A Surprise in Every Box Lot

It’s cold, snowing, and the Seasonal Affective Disorder is hitting me hard right now, guys. Plus I got wrangled into making a Christmassy centerpiece for Friday, and that should be… entertaining. 

I wanted to do something Star-Warsy, but I limited myself to whatever I could find at Dollar Tree or in my craft closet and alas, no tiny AT-ATs or X-Wings to be found…

The cleaning of the dirty pony lot continues apace; I think the Black Bucking Bronco may also a Pearly, but the plastic itself is just strange overall; I don’t know if the model itself has a textured surface, or the paint is just more heavily applied than average or there is just really deeply embedded grunge. I think the last? 

The plastic almost feels like ABS/Styrene, but it’s not. It’s really perplexing me.

(I have no pictures of him yet because he’s still got a lot of rehab ahead of him – this boy is a mess! – and I am currently preoccupied with this silly centerpiece thingy anyway. The things I get myself into, I swear.)

Here I thought I had seen it all when it came to crazy plastic shenanigans of the 1970s, but in every mystery body box, there seems to be a surprise!

I haven’t owned a lot of Pearlies in my time; outside of the two potential candidates from the dirty pony box lot, I only own a Black Appaloosa Lying Down Foal currently. I haven’t had much luck finding nice examples locally, and the ones in the “retail” market either tend to sell quickly, or go for more than I’m comfortable with. 

The Lying Down Foal was a BreyerFest purchase from many years ago, before they became a big thing. (Wandering the halls, buying cheap Chalkies and Pearlies. Ah, those were the days…)

I think it’s interesting that Breyer seems to have limited the Pearly plastic to either Classic-scaled molds or to Foals. I don’t know if it was an active, conscious decision on Breyer’s part back then, or simply a coincidence: maybe they just happened to be running those molds that week? 

If this Bronco is any indication, though, maybe there were some technical issues they were having with it that made it more practical to run on the smaller molds. I am a little fearful that that is the case: he has a leg bent at a terrifying angle I will only attempt to straighten on a day when I am not feeling either grumpy or flat-out exhausted.