Making Mischief

The seemingly endless parade of Fall Special Runs continues, now with more Classics "Farm Store" Mustang sets, Tractor Supply Specials Maverick (Bay/Dun/Brownish Missouri Fox Trotter) and Travis (Black Pinto Carrick), and now this fascinating little oddment, Mischief Night:

(Photo taken from the Breyer web site Collector’s Club sneak preview page.)

A Classics … Hobo? Interesting mold choice, and one we haven’t seen since the Pony Express Gift Set in 2001. The price is right and he Glows In The Dark, so my next order to Reeves will include him if he’s still to be gotten. That seems likely, since the Classics Hobo has never been a wildly popular model in any color, but you never know with these things.

The appearance of the Hobo after such an extended period of time, on a Special Run with a rather narrow appeal, suggests two different things to me. Either they’re using up warehoused bodies, or gearing up for another production run of the mold in the near future.

We won’t know for sure about the "warehoused bodies" theory until the first ones start showing up, and they can be physically inspected for clues. The photos on the web site are better than we’re used to, but still not helpful clue-wise.

Speaking of, an example of the other Glowing Halloween Horse "Night Mare" just showed up on eBay today, sooner than I expected. I don’t know what’s up with having two different Glowing Halloween Specials this year. Will Glowy Little Bits/Paddock Pal and Stablemates SRs be not far behind?

By the way, I had no idea that "Mischief Night" is what they called "Devil’s Night" in New Jersey; I learned something new today. Technically we’re rather loath to refer to the nights before Halloween by that name any more in the metro Detroit area, for a variety of reasons I won’t get into here.

(Just a helpful little tip if you happen to be traveling in and around our area around that time of year.)

In another BTW, I’m finally getting some stuff up on MHSP! All items there will do a two-week stint before being shopped elsewhere. Extra money this time of year is always helpful, but the additional space will be an even bigger boon, especially now that I have more archival materials to deal with.

More on some of the latest ephemera acquisitions next time, and their origins.

(Before I go, I will answer the most pressing question here and now: yes, I do plan on publishing at least one of the photo albums in the near future. It’s already digitized, I just haven’t had the time to take care of the rest.)

Had to Laugh

So I’m down in the basement yesterday, scanning and recreating some Breyer logos and stuff, mostly for illustrative purposes - and because it keeps my Illustrator skills sharp.

(Just to make it extra clear: for educational use and for fun. They don't go on anything I can sell.)

Plus it’s kind of an interesting design challenge in and of itself. By recreating the logos, sometimes you find little clues about the thinking that went into the design.

 

I’m recreating the most recent logo - the "blue pill", I like to call it - and I’m poking around for the matching typeface, or something close enough to tweak into shape.

When I found the match, I nearly fell out of my chair laughing.

It’s Stone Sans Serif, Semi-Bold.

Stone? Really?

Good graphic designers know that research is as important - if not moreso - as your technical skills, especially when it comes to brand or corporate identity projects. The more you know about a company or brand, the thinking is, the better able to are to capture its essence in a logo.

I am 99.95% sure that the person or persons involved in the logo redesign didn’t know anything about Peter Stone; Reeves has done a pretty good job of disappearing him from their version of Breyer History.

Someone who only has a passing interest or knowledge of Breyers or the Hobby - and who most likely wasn’t around in the Signing Party heydays of the 1980s and 1990, either - isn’t going to know about him. Heck, even many newer hobbyists think that Peter was just some guy who worked for Breyer for a while.

Yeah, only for the first fifty or so years of his life.

So anyway, I had a good giggle fit over that for about 15 minutes, imagining the tiny possibility that it might not be a coincidence.

A Novel Idea

I’m feeling a little bit better today. I figured out what I was doing wrong with a recipe I’ve been experimenting with (I wasn’t following it to the letter. Duh.) I found a few more auctions to fantasize about on eBay (for a week, until I inevitably lose them.) And I’m just about ready to wrap up (what wasn’t supposed to be such) a tedious sewing project.

I’ll probably spend most of the next day or two cleaning up some paperwork, prepping some stuff to sell, and working a bit more on that secret thing.

In fact, I’ve been wracking my brain trying to come up with a few more not-too-obvious clues for you all about it. Here’s what I was able to come up with:

• I can almost guarantee that it’s going to be something that a big chunk of the online model horse community will be talking about for some time to come. The chunk that’s obsessed with Breyer History, that is.
• Oh, and it happens to be something I’ve talked about here before, in passing. Not very helpful, especially since that’s nearly 500 posts you’d have to wade through.

In other tangential/self-referential news, I think I might have come up with a sufficiently motivational writing project for November. In light of the events of the past couple of months, this particular notion keeps floating to the surface of my mind: writing a hobby history of myself.

It’ll contain all the crazy stories that I couldn’t otherwise tell here - or the ones I haven’t quite told in full. It’s not necessarily a novel, per se, but some of the stuff I’ve experienced sounds almost fictional - some of you who have seen what I’ve done (and what’s been done to me) know what I’m talking about.

Some of what I want to write down is also potentially libelous, involving people who are no longer with us, either physically or in the hobby proper. So the notion that I could profit from this history in some way - either by self-publishing it, or tailoring it for the larger memoir/autobiographical market - isn’t something I’m even considering at this point. I just want to write it down for the record, so the stories themselves don’t get lost to the ages. Its purpose, more or less, is to basically become another volume to add to my archives.

I don’t necessarily think of myself as a "BNP" in the hobby, or someone who necessarily needs to write an autobiography. Actually, I think everyone at some point should write their own hobby biography - if, for nothing else, to explain to their friends and family why this thing we do means so much to us in the first place.

I just happen to have way more - and way crazier - stories than most. 50,000 words worth, at least.

Face Time with Old Friends

I actually have to work tomorrow! It's not much, but it's something. Unfortunately I have to be up and on the road at some unheavenly hour when most of the world is sleeping, except for vampires and truck drivers. So something short again, today.

Finished the latest quilt, finished the descriptor project. Now moving on to my 2009 paperwork and cleaning up the office for some near-future remodelling. And some stray crafty things: I bought some Aves Apoxie Sculpt from a local hobby store recently, and I'm having a little fun with that, too. (Yes, I do a little customizing, just for fun. Nothing beats dremelling a FAM body for stress relief!)

Lots of positive goods came out of the collection excavation. Aside from finding the inspiration for even more blog posts, I now know where all the models are that I need to photograph to illustrate those blog posts.

Another positive result is that's it has definitely put a damper on my acquistive desires. I did a thorough purge a few years ago, so it's not that I've found a lot of my models wanting – if anything, the process has made me want to see these guys more, not less. After being in storage for a while, they've become fresh and new again, and I miss their company. Buying a lot of new horses would mean less face time with old friends I want to get reacquainted with, y'know?

(Though the “refreshened” new horse smell put me out of commission for a couple of days this week with migraines. Holy moley, I didn't realize one could actually overdose on it!)

There are still an number of newer molds and models I'd like to get, and I won't turn away any potential herd members if I should happen to stumble on them during my daily routines. But I will definitely shifting more of my modest discretionary income towards model horse ephemera, and a lttle less on actual model horses.

Speaking of which, it looks like the hobby history project is getting back on its feet again – ironically, as a result of a discussion about where we need to take the hobby in the future (which actually started out as a discussion about realism. Gotta love thread drift!) I'll discuss that endeavor in my next post, when I actually have time to do it; in the meantime, I really think it's worth your while to at least lurk in the discussion. It takes a couple of pages in before you get to the meat of it. Good stuff – something we've needed to get out in the open for a while. Let's hope the momentum for change lasts:

http://www.modelhorseblab.com/forums/showthread.php?t=97634

Puffy Stickers!

My latest big project: going through last year’s horse trading. The spreadsheets were all fine and up-to-date: the work was in the cleaning, sorting and organizing of the paperwork that went into it. I would have finished today, too, if the printer hadn’t run out of toner.

I’ve had too much experience with electronic files being lost, destroyed or tampered with to abandon the security of hard copies. And there’s some satisfaction in seeing it all neatly tabbed, collated and sitting on the shelf in one sturdy little binder. It’s like a craft project, with data instead of scrapbook paper!

Since I was already in the mood, I also started reorganizing my hobby archives. I had my archives in a couple of different locations in the house, and I’m now attempting to relocate all - or most - of it into my office. I knew I had a lot of stuff, but putting it all in one room was quite enlightening.

I’ll go on another day about my efforts to create a true model horse hobby archive; I scrapped my first attempt to articulate my thoughts about it (thus explaining the shortness of today’s post!) And I do want to tidy up the place a bit before I share pictures of what my "library" looks like, anyway.

I will share a couple of things that I found in the move: the Puffy Stickers I mentioned in the post about the J.C. Unger connection a little while back. They were right where I thought they were - in a mixed box of loose bits of Breyer tack.


In case they aren’t quite readable the first sheet has: (Bay) Jumping Horse, Overo Paint, Lady Phase, Trakehner, Traditional Black Beauty, Traditional Man o’ War, (Buckskin) Mustang, Tennessee Walker (aka Midnight Sun) and Legionario III.


Second Sheet: Stud Spider, (Palomino) Family Stallion, (Palomino) Western Prancing Horse, Clydesdale Stallion, (Appaloosa) Running Stallion, (Buckskin) Quarter Horse, Clydesdale Mare, (Bay) Running Mare and the (Mahogany Bay) Proud Arabian Stallion.

They’re in remarkably good condition, considering that they’re nearly 30 years old. The sheets are bent slightly, but I don’t see any yellowing, peeling or cracking. I did keep them in their original wrappers and stored in an unlit closet for most of that time, which probably helped.