t take all that much extra effort to come up with something special.

The problem has long since been solved, except for the sizing – in previous years they didn’t make enough of the larger sizes, and this year they probably made too many.

(FYI: I’m hoping to have a shop for the blog – with my own shirts and swag! – by the end of the year. But more on my plans for the rest of the year, next time.)

3 comments:

pawprint said...

What was the deal with the belt buckles anyway? Were they marked Breyer in any way? I keep seeing similar ones marked Tech-Ether Guild or something like that: were the Breyer ones a copy of those?

My one and only Breyer wearable (I think) is the Breyerfest 2000 Leah's Fancy Chick golf/polo shirt. It might in fact be the only thing I've kept from that Breyerfest, which was the only one I've ever been to. Sometimes I still regret selling the Celebration horse, but it usually doesn't bother me too much -- I still like my Breezing Dixie way better and I've sold a lot of special Lady Phases in my time.

Christi said...

I ordered a Kripton Seni (or however you spell it) from one of the online catalogs a few years back, and added another Breyer that I sort-of wanted to make better use of the shipping. And of course, the Kripton that I really wanted ended up being sold out or whatever, so I paid for the horse that I only kind-of wanted. Ugh. And then there were two attempts to get the Warehouse Special Clydesdale Mare, which were both cancelled, but at least I didn't order a SM with either of them, because I would have been Peeved to pay that postage on a freaking SM. (We won't get into the fact that I had to bug Reeves to get a refund for the cancelled orders. Sheesh)

Suzanne said...

Holy cow! I had a t-shirt with Pharoh’s Horses on it, back in 1981 or therabouts...