Sunday, August 4, 2019

That’s Entertainment

It’s amazing how much you can get done when your allergies leave you largely housebound.

(I did make an exception for the flea market this morning: my sales list has been a mere shadow of its former self since BreyerFest, and the pickings have been pretty good there lately.)

I even started a custom, but I’ll talk about that later: I started with a Family Arabian Mare missing three legs and an ear and covered in brown enamel spray paint. It’s going to be a while before I have something worth showing.

Here’s one bit of older news I’ve been meaning to cover for a few weeks, about Breyer’s upcoming horse-themed TV show and other projects:

https://variety.com/2019/tv/news/breyer-horse-toy-imagine-tv-series-1203262655/

This link provides a little bit more info beyond the press release:

http://kidscreen.com/2019/07/18/breyer-saddles-up-with-imagine-for-its-first-series/

It’s also mentioned in passing in a New York Times article about Imagine Entertainment from a few days ago:

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/01/business/media/imagine-entertainment-brian-grazer-ron-howard.html 

The news initially dropped during BreyerFest week – which makes sense, since it’s referenced in the press release – and it did not surprise me in the least. In fact, I made the assumption that a TV show would happen sooner rather than later when they added Rick Rekedal (formerly of DreamWorks Animation) to the team in late 2017.

I thought they’d go with an animated show first (for obvious reasons!) And also because, as some of you may know, I am not a fan of most fictional live-action equine-themed entertainment: it tends to be formulaic and overly sentimental. Though this quote from the Kidscreen article gives me some hope it won’t be the Hallmark Horses Channel:
For example, while humans will play an obviously important role in the upcoming show, horses will be at the foreground, with an emphasis placed on their own social relationships, trials and challenges, and an element of magic will also help bring the animals to life, she adds. This insight comes straight from Breyer, who found that, among fans, the animals’ interactions and dramas are just as interesting as that of their owners and riders.
Though this part of the original press release is what made me go Wait, wait, what?
Along with the series, Imagine Kids and Family and Breyer are working on several other development prospects including a documentary about the history of Breyer.
(Looks at my giant wall of historical materials.)

That sounds... interesting.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

As an adult collector I always feel so left out.

As a kid I loved movies like The Black Stallion, Phar Lap, Ladyhawke and The Man from Snowy River. As an adult I still love them. Why can't we have horse themed programming that includes everyone?

They really lost me at Spirit. I see these things all over the place like the Breyer versions at Tractor Supply and the non-Breyer versions at Walmart. I guess they are "okay." But even as a kid, I wanted my model horses to look REAL. That's what drew me to Breyer in the first place. Otherwise if I wanted cartoony I could have stuck with My Little Ponies and those Barbie horses. So I don't know why we are going backwards with all this cartoony stuff? As an adult collector I don't really feel like they care about me as a customer anymore. But maybe that's just me.

Anonymous said...

Ditto!

Anonymous said...

I agree completely!