Wednesday, November 22, 2023

WinterFest?

My life is weird, part one million: this past week included my shoes melting and an extended argument about a toilet. I also unintentionally manifested an entire box of French Vanilla coffee creamer.

(Yeah, the same nonsense I can do with models I can now do with food. Except a decent vegetarian corn chowder: that search continues.)

First, some of you were a little confused about the references to the legs on the Family Arabian Foal: I was referring to how she looked from the front, rather than the sides. Here’s a shot to show you how different the leg positions are on my belly-stamped FAF, compared to a slightly later Bay example.

Most of my FAFs (I have… so many) look more like the Bay than the Woodgrain. It could just be that this specific Woodgrain Foal was made this way, or got this way somehow; legs have a habit of going wonky in storage. Maybe there is something more to it, and maybe there isn’t. I haven’t seen enough of these Foals in person to make any assumptions.

Someone mentioned the Old Mold version of the Stallion in the comments – yes, he is most definitely an underappreciated early rarity! But ironically, not a hard one to collect: I think I have a complete collection of them now, and I don’t think any one example cost me more than fifty dollars (the Woodgrain, I believe: I think because he had a Tenite sticker? Back is still too achy for me to dig him out.)

The only significant difference between an Old Mold Stallion and an early Family Arabian Stallion is the mold stamp: Old Molds don’t have it, though most Gray Appaloosas seem to have the partial one. There may be some other subtle differences, but I’ve never been able to conclusively pinpoint anything that couldn’t be ascribed to an incidental manufacturing error. 

Second, this WinterFest thing is interesting; I was just thinking that it was about time for another Duende Special Run. I do like Trueno, and how this paint job makes his mane looks like icicles, but I don’t know if I like him enough to pursue him.

https://www.breyerhorses.com/pages/breyers-winterfest-2023

The same can probably be said of the braided-mane version of Nikolas, named Mouse. Other people have done some digging in my stead and discovered that they are going to be both relatively plentiful and inexpensive, so I may have time to change my mind.

Mouse reminds me a little bit of another one of the customs I’ve been working, too. I’ll probably be putting most of my customizing on hiatus after the Thanksgiving work break, though, to focus on my quilts instead. 

The garage is cold and quilts are warm; that’s all there really is to that.

What else they have in store for this thing we’ll all have to wait and see. I might do a workshop or two if I can find the spare time. (Tempted by the Zebra one, but I fear my patience for painting stripes is very limited.)

2 comments:

Suzanne said...

Oh! My guess would be they modified the cooling rack, and splayed legs would add more stability.

Yeah, I'm sure time and heat would make those legs go wonky too. And yet I have seen FAFs with that slightly bent knee, and wondered.

Okay, here's something fun you can do for comparing models: mark the surface and use a tripod (or something) to get a picture of each, from the exact same angle. Using a Photoshop type program, overlay the two photos, and remove an RBG channel from each. I used this to see how much a shrinky had deviated from the norm.

Happy Thanksgiving! :^)

Anonymous said...

So I just looked at my FAS's. I have a no-mold mark FAS in bay with eyewhites and I *thought* one in Appaloosa. As a matter of fact, I can remember he had lots and lots of small spots. But I can't find him! How does one LOOSE a FAS? I know I didn't sell him because FAS never bring much money anyway and he had really nice spots. He was a keeper! So now that is going to haunt me for a while. FAS's have their own area in my collection and he's not there. Thanks Andrea......now I have to search for him, lol! The reason I was looking for him after reading your blog is because I thought all his legs kind of sucked in slightly. Like they weren't spread as far apart as typical. Both of my bays with and without the mold mark look about the same. Sigh.