Raleigh, Etc.

This week was about on par with last week in terms of stress, drama and overall chaos. (But I did finally get my nachos!)

I managed to visit most of the local Walmarts within my usual driving area this week, but most of the stores were either just getting ready to do their reset, or weren’t even considering it yet when I visited. Since my schedule over the next couple of weeks is straight-up crazy, that’s probably the end of my local Walmart Stablemates search.

Bah! I picked such a bad year to focus on Stablemates!

At least the Stablemates Club Raleigh will be coming this way shortly:

Did you know that the Saddlebred was the first of the 16 original Hagen-Renaker molds adapted to plastic? That’s why it appears first in the Stablemates numbering sequence: the original releases were the #5001 Dapple Gray, and the #5002 Bay.

It’s also the only G1 Stablemates mold that is its own mold: all of the others are paired up with another Stablemate, to make it more cost-efficient to run. I believe his solitary nature is because they used the Saddlebred as their test piece before they went ahead and produced the other 15 molds.

Thus explaining the lack of detailing between the mold’s ears.

This is also why the mold was probably used to make the 25th Anniversary Silver-plated Promotional piece that makes everybody so crazy whenever it shows up on the Internet. Someday one of you kind shall be mine, G1 Silver Saddlebred!

(I have this strangely detailed fantasy that I’ll be rummaging around in someone’s old jewelry box at the flea market, and find one tangled up in a knot of funky rhinestone-encrusted owl necklaces from the 1970s. I’ve found things in stranger circumstances, so it could happen...)

Since they’re running a Stablemates sale this weekend, I might toss in a few others in my order just for the heck of it. After making it through the past two weeks, I think I deserve a few.

I wanted to wait until the end of the year – and the possible return of the Free Holiday Gloss Promotion – to buy all the newer ones en masse off the web site. But I recently added everything up I wanted, and there appears to be more than enough to fill up a couple of potential orders. So which ones will I buy first?

At the moment I’m leaning towards the 8-piece Blister Card Assortment; while I love them all actually, I really could use that Icelandic and Appaloosa Dungaree: