Flood Damage

This is what happens when your family decides – against your wishes and better judgment, and by the way you have no choice in this decision anyway – that some of your horses must be stored in the laundry room: 

(Some plumbing work needed to be done, and there were complications. FYI: they were NOT anywhere near the floor.)

It’s super frustrating to see the one thing you feared most about this storage situation – one that was completely avoidable if they had only actually listened to you and valued your opinion – happened anyway.

The only saving graces here are that (a) these are not the Vintage Club releases in the highest demand, and (b) the horses and their respective stickers and other ephemera are all perfectly fine. And aside from another item that I had intended to unbox soon anyway, this is the extent of the damage.

(This time.)

Nevertheless, as someone who values ephemera like I do, this is definitely a punch in the gut. In spite of hobbyists’ complaints to the contrary, replacing them will be neither cheap nor easy, unless there’s someone out there is willing to sell me just the boxes.

Ugh, seriously. My life is complicated enough right now. (I am currently trying to figure out my Worldcon schedule. Unless I am able to master the skill of bilocation between now and then, I cannot attend both the Masquerade and John Scalzi’s Dance Party simultaneously. Grr.)

Anyway, to make up for my complaining, here is a picture of a couple of Shetland Ponies in sweaters, to brighten your weekend, if not mine:

I am now possessed by the urge to customize a Shetland Pony. I did just buy some new Dremel bits yesterday, coincidentally....

Good Things Come in Tiny Packages

My schedule is already apparently back to “normal” and to celebrate, I went out and bought a few more Walmart Stablemates. Nothing especially noteworthy about the lot of them; I still need to find the G3 Quarter Horse in Dark Bay and (of course!) the Carbonated Grape Unicorn Chase piece continues to elude me. 

But I’ll wait on those two. That purple unicorn seems to be getting more common over time, so – like the Rainbow Magnolia – I think I’ll be able to avoid having to pay the online premium for it.  

The 70th Anniversary Stablemate 24-piece Displayers are also back in stock – or were so earlier today – so I also have that coming to me. I know it’s technically not on the “discontinued” list, but I’m tired of trying to track down boxes locally, only to find them completely picked over. 

I’ll see if I can resist the temptation to open them until a significant holiday (or other reason to celebrate) arrives. 

A third – and for the moment, final – Stablemate purchase was made some time back, but I hadn’t bothered to photograph it until recently because other things have gotten in the way, as they do:

I decided to do “full retail” on this purchase because it doesn’t look like a purchase of a Gloss Dapple Gray Belgian is going to happen any time soon, and the money I had designated specifically for that purpose rather neatly accommodated this one. 

I felt a little guilty at first, but then a few days ago I was looking at some recently ended auctions on eBay of what I consider somewhat less scarce vintage NIP Stablemates, I don’t feel so guilty now.

Boxed Sears Wishbook Stablemates have been grail items for Stablemates collectors even before other boxed Wishbook horses became something worth collecting, mostly because the boxes are so darn cute. 

I mean, seriously, they need to make these miniature carton boxes a thing for the Stablemates Club one of these years. Don’t get me wrong, the little yellow boxes are great, but these are reusable and therefore logically superior.

Sure, I would have loved to have gotten her for a lower price, but they can’t all be bargains. But being cheap most of the time means the occasional “Good gravy, what have I done?” purchase is only momentarily discomforting.

Hey Sailor

While everyone else is squeeing over the horse itself, it’s the box that the latest Vintage Club release Running Stallion that’s getting me all excited:

They brought back the gold foil sticker, seen only on the earliest examples of the "White Picture Boxes" from ca. 1973. Like, coincidentally, this Black Appaloosa Running Stallion example I sold recently:

The only slightly bothersome thing about the newer box is that the "picture window" is too big. In the originals, the picture window was cropped in such a way to accommodate the identifying mold and color text, or sticker.

It also just looked better, aesthetically. As my art school instructors were so fond of beating into our heads, white space is a design element, too. Don’t be afraid of it! White space improves readability by allowing you to focus on the most essential elements of the design.

Too many designers and artists feel like they need to fill up a page or image area, when all that does is create a lot of visual clutter that you feel obligated to read.

It’s not just about the box: the Breyer web site has a similar problem. Even though the site is relatively "flat" - theoretically, you don’t have to click more than a couple times to find the page you are looking for - finding them in those long lists of hyperlinks and images can be a challenge.

More is not always better.  I'd be willing to click through an extra page or two if it didn't mean staring at a single page for five minutes trying to figure out which one of the fifty-plus links will take me where I need to go.

My Running Stallion is quite nice, by the way. No significant issues - other than a slight roughness on a couple seams, similar to some of my original Running Stallions from the 1970s. Unlike those Running Stallions, though, my "Sailor" stands just fine, even on carpeting! Though I've been lucky in that regard: most of my vintage Running Stallions are not tipsy, at all.

(Maybe because, like the Stretched Morgan, I've found so many over the years that I've been able to pick and choose. Another long story, that one.)

I am please that I got the Wedgewood Blue - my favorite vintage Deco color! But I would not have been unhappy with a Gold Charm, either. From the pictures I’ve seen online, Reeves did a stellar job with the Gold Charms this time around. 

The Thing Inside

Looks like everyone else in the hobby did their math, too: the BreyerFest Bear set is sold out now. Everything else is still available, though I’m a bit surprised the Misty and the Adios still are. That Adios is a mighty handsome piece; I’ll definitely consider one once I get the sales-versus-storage issue sorted out here.

It’s hard to believe, but back when the plastic boxes debuted in the mid-1980s, most hobbyists thought they were a good idea. At last, no more mysteries over what you were buying! No sliding around in the box = fewer condition issues! Handpicking was at last a possibility!

I was a little…skeptical. Strapping a horse with zip ties to a bright yellow backer board? We were just swapping one set of condition issues for another. It was the stability of the boxes themselves worried me the most: they seemed kind of flimsy from the get-go, and even under the best conditions I doubted they’d have the same durability (or usefulness!) as the chipboard boxes that preceded them. I feared this sort of thing was in their future:

That Mesteno is so getting liberated after I post this!

The dealer I bought him from at the flea market was very apologetic about the box's condition, but I told him it wasn’t that big a deal. As far as value goes, these plastic boxes are so common and ubiquitous that most of the time, it simply doesn’t matter.

There are a few rereleases - like the Toys R Us Bay Fighting Stallion - where the box may be significant, but most of the time, it just isn’t.  And I think that’s a good thing, something I wish more toy and collectible segments would emulate. The box is not the thing. The thing inside is the thing.

Well, most of the time. Though with the prices the early 1970s Showcase boxes are bringing, I doubt I’ll even have to worry about it.

Almost Like The Real Thing

My schedule is continuing to be uncooperative, as is the weather. And the body: it did its best to catch up on Saturday with all the sleep I lost during the week. Caffeine can only take you so far, apparently.

But I did make a little progress on Levi - I opened the outer box, but the inner box will have to wait until my next truly free moment, which should be…late Wednesday? I’ll be so glad when this January is over.

As far as what I can see, so far - so good! The box isn’t an exact replica of the White Boxes of old - it’s not shrink wrapped, and it’s made of higher quality materials. But in every other regard, looking at it makes me feel like I’m a 12 years old at Circus World again, trying to decide between the Belgian, the Yellow Mount, or that neat new San Domingo.

(Took me forever - until last year, actually - to find just the right Yellow Mount, but I am still without a worthy San Domingo. This year, perhaps.)

If you're curious, the iconic Breyer display font is called Neil Bold, and it’s not too hard to find a legitimate copy nowadays. I tried locating one a few years ago, but I could only find the knockoff versions in those "1001 Fonts!" collections you’d find at the dollar store. I don’t know if it was a question of rights or lack of coolness that kept the real thing from getting digitized until recently, but I’m glad it’s available now for our graphic designing pleasure.

http://www.identifont.com/similar?2EEN

Oh, the T-shirt possibilities!

In case you were wondering, yes, I did have a little bit of input into this year’s Vintage Club offerings. The Powers-That-Be asked for some opinions and suggestions, and I offered some. Well, actually, a lot. (Others were asked too, I am guessing. I am not the only Breyer History Nerd out there, just the most vocal one.)

Some of what I asked for came to pass, particularly the boxes and ephemera. I am glad that the response to those improvements has been very positive. It gives me some reassurance that I know what I am doing, at least some of the time.

That’s something everybody could use, model horses or otherwise. (Speaking of: Miss Susan - nice job on the Grandmother’s Flower Garden quilt top! Not quite brave enough myself to do a hexi quilt just yet.)

It will be interesting to see what, if any, of my other suggestions get implemented.

Another Episode of Obscure Variation Theatre

Gosh, I’m in a weird mood today. Don’t know if it’s the nice weather, or the entire bag of Haribo Gummi Smurfs I ate earlier.

(FYI: Smurfs taste like raspberries and strawberries!)

Didn’t get an Apollo. No surprise there. He seems way more popular than I thought, though it might be the proximity to BreyerFest that’s making it seem so. (Folks trying to drum up travel cash.)

I’ve been more jealous of all the big flea market scores people have been bragging about on the Internet recently. I’ve found a few odds and ends, and while I’m not doing too shabbily in other venues, there’s just something to finding goodies in the wild, you know? Even if it’s something you already have, in multiples.

I don’t think there’s any shortage of stuff in my area, I just haven’t been as motivated as I usually am. I already figured on drawing whatever sales items I need for BreyerFest from my ongoing herding culling - and from the duplicates/upgrades/box lot purchases I’ve been scoring on eBay.

My nifty late-night Buy It Now purchase arrived yesterday, but it’ll be another day or two before I finish "processing" it. I already had most of the contents within, but there were variations and stuff, my favorite being:

Another Western Prancing Horse, in Black Appaloosa! With the original box this time! Something I did not realize I had a pressing need for until I saw him. (Funny how that works.)

The "gold foil sticker" boxes were another one of the numerous box types Breyer was experimenting with in the 1970s. In this case, it was a box type unique to 1973: they’re the earliest form of the lidded "white boxes" used throughout the 1970s, and remembered with great fondness by hobbyists of my generation.

The only difference is that the earliest boxes had gold foil stickers with the number and color of the item printed on the sticker, instead of being printed on the box itself.

The thinking was that they’d save money by printing up a single "generic" box for each mold, and just slap a sticker on it. It seemed to make sense at the time. Until they discontinued most of the multiple color options at the end of 1973, rendering the idea kind of silly. Why spend the extra case to print up separate stickers for items that came in only one color, anyway?

I suspect that consumers were also confused by the packaging as well. If you see a Smoke Western Prancer on the outside of the box, you’re going to assume that that’s what you’re getting on the inside of the box, gold sticker or not.

I’ve been tracking the gold foil sticker boxes - just like all the other box variations - and this is the first Western Prancer box I’ve found with a "No. 115 Appaloosa" sticker on it. I suspected they existed: I’ve collected enough data to conclude that most, if not all the Traditional horses issued in 1973 came in some sort of stickered box.  

Still, me being the dork that I am for the Western Prancer mold, I just had to have it. The horse himself is pretty nice, too - just enough of a variation to add an extra layer of "justification" to the purchase.

The rest of the stuff that came with it wasn’t bad, either, though most of it won’t be sticking around, if I know what’s good for me.

The Answers to Everything

Got a gander at the prices the Gloss Joeys on eBay are bringing - yeowch! I sure could use the money to get some work done on the car, but mine’s not going anywhere. I’ll just have to nickel-and-dime it, the way I usually do. (I’m giving up a whole bunch of stuff for Lent that should help, too. My finances, if not my attitude.)

I’ve decided to keep the Joey in the box for a while longer. I was cleaning up the office last night before going to bed, and noticed that the box liner/insert the model was attached to was coming undone.

Because it was put together using Scotch Tape, and not the industrial quality strong-enough-to-set-tile-with stuff they usually use. The boxes themselves were assembled in New Jersey!

The notion of a box-assembling party in the Reeves offices amuses me no end. (Was pizza involved?)

Another box came yesterday - the one with the Vintage Club Dandy. I haven’t had the chance to open it yet; as usual, I’m a little crushed for time. The shipping box is kind of interesting - a new take on the original Fighting Stallion shipper box - except that the UPS stickers obscure all the best parts.


I’m going to assume that this is going to be the standard shipper for the Vintage Club, and not worry about the condition of this one. I should have plenty of opportunities to get that one representative sample.

My Vintage Club membership number is … 42. The high holy number of the Internet, the answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything? Awesome.

(Yes, I do keep a towel in my car. Right next to the pantry.)

Henceforth, all my Vintage Club horses shall be named after Hitchhiker’s Guide characters. (I already have a Clydesdale named Dent. Coincidence? I think not!)

The extra little surprise that they gave us is a copy of the 1953 (not 1954!) Boxer flier, with a copy of the pastel rough on the opposite side. I already had copies of both (of course) and an original of the Boxer ad, from an early 1953 issue of Playthings magazine (February or March, I forget - whatever month Toy Fair was that year.) Mine has a list of the regional representatives on the bottom, and the ad for the Western Horses printed on the opposite side.

Did you see the disclaimer at the bottom?

"This archival copy and all images may not be reproduced, posted to the Internet, or used without the written permission of Reeves."

Dudes, that bridge has already been crossed. Not just by me, but by lots of hobbyists. I can’t speak for the actions or intents of other hobbyists, but I feel that most of what I do here would fall under the Fair Use Doctrine, as codified in the Copyright Act of 1976.

If anything, my use of the materials in question actually results in a net benefit to Reeves. (FYI: My opinion only. I have had a little bit of legal training, but I am not a legal professional.)

Joey in the Box

Who doesn’t love a box with their name on it? Especially when it’s a gift?


Here he is, mostly out of his box. (You’ll have to cut me some slack; I just opened the box a few minutes ago.)


According to the sticker on the outside of the shipping box, his release number is 712073; the number on the box itself is 1489, which is the release number for the Regular Run release of Joey, on the Man o’ War model.

Why the discrepancy? The box is (what I’m assuming will be) the standard one for the Regular Run release of the Joey, on Man o’ War. Unlike previous boxes, it’s not a generic box with stickers and labels added: everything is printed on it directly.

As I haven’t examined the packaging for any of this year’s new releases in detail, I don’t know if this is a new thing, or specific to this release. The past few years of BreyerFest releases weren’t generic either, so I’m going to assume that it’s a new thing.

If that’s the case, I hope it doesn’t spur a new trend towards box saving. I kind of like that the hobby has a more lax attitude about boxes than others do. It helped, I think, that prior to the early 1970s, there weren’t a whole lot of boxes worth saving. Horse/Rider sets, the licensed properties, and some of the illustrated shippers have some visual appeal, but the plain old corrugated shipper boxes everything else came in? Not so pretty on the shelf.

Plus, we show them. You can get away with showing MIB items in Collector’s Class entries, and maybe in halter, if you’re willing to push that envelope. Performance is out of the question, though, unless you’re other hobby is building ships in bottles.

I probably have a few more boxed items than the average hobbyist, mainly for research purposes. If I were more of a shower than a historian/collector, the vast majority of those items would be box-free, also.

I’m actually a little bit on the fence about deboxing my Gloss Joey completely. I do "need" one representative sample of this packaging, and I am unsure if I’ll be getting any other items this year that would come in the new standard packaging. And he’s not a mold and/or finish one normally shows much outside of collectibility anyway, so…

Be (Not) Mine

My car and I both managed to survive the blizzard Tuesday night physically intact, but I’m still a little unnerved by the experience. It’s probably (quite) a bit of a stretch to call what I’m experiencing PTSD, but getting out of bed and out to work the past two days has definitely been more unpleasant than it normally is.

It’s not likely that I’ll be buying the latest Web Special "Be Mine", a Huck Bey in a Decoratory red roan with little white hearts. I love red roans, and he’d be a perfect complement to my Polaris, but there’s no room in the budget for such foolishness right now. (It was a much more painful decision when I opted against sending in my card in for the Connoisseur Kandinsky, actually.)

I haven’t even snuck a peak at any of the discussions about him anywhere, yet - not that it would change my opinion one way or another, I’m just not in the mood to deal with the exceptionally annoying crop of commentators (new and old) now populating the model horse world.

I supposed most of you heard about the box that went for over a grand on eBay. A touchability box, not unlike the one I wrote about in one of my earliest posts, in March of 2009:


Needless to say, I found that a bit unnerving, too, in a slightly different way. I thought I overspent when I bought my touchability box some years back, and what I dropped on mine was considerably less than four figures. Heck, it was considerably less than three - and the horse came with!

I’m still trying to sort out my thoughts and feelings about it. Being all frazzled from the snow is not helping.

Since I’m not in a very talkative mood today, I’ll throw in a couple of pictures of test colors for you to ogle at instead. (I don’t own either one - just the pictures.) Here’s an exceptionally pretty dapple gray Misty:


And an old favorite - a Black Quarter Horse Gelding, with eyewhites:


I had a chance to buy this fellah, way back when, and didn’t. I won’t make the mistake of passing him by a second time.

The Touchability Box

Since the powers-that-be at Reeves have decided to revive the Touchability box packaging, I thought I’d post a picture of an original. They’re surprisingly rare - probably one of the scarcest of the many varieties of vintage Breyer packaging out there:


The original Touchability box was a late 1960s experiment. Breyer was looking for a box that was more store-friendly than the corrugated cardboard shipper boxes that were the norm at the time. Their scarcity nowadays is partly a consequence of the short duration of the packaging: they were only used for about a year. Another reason would be the nature of the box itself; they were designed strictly for display and couldn’t be repurposed for storage.

Actually, there are a number of reasons for the lack of success of the original Touchability box. As you can see, the only things holding the horse to the packaging were a few stretchy, flexible ties that weren’t much of an obstacle to theft or package tampering. The boxes themselves weren’t terribly sexy either - just barely a step up from the corrugated shipper in terms of visual appeal.

A year or so later, Breyer experimented with the clear plastic "Showcase" boxes. They had a couple of advantage over the Touchability box: they were more tamper-proof, and you could inspect every square inch of the model before purchase. But these boxes were prone to yellowing, and not terribly sturdy; the horse wasn’t secured within the box either, so rubs and dings were another issue. In 1973, Breyer finally switched over to the familiar, much loved two-piece illustrated box for the Traditionals, and all was right in the world for the next dozen years or so.

The new Touchability box is sturdier and more tamperproof than the original. I know some collectors are concerned about condition issues, but I’m not as worried. I tend to give higher marks for durability of Breyer paint jobs than others do. I’ve occasionally had issues with the quality control of the paint jobs - overspray, sloppy glossing, inadequate shading, smudges, missing details - but the durability hasn’t been one of them.

The only models released in the original packaging were the Family Arabians; like the original, the new Touchability box appears to be targeted to a younger audience. An audience that may be looking to upgrade from the more toyish fare of Safari or Schliech, but is still appreciates and responds to the tactile nature of that kind of packaging.