Circa...

I took a pass on the Gambler’s Choice Classic Nayati on the Mustang/American Dream mold today. While I actually loved all three colors (but especially the Dunalino!), I’ve been buying a lot of stuff lately and I really need to draw the line somewhere.

Some of it completely justified, like this:

Yes, a White French Poodle Perfume Kit – to match the Black one I had purchased several years ago, also on eBay. The Black one didn’t cost much – less than the average cost of a vintage Gloss Black or White Breyer Poodle on the secondary market, which is fairly low to begin with.

This one cost more, but I figured this could count as my official “birthday splurge”.

(Like I need another, but whatever.)

The Perfume Kits appeared in the Spiegel 1957 Holiday catalog, and the Sewing Kit version appeared in the Sears 1957 Wishbook.

However, the Big Poodle mold (as distinguished from the Small Poodle mold, which technically didn’t get an official release until the 1990s) wasn’t “announced” as a Breyer product until the 1958 Toy Fair.

It’s pretty obvious that the model had been for sale for some time prior to its Toy Fair debut, since not only did the mold have to be ready to photograph for inclusion in the holiday catalogs by Spring of 1957, they also can be spotted in a Western Saddle Company sales ad in the June 1957 of Western Horseman.

My guess is that it was originally scheduled for a 1957 release, but there might have been some technical issues and the mold itself wasn't ready for production (or even test shots) until after Toy Fair. Instead of making an interim announcement, they just put it in production and and waited until the next Toy Fair to say Hey Look, New Product!

This sort of nonsense is why a lot of Breyer release dates from the 1950s through the early 1970s have a little “circa/ca.” tag in front of them.