Friday, January 13, 2023

Old Timey Goodness

As someone who eats candy professionally (yes, really!), I may be legally obligated to buy Peanutine:

I had never heard of “peanutine” before, but I guess it is the peanut brittle variation of Saltine Toffee? Interesting. 

In reality, I’m not too crazy about peanut brittle per se – if you need to know, I am currently obsessed with the maple sugar candy I got for Christmas – and I am trying to behave myself this year, so I’ll take a wait and see approach on him. I mean, he’s cute, and I’m glad it’s not another bull, but I was hoping for something just a tiny bit more “outside the box” for a cart-pulling nonhorse, like a Goat or a Dog mold. 

The next Special Run – the Mare and Foal Set Surrey and Axle – might be my first must-buy of the ticket lineup, but not for the reason you might think:

If you could look at my notes for this year’s Sampler sitting on my desk right now, you’d see that the very first article I planned to write for it was (will be!) about the Standing Stock Horse Foal. 

This sort of thing usually happens after I publish an article, not before. So either Reeves and I are on the same wavelength, or some strange time travel thing just took place that I am only now finding out about.

The poor little guy doesn’t get a lot of love, but from an historical standpoint, he’s way more interesting than most collectors realize. I just wasn’t expecting to see a BreyerFest SR of him like, ever: he’s not exactly the flashiest foal mold on the block. He’s kind of like a blank canvas of a mold: how interesting he is is entirely dependent on how interesting his paint job is. 

Which is this case, is quite.

I certainly won’t turn down a few-spot Lady Phase with the package, either. I’m definitely not understanding all the online Lady Phase hate, though. When did she become “one of the ugly ones”? Heretics!

While you could argue that she’s occasionally been overused, she is never not beautiful. 

The next thing you know, you’ll be telling me that Iced Oatmeal Raisin is not, in fact, the best cookie in the world. 

Anyway, I am glad that my intuition about the turn towards “vintage” has been proven somewhat right. And has piqued my interest. Will the Old Timer be turning up soon? I’d definitely be on board with that…

And then they dropped the next Store Special, which was the Troubadour I was expecting, in a colorway I was also (more or less) expecting:

Lovely, but I’m a little reluctant about him for one simple reason: I don’t have a lot of space to spare right now, and he’s one hecking chonk of a model. And I am still holding out for an affordable Stretched Morgan Special Run, as unlikely as that now seems to be. 

3 comments:

Alex said...

It'd be the height of silliness not to include the Old Timer for this year! I'm a big fan of the older sculpts too, I think many of them are so pleasing and they often remind me of real horses that aren't elite athletes, but good-- if imperfect-- equine citizens. It's a very subtle thing they have, just a cock of the head or something in the eyes and brows maybe. I can't quite put my finger on it but they regularly strike me as friendly; I enjoy many of them so much even with their quirks.

Suzanne said...

I like the Stock Horse Foal. Back in the old days, even though I'd seen him in the Collector's Manuals, I never really noticed him until there was a head-on picture of him in JAH, next to a buckskin Lady Phase. He looked so different in profile, I thought it must be some other weird, discontinued foal. Looking forward to the Sampler!

I too prefer Hess' models, and I can't put my finger on why. Probably partly my own stubbornness ("they were better in the old days!") but maybe it's also because there are more constraints on the forms. And I love the evolution of his style. The earlier Hess models are so thick and streamlined, and the later ones are so delicate but coarse textured. (Right now, on my kitchen counter, a Running Foal is standing next to a Touch of Class, so...)

Anonymous said...

How the hell can you just drop the line “eat candy professionally“ and not follow up on that!? I need in on this! How!?