Cavalcade of Trivia

The Diorama Prize model is a Haflinger named Cavalcade:

Should have guessed when I saw it was Chestnut. The majority of the Traditional Haflinger’s releases have been some shade of Chestnut or Palomino! Some of them quite lovely, but still… some form of Chestnut.

Though this one does appear to be the same shade we saw on the generally well-received Clock Saddlebred Muir Woods last month.

It’s hard to believe, but Cavalcade marks the fourth production BreyerFest Special Run Traditional Haflinger. It’s had more BreyerFest releases than legit pony fan favorites like the Cantering Welsh Pony, the Pony of the Americas, and even Misty.

In fact, this marks the second time the Haflinger has been used as a BreyerFest contest prize, the first being the Gloss Red Dun awarded to the winners of a “Design a Breyer Sceptre” Contest in 2005, one of the early precursors to the Diorama Contest.

Back then they didn’t have age categories, they didn’t require a Breyer item incorporated in the final product, and they had only had a handful of rules that were mostly ignored anyway.

I also remember that one being judged in the dark. (Sometimes I still think they do…)

The Haflinger has also been a Live Show Prize (2012 Youth Show), and a very pretty Flaxen Chestnut Pinto Ticket Special named Buckaroo in 2013.

What the model is, of course, has no bearing on whether or not I enter the contest, though I am happy it’s not something that would make me really wince and try too hard, like a Fell Pony, or the short-tailed version of the Pony of the Americas.

As the BreyerFest blog post notes, the name Cavalcade is in reference to the “parade” aspect of this year’s contest theme. In fact, per the online Merriam-Webster:

When cavalcade was first used in English, it meant "a horseback ride" or "a march or raid made on horseback."

But wait, there’s more. Horse-wise, Cavalcade was the name of the 1934 Kentucky Derby winner and the name of a vintage horse-racing-themed board game (the latter is a steeplechase game, and doesn’t seem directly related to the former, but I am not a board game expert here).

Comic book-wise, there were two well-known comic book titles that used the name Cavalcade, both published by DC Comics. The first was Comic Cavalcade, which was a Golden Age anthology series that began as a mostly-Superhero book and ended in the 1950s as a Funny Animals title.

The second was the legendary/notorious Cancelled Comics Cavalcade, a two-issue “series” that was published in 1978 to maintain/secure the copyrights to a bunch of titles that were abruptly canceled (it’s a long story). Only 40 copies were published – a Micro Run! – and aside from its rarity, it’s best known for the first appearance of the superhero Vixen, a member of the Justice League who can conjure the powers of any animal past or present.

And here y’all thought the name didn’t fit the theme. With a little research, you can make anything fit!