The Year of Never Mind

Unlike Ambrose, who came at the very end of the holiday sales season and didn’t impress me all that much anyway, I like the second “Holiday Connoisseur” Midas tons better:

He reminds me a lot of the Liver Chestnut variation of the 2020 BreyerFest Volunteer Model Ben Nevis, who I was not fortunate enough to get, but also not so much in love that I’d be willing to throw $750 at him. 

$295 plus shipping and handling, however, I could do.

If I had gotten picked. 

Sigh. 

That’s really the only issue nowadays, isn’t it? 

All I have to show for all my entries this year are the VIP Ticket and the Silver Uffington that ultimately came with it. I did get picked for Puffin, but I sold him to a friend at cost. 

The Brunhilde and the Christmas Clydesdales only happened because my schedule allowed it. If I didn’t have the work schedule that I do, I would have missed them, too.

There is also Thornycroft, but I worked my behind off for him. 

I know I shouldn’t complain – I’ve definitely done better than a lot of hobbyists, especially with only one account! – but this whole situation is becoming a massive bummer. I got into the hobby, in part, because it was accessible and affordable. And it really isn’t that, right now. 

Honestly, there are a lot of things I don’t want to think about today, and figuring out easy solutions to this is near the top of the list. Upping piece counts in general? Adding minor variations to large, open-ended runs? Offering an orderable Gloss option for everything? 

I will let Reeves sort it all out. 

On the plus side my Brunhilde is now apparently out for delivery, and all the pictures I have seen of her so far have shown her to be just as nice as I had hoped. 

And I have all of next week off to clean up the mess working 50-hour weeks for two and a half months straight has left behind for me, too. (The house’s current level of tidiness is at “kicking things out of the way to make a path to the bed.”) 

If I am really lucky, I might even be able to finish my inventory and finally get some things listed for sale, not that anybody has any money left to buy anything after the latest round of sales promotions. 

Dreaming of Warmer Days

Darn, just missed out on the True North Mini on the Breyer web site Black Friday sale. Put it in the cart, but when I tried to check out, he was removed.

Nothing else in the sale was making my heart go pitter-patter, and the weather will be too darn cold to go adventuring tomorrow, so that’ll likely be the end of my Black Fridaying for the year….

I haven’t commented yet on the announcement of next year’s BreyerFest Celebration Horse, Oliver:

With the announcement of the theme, I was expecting to see (a) the Cleveland Bay mold, (b) a Police Horse of some sort, and (c) possibly something honoring one of the many horses who serve at the Kentucky Horse Park: with Oliver, they’ve managed to combine all three!

My only mild disappointment is that he’s a loose-maned Cleveland Bay: while the loose-mane is my favorite of the three variations, I still don’t have a braided-mane variation in my herd. I’ve had a few, but I’ve since sold them or traded them off for other things.

I wouldn’t mind a Chicory or a Cassia, but the former is a little out of my price range, and the latter is completely so.

The Connoisseur Series Jazz Fusion is another one I wouldn’t mind owning, but I was not lucky enough to get pulled for one, and I am reluctant to buy items in that series the same way I’ve been reluctant to buy a BreyerFest Dr. Peaches.

Since I wasn’t at the first BreyerFest, it doesn’t feel right buying a Dr. Peaches on the secondary market: each BreyerFest Celebration Horse represents an experience I had, but the Dr. Peaches would simply be a model I bought to complete a series.

My Connoisseur collection consists almost entirely of the ones I was drawn for. The only two Connoisseurs I’ve bought in the aftermarket have both been NPOD Samples: a Lonesome Glory Thrillseeker, and the Buffalo Taima. (Both of whom I really, really wanted anyway, so that kinda-sorta worked out for me.)

Jazz Fusion is a reasonably popular Connoisseur, and the prices on him are not… outrageous, but I think I manage to hold off and let the more devoted fans of the mold, or the Connoisseur Series, have their shot at him first. I’ll just bide my time and wait for Oliver.

(And quietly sigh at the probable impossibility of winning a Gloss one at the Costume Contest.)

Kaibab

I was not expecting the latest America the Beautiful release Kaibab to be the lightning rod that he is. Personally, I love mine:

The Stretched Morgan mold is one that’s experienced huge swings in popularity over the course of its 50+ production career. He’s been derided as being too typey, not typey enough, old-fashioned, awkwardly posed, obviously suffering from laminitis, and bombarded with the standard conformational nitpicking every Breyer mold ever has been subjected to.

Yet he still retains his fans – like me – and many Stretched Morgan releases and variations are among the most desirable and highly sought after Breyers of any kind. The Woodgrain? The BreyerFest 2000 Raffle Model Showboat? The multitudes of variations of the original #48 Black?

(Have you seen the prices on some of those Black variations lately? Yikes!)

Sure, the price for Kaibab was a bit high, but that I attribute to the popularity of the series and the complexity of the paint jobs they’ve been attempting on the Web Specials: in many cases they are approaching Connoisseur-level quality.

There are some real-horse world biases in play with Kaibab, too: in the past few years, especially, nonstandard colors on breed-specific molds have been getting a lot of pushback.

That is something I find rather weird. Part of Reeves marketing program is selling the notion of model horses as a fantasy wish-fulfillment of horse ownership. Even the most technically accurate horse figurine is still a fantasy construct.

Are some of them bad ideas, artistically? Maybe. But an Appaloosa or Tobiano Pinto Morgan sitting on your shelf isn’t likely to spawn any real-life horses. They have no “bad” genes to propagate.

Anyway, again: with retail or in-hobby purchases, it is always safest to buy what you love, not what you think you can sell later. Buying something at retail to resell later has rarely worked out well for me. (You would think I would have learned by now, but for some reason I keep trying...)

I was secretly hoping that there’d be a Morgan release for BreyerFest, since one of the most famous race horses of the early 19th century was Black Hawk, sired by Sherman Morgan himself, and memorialized in folk art ranging from quilts to weathervanes.

I think a Glossy Dappled Black on the Kennebec Count mold would be great, but I know most of the hobby would beg to differ.

Things You Wish For

I’ve resisted the siren call of the Breyer Black Friday Pre-Sale so far. I already had a Charlie and a Bravo, and the only other thing calling my name – the Deer Family – is a Regular Run item I can wait on.

In the ongoing end-of-year hubbub I forgot to mention that I got the Gambler’s Choice Reiner that I wanted – the Brindle! Yay!

Getting what I want doesn’t happen nearly as often as I’d like (my recent eBay bidding history is testament to that!) so he’s been sitting just under my monitor here as a reminder that every once and a while, you do get what you wish for.  

Since I am not in a very talkative mood today – partly because my fingers are sore from all the quilting I’ve been trying to catch up on this week – here’s another picture of another piece that was something wished for:

Yes, this is a Connoisseur Thrillseeker. Sort of: it’s actually from a group of unnumbered Thrillseekers that were found in the Ninja Pit a few years ago. I grabbed one, but in the ensuing melee, another Ninja pilfered it from my buy pile while my back was turned.

I still did okay that year – that was the year of the Stablemates Hermes, I believe – but it did sting a bit nonetheless. I had won the first Connoisseur Mosaic, and had hopes of winning the last, Thrillseeker, but that didn’t happen.

To make a long and complicated story short, I obviously and eventually did end up with one!

Since I still don’t have a “normal” Thrillseeker for comparison, I don’t know if there are any subtle or significant differences between the NPOD Thrillseeker and the numbered Thrillseekers, beyond the numbering.

They were probably overruns, but a few years later some equally mysterious Smart and Shineys – with no VINs, a different backstamp and slightly different shading and markings – were also made available in the NPOD.

Those pieces were very obviously a different item from the standard Smart and Shineys that were distributed at BreyerFest in 2013. Which is why I can’t yet shake the nagging possibility that these Thrillseekers might have been something similar. I mean, technically, I guess...

So this is why I still have a Thrillseeker on my want list.

Such is the case of getting what you want, or what you think you want: you just end up moving on to wanting something else.

Delicate Condition

Vita is fine now, BTW. Me, on the other hand …I worked over 17 hours on Thursday. Combined with dealing with the latest big blizzard, and Vita, my still-slightly-fragile health went off the rails again.

It’s nothing serious - it’s more exhaustion than anything else. I’m feeling just a bit more tired, rambly, and a disconnected from reality than I usually am.

I haven’t had a chance to take a personal look-see at the new Flagship horse Aurelius - a Gloss Flaxen Chestnut Desatado - even though I had an opportunity to do so earlier this week. In the pictures I’ve seen so far he looks very pretty and very promising, but I doubt I’ll be getting one.

It’s nothing against the mold or the color, I need to do a little bit of downsizing before I start buying again, outside of the occasional Web Special and Vintage Club stuff. I haven’t had the time to do that because of work getting in the way. (Time will be made, once I get these minor health issues out of the way.)

Pictures of the two BreyerFest Raffle models are now making their way about the Model Horse world, via hobbyists visiting the Breyer booth at the Road to the Horse Expo in Lexington this weekend. It looks like that us old farts will (sort of) be getting our wish after all: one’s a Pinto Clydesdale Stallion named Walk Down Memory Lane, the other is an Appaloosa Fighting Stallion, named Kick Up Your Heels. Both are Glossy. More widely-available releases would be even better, but it’s nice that they’re going with two "Vintage" molds this year.

(But would I turn down the Early Bird Raffle Alborozo? Heck, no!)

Everyone is rightly going ga-ga over the Fighting Stallion (striped hooves!), but I’d be just as content with the Clydesdale; he’d make a fine husband for my Gloss Palomino Clydesdale Mare. (Does he have mapping? Hard to tell in the photos I’ve seen. If so, also awesome.)

Like everyone else, I’m suspecting that the Store Special Champagne Pinto Bluegrass Bandit Champagne Wishes is replacing the Nonplastic Store Specials, which haven’t exactly been setting sales records. On the web site she’s described thusly:

Champagne Wishes is a Connoisseur Level model with delicate mapping, silver horseshoes and beautifully detailed eyes.

Connoisseur Level? Delicate mapping? Silver horseshoes? Sound like something extra limited and extra expensive to me. Since they specifically dropped the Connoisseur word on us in the description, I’m expecting something in the same range as the program of old: about 350 pieces, somewhere around $150-200.

This is entirely speculation. Since this is a new thing, I could be wrong. All I’m hoping for is that there are at least enough of them around that I have a reasonable shot. I’ve been waiting for a realistic (and somewhat affordable!) release on the Bluegrass Bandit mold that I can’t live without, and I think she’s it.

Plus I was addle-pated from a lack of sleep last year when I ventured into the Pit, and never did get around to buying the also very pretty Black Pinto Store Special Lady C. The prices on her aren’t too high either, but like Aurelius, some downsizing will have to happen first.

Smash and Grab

So, did we all enjoy our online NPOD last night?

For those few of you who didn’t know, Reeves had a "Vault Sale" at 8 p.m. on Thursday night; the notices for the sale went out around 1 p.m. that day, via e-mail, to all current Collector Club members.

From the description of the sale, it sounded like an online version of the fabled Ninja Pit of Death: "A collection of rare finds, limited editions and more await you behind this door."

I was half expecting some Passage to the Pacific leftovers (Like Thunders, and the Hear Me Roars) and Weather Girl redemption models (she’s been "retired to the vault", you know) and perhaps a surprise glossy or Silver Filigree. None of that showed up, but the following models did:

• Rubicon $150
• Silverado $150
• Moon Warrior $150
• Auld Lang Syne $175
• Giselle $250
• Pamplemousse $70
• Melange $70
• Valiant $150
• Gus $145
• Chestnut Esprit $300
• Silver Charm Newsworthy $75
• Logan - Gloss Red Walking Hereford Bull (40 pieces) $150
• Angel - Seal Point Tabby Kitten (50 pieces) $150

Not a bad selection! (Well, for most folks. Some people are never happy.)

The last two were Vault exclusives - Logan was a Gloss Red Walking Horned Hereford Bull, and Angel was a Seal Point Tabby Traditional Kitten (aka "The Creepy Meow"). It appears Angel is still available - because hobbyists don’t appreciate the sublime qualities of the Traditional Kitten mold, apparently - but the Bull sold out very, very quickly.

(BTW, am I the only one that thought "Where’s Xavier, Cyclops and Phoenix?")

The Silverado sold out very quickly, too - a little too quickly, I think. Looking at the poll numbers on Blab for the number of people claiming that they got either the Bull or the Silverado - 26 Silverados, and 30+ of the 40 Logans accounted for? - well, color me skeptical that all of those orders will actually go through.

Remember what happened with other white-hot super-limited online specials like Silver Snow? Cancelled orders, and not just a couple of them either. That’s what happens when you have several dozen people pushing the order button at the same time. 

(Wasn’t Silverado deemed to be some sort of horrific failure of execution on Reeves’ part when he was released? Why is he suddenly the "it" model, now? Silly collectors.)

I got a shipment notification on my order today - yes, I caved - but I’m not going to count the Logan and the Angel as "mine" until I actually open the box. (According to the notice, this should happen December 27th.) Except for a small handful of overly eager beavers on MH$P, most people seem to be following that same line of thought.

More News, More Surprises

When I asked for more hours at work, I wasn’t expecting them to give them all to me the week before my trip. Argh!

And of course, there’s been tons of news while I’ve been on the road for the past three days.

First, they offered more leftover Connoisseurs, this time to Collector’s Club members: Nympheas, Kandinsky, and Thrillseeker. A Thrillseeker would have made a nice bookend to my Connoisseur collection - since I was lucky enough to win a Mosaic - but I was on the way to work (again) when they finally went live with them on the web site. (I know Kandinsky is still available, but the $225 price tag is not to my liking.)

Wasn’t too crazy about them announcing them "early", since that nearly caused a meltdown on the Breyer web site, with everyone refreshing every few seconds.

The BreyerFest program is out. Surprises: more items for the British souvenir tent, and the full auction list, which includes the volunteer model (a buckskin overo Roxy) and a Glossy Bay Alborozo.

The extra Souvenir pieces include: a kinda-creepy standing horse named "Fox Chase", dressed in hunting attire; "Fox Hunt", which is a bay-ish Might Tango with the Tally Ho hunting decals; and finally, a numbered plushie named Little Jack. I’m definitely interested in the Might Tango, and (as I’ve mentioned before) the Translucent Classic Ruffian "Union Jack". I haven’t had time to read up on the where/when/how of it all, though.

(Note: As of today, all Souvenir Models are available for viewing at Breyer’s Blog.)

The volunteer model sounds really nice this year, but I think Reeves should have just left that space unspecified in the program (i.e. just stating that the lot is for the volunteer model, not what the model was, exactly.) It makes me feel uncomfortable seeing people pre-sell their volunteer models. Not that they shouldn’t be allowed to do it, but I rather prefer that they keep that sort of thing more on the "down low".

Keeping it a secret until the day-of helped mitigate that a little, but if it’s a known quantity, that might change.

Wasn’t there a rumor floating around about a Gloss Bay Alborozo back in 2008? I distinctly remember the buzz, if not what it was specifically in reference to (as the volunteer model, maybe?) Is the auction piece the inspiration for the rumor, or was the rumor the inspiration for the auction piece? Or maybe … my brain is addle-pated from a lack of sleep, and it’s all just a big coincidence.
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I don’t see any surprises on the Tent Specials list. On the store specials they’re doing 750 pieces on the Taskin, 400 pieces on the Killarney, with the Killarney being a surprisingly reasonable (for a porcelain) $100. All the prices and piece counts on everything else are in the same range as last year’s, more or less. If they do a Gloss/Matte mix up like they did last year with the Once Upon a Time, I think it’ll either be with "Sixes and Sevens" or "Bees Knees", which both have lower piece counts, like the Once Upon a Time did. And both would look fabulous in gloss!

They did up the piece count - and the price - of this year’s surprise model, which now leads me to believe that IF another new mold release happens at BreyerFest this year, it has to be with the Surprise model.

Technically the "Fox Chase" Souvenir model is a new mold, but it’s a little too offbeat to be anything more than a novelty one-off. And I don’t think they’d dare do an early-release on the Totilas, since the mold (who also makes a cameo in the program) doesn’t strike me as being representative of the kind of horse you’d take on a trek across the English countryside.

The final surprise - in my very limited skimming of the program - was my own personal cameo on the very last page. Guess I’ll have to pick up extra hard copies for autographing!

Next up on the blogging agenda: that Premier club Marwari!

Pushing My Buttons

Apropos of absolutely nothing, I just want to say if I had a choice of auction models to bid on, it’d be today’s cutie-patootie rose gray Hackney with lime green ribbons. No one particular reason, it’s just the first auction model I’ve seen in a while that’s telling me it wants to come home with me.

(Pic from the Facebook page.)

Not gonna happen, of course. (Had a kitten try to do the same thing to me at the flea market yesterday. Dang it, he was persistent.)

I want to preface what I’m writing today with the following, to explain the tone: I broke out in a rash, the brake pads went on my car, and one of my projects just fell apart. Oh, and I’m having some scheduling issues at work, too. So yeah, my patience is a bit lacking.

Though some of it is my fault: I really shouldn’t be cruising the Internet when I have eleventy-billion things to do before I leave on my trip. But you know me and my multitasking problem.

Anyhow.

I found it amusing that even Reeves is getting a bit annoyed with some of us. From their forum, in regards to the Premier Club Connoisseur Offer:

There were several ways people were notified about this limited-time offer. We posted about it on Facebook, Twitter, in the Club News section of our web site, and also started a thread in the Premier Collection forum on our web site. Also, the available models could be viewed in the Club Home section of our web site.

As stated, only an extremely limited number of these unclaimed Connoisseur models were available, and they sold out quickly. There will be more special offers soon!

For a hobby that almost brags about how it adopted - and adapted to - the Internet culture right quick, I am amazed at how "disconnected" many online hobbyists are. And how persistent misinformation can be within our community, in spite of the wealth of resources available to us. 

I am not on Facebook: I don’t have an account, I don’t want an account (unless it ends up becoming medically or professionally necessary). I am not on the computer 24/7; if you keep track of my post times, you’ll notice that I, in fact, keep pretty weird and irregular hours. I am also not a member of the Premier Club.

And yet, despite all these impediments, I still managed to have found out about the offer before they all sold out.

Look, when you actively pursue any hobby, you have two commodities to spend: time, and money. You have to have at least a little bit of both, but most of us have more of one than the other. (And those that have a lot of both - well, fortunately for the rest of us, they tend to get bored very quickly and move on.)

Reeves can’t do all your work for you. Simply belonging to a club is not enough. All club membership does is give you access: it doesn’t provide you with a palanquin, it opens a door.

(A few extra freebies for the money would be nice, but that’s another issue, for another time. And also, palanquins at BreyerFest would be awesome.)

If you don’t want to spend the money, spend the time. Don’t have the time? You’ll have to spend the money. It really is that simple.

The Leavings

That’s very nice of Reeves to offer leftover Connoisseurs to Premier Club members; I would have loved a Pandora or a Swirling Sky, but with BreyerFest right around the corner, I wouldn’t have been able to even if I was a member of that club.

A few less things for the Ninja Pit, I guess. As for what I actually think is going to be in there this year, I am not even going to speculate. Not that I don’t have some interesting ideas on the subject, but I don’t want to stir the pot anymore than that silly "When are you getting in line for the NPOD?" thread on Blab already has.

I know, it’s mostly talk, but still. Nothing against amateurs or noobs - we all were, once - but if you don’t know what you’re doing, or what to look for, your odds of finding something "good" are utterly random, regardless of your position in line.

Naturally, right after I posted how everything was going so swimmingly, everything came crashing down. The computer lost its mind, the printer jammed up so badly that I had to disassemble it, I discovered that a component of one of the costumes I was thinking about doesn’t fit, and the power went out for most of a day. Oh, and a groundhog ate all of our tomato plants (which is somehow my fault, because everything is my fault.)

I’ve managed to recover from the bulk of the catastrophes; on the costume front I will probably go with one of the other ideas I have if I can’t take the weight off in time. And the universe gave me a small token for my trouble: a Beswick Beatrix Potter "Cousin Ribby"!

At a Salvation Army - in a less ritzy neighborhood than I usually frequent, no less. Not sure if I’m keeping her or not; it’s been a while since I picked up a Beswick of any kind, but it’s not a horse, and I will be needing some serious cash after BreyerFest to pay for all the things I need to pay for.

Other than the SRs, and the NPOD, I’m hoping to hold on to most of the money I manage to make this year. There are a few things I’m still eyeing (like a really nice Yellow Mount!) but if I buy anything, it’ll be the usual reference materials and stray oddities.

Among the things I’ll be selling this year - besides the usual assortment of flea market finds and book sale leavings - will be these Allen F. Brewer Jr. prints I picked up a few weeks ago at my local flea market. If you haven’t already seen them, here they are:

(In order; Kauai King, Man o' War, Round Table, Your Host, Swaps, Silky Sullivan. Your Host was Kelso's sire, sort of the Barbaro of the 1950s.)

They’re not all in the bestest shape, but they’re (mostly) signed, and (to put it bluntly) they had to be rescued. I wanted to keep a couple of them - like the Man o’ War and the Silky Sullivan (for research purposes, right?) but I’ll probably have to let them all go, because of the money. I don’t have a lot of wall space to spare, either.

Cutting it short today; lots of odds and ends to deal with.

The Web Site

I have to work on the last day of the month, so I’m trying to get a little bit ahead of myself on the Nano novel just in case. Unfortunately, the words were not cooperating today; I’m ahead, but not as much as I want to be.

Maybe I should go work on a quilt or two to clear my head. It’s been a crazy week; I think I deserve it.

Anyway, I was playing with the dog the other day, and it occurred to me that we somehow managed to raise a completely skeptical dog. Vita’s willing to play with you, even though she knows - or suspects - you are not being entirely honest with her when you do. (I’m not going to run up the stairs after the ball, because that just means you’re trying to get a head start on me when we’re playing hide and seek.)

She’s skeptical, but not cynical: even thought it’s true that we’re not always one hundred percent truthful with her, we’re truthful - and sincere - enough to make it worth her while to play with us. If she were cynical, she’d just run off with the ball and play with it by herself every single time.

Anyway, that’s sort of a roundabout way of explaining why I haven’t participated in any of the online discussions about the soft launch of the new Breyer web site on Monday. I’m a skeptic, not a cynic. But I also know better than to toss a ball into an arena full of cynics.

(Another grating thing: if I have to read one more post by hobbyists asking about the remaining issues on the JAH subscriptions, I swear I’m going to go outside and violently break something. People who regularly drop hundreds of dollars on a single model, whinging about twenty dollars worth of subscription fees? Talk to the hoof!)

Yeah, Reeves is not handling the launch as well as they should have; I’m surprised that it took them until this evening to finally send out an e-mail notification about it, and nothing at all on their Facebook page yet, as far as I can tell. (NOTE: I don’t "do" Facebook.)

I’ll just assume they did this "soft" launch as a way of working out the bugs with the early adopters in time for whatever they have planned for Black Friday/Cyber Monday (the web special Nokota, I presume?)

As for the web site itself, s’alright. It’s a little too cluttered for my taste, but I’m a design minimalist at heart. I’d rather they started out simpler, and scaled up, rather than hit us with that level of complexity early on. You know, show us they have mastered basic math before hitting the trigonometry textbook.

The Collector’s Club has turned out to be just an online JAH/forum/online store special access subscription type thing. Eh, whatever. Not crazy about the fee, but it’s not any different than paying for a subscription to a magazine or online forum. During the signup process they asked for an online ID, which I’m assuming means that they really are planning on implementing some sort of discussion forum in the future. (That ought to be …interesting.)

The only other thing I signed up for was the Vintage Club, since that’s my natural inclination. A lot of hobbyists are extremely concerned that the models that they’d be "forced" to buy through the program will be unsellable turkeys, but honestly, I am not that concerned. I’m going to assume that they’re going to stick with fairly "safe" (pre-1965) vintage molds and colors for their first offerings, and they’ll be asking for input from subscribers for the subsequent rounds.

If I had the money and the space, I would have signed up for the Premier Club, too, but I don’t, so I didn’t. Simple as that. I was a little concerned about the undefined piece counts on what’s essentially a Connoisseur Club, too, though if the quality holds up, the piece count would be moot.

If It Ain't One Thing...

A rough couple of days here: not so much bad luck, but many petty aggravations. I banged up my knee pretty good, lost another pair of shoes to the dog, the allergies kicked it up a notch, and I keep dropping food on myself. (Yesterday it was an entire can of Diet Mountain Dew.)

Oh, and I had to get a new battery and new tires for the car.

I guess I should be grateful that I didn’t get the call for Red Rocket, then. Or get pulled for Swirling Sky. (Not getting picked for him wasn’t quite as aggravating as not getting picked for a Red Rocket, but it didn’t help. There’s always the wait list…)

I’m in the process of making a big sale to a regular customer that should cover the cost of my car troubles, though. If I can spare some time this weekend, I might even get a chance to throw a few items up on MHSP, too. Bodies and small items, I think, nothing to lurk about.

It is interesting that we haven’t seen too many Red Rockets up for sale in the secondary market; I don’t know if it’s because it’s not a super-popular mold (i.e. most of the drawing entrants actually wanted it for themselves) or the resellers are being more discreet about it. Fine with it, either way. I’ve got other things to obsess over.

Other than the aggravations, and the Red Rocket thingie, it’s been kind of a boring week. Lots of working, cleaning, sorting and filing. I know I’m probably just weird this way (or perhaps it’s a touch of OCD?), but there’s something very relaxing about taking a big mess of papers and putting them in a logical, usable order.

As such, I was a bit bummed didn’t get to bring back as much ephemera as I wanted to from BreyerFest this year. I still had a substantial pile of stuff from before then that needed to be dealt with, but more is always better, as far as the ephemera is concerned.

Since I’m in the middle of pulling that really big sale from the storage totes (over 20 items - no joke!) I’ll have to leave the post about this year’s BreyerFest Surprise model until tomorrow.

An Extra Special Buffalo

Almost caught up with everything here; if you’re expecting an e-mail or PM from me, I'm hoping to catch up on those on Saturday.

One of the many fabulous things I found in the Pit on Friday morning was a Taima - the Connoisseur Tortuga Buffalo - at an exceedingly good price. I didn’t get pulled for one when they came out, and I was way too much of a "Buffalo" myself to pay retail for one. So when the opportunity presented itself Friday morning, into the buy pile he went:


It wasn’t until yesterday, as I was finally starting to unpack the last of my personal stash, that the thought occurred to me: what if, was he, could he be…? He didn’t come with a velvet bag, or a certificate, and he wasn’t numbered. Hmm. So I pulled out my July/August 2010 issue of Just About Horses, and checked.

… all the lumps, bumps, swirls and bubbles match: he IS the very same Sample used to illustrate the announcement in Just About Horses! (The scanner hasn’t been behaving, so you’ll just have to refer to your own copies, folks.)

I actually found myself shaking, for a moment. It has always been a dream of mine to have a photography Sample; I have a few that I suspect might have been, but in this case there is no doubt.

I found myself carrying my newest treasure around the house the rest of the day, holding him up to every available window. In spite of my abundant joy, foremost in my mind were the comments of a couple of fellow hobbyists I shared my find with, who had dismissed him altogether. "Oh, he wasn’t very popular to begin with." "Eh, I thought he was kind of ugly, myself."

Definitely not the responses I was hoping for. Not unexpected, mind you - I’ve lurked on enough boards to know just how catty and judgmental my fellow hobbyists can be - but, yeesh. Way to put a little damper on a momentary bit of happiness.

Look, you don’t have to like the choices other people make when it comes to collecting, but when someone shows you their latest "score", the proper, decorous response is to be happy for them. Especially if they got it for a good price, or through some extremely fortuitous circumstances. They want to share their happiness: for Pete’s sake, let them!

I was already excited to have gotten the Taima for such a good price; now that I know his specialness goes beyond his cheapness - well, I just wanted to share.

(Oh, and FWIW, his name is Basil. After my "Buffalo" Great-Grandfather.)

Now for Something a Little More Colorful

(This is how crunched for time I am right now: the following post was written in the back seat of a car during an especially long carpool. Multitasking, woot!)

I see a lot of people are upset that the next Connoisseur horse is another translucent Moody Andalusian. That doesn’t bother me so much; I sort of expected that we’d be getting a duplicate or two at some point in time. What cheeses me off is that they went with Van Gogh as their next Artistic inspiration.

Snore.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Van Gogh as much as the next person, but it’s such a predictable choice. I thought they might have had it in them to go a bit daring – Kandinsky was the first in the series, right? But I guess they just had to play it safe.

Rats. I was really hoping for a Franz Marc Belgian. (And if you don’t know who Franz Marc is, you really should.)

I wonder what’s up with this being the third Translucent release on the Andalusian mold? That’s mighty peculiar. I didn’t think there was anything chemically different between the standard White Tenite and the Clear, except for the pigments. Are they leftovers from the Breast Cancer horse? Or just playing it safe, again?

I was an Art History major in college, and this is (sort of) an Art History blog, so yeah, I’ll probably be sending in the card anyway, depending on what the money situation is after BreyerFest. Him being a Translucent isn’t hurting, either.

Speaking of colorful new releases, I’m really liking the BreyerWest SR Fontana; just the other day I was thinking how nice a pinto release on the Roxy mold would be, and voila! There she was. Like the universe was listening to my thoughts or something. (Oops, there go those delusions of importance again.)

The name kind of cracked me up a little – not that it’s all that funny, unpredictable, or has any special meaning to me. It’s just that with all these genre movies coming out lately, I’ve been letting my nerdiness really hang out: the very first thing that popped in my head when I saw the name was that there must be a serious Trekker in the Reeves offices. (If you don’t get the reference, here you go: D. C. Fontana.)

How bad has it gotten? I actually said this in an actual conversation with a coworker last week:

"I had my first LOC published in Green Lantern back when Alan Moore was still writing backups."

Fortunately, it was one of those kind of coworkers I could say something like that to and not look like a complete dork. The conversation then moved on to voiceover artist Frank Welker, for some crazy reason.

(BTW: not enough Mogo in the Green Lantern movie! The Bzzd cameo was kinda cool, though. Also cool: http://hoosierinanity.blogspot.com/2010/03/yippee-ki-yay-green-lantern.html. The comments are a hoot.)

I don’t know if I’ll actually be buying one, guess it’ll depend on the situation I’m in by the time they make the leftovers available to the rest of us. I’ve been thinking about seriously cutting back on my purchases in the second half of the year to pay for some long-overdue non-horse expenses.

Cobbler, not Scones

Up until Thursday night, I had a leisurely Saturday all planned out: bake some scones in the morning, write a long, detailed blog post in the afternoon, and then an evening finishing up a couple of small sewing projects that I’ve allowed to drag on just a bit too long.

Nope, nope and … nope. Sigh. The scones are going to have to wait. Hope you don’t mind the quick little cobbler I’ve thrown together today.

If you’re doing another Appaloosa Connoisseur model and you’re going to go with a "Great Artist" theme, the guy who did the spotty-dotty thing was Seurat, not Kandinsky. It was Kandinsky’s friend and contemporary Franz Marc - cofounder of "Der Blaue Reiter" (The Blue Rider movement) - who had the larger fondness for horses. Google "Franz Marc" and "Blue Horses": you tell me that a big-butt Belgian in the same shade of blue as the "Big Lex" would not be an absolutely perfect addition to this series.

I’m not holding out a lot of hope for the idea: I doubt they’d go for two German Expressionist artists in a mere four-horse series. (How about the Traditional Zebra painted in a primitive bay or dun, as a Lascaux Cave horse? Too obscure?)

This is no knock on the winner, but the winning entry for the Diamond Dreams Contest was almost exactly what I imagined it would be. Most of my fondest - or best - model horse memories involve fires, plane crashes and celebrity cameos: more like a Nicholas Cage movie, than a Hallmark Special. My live hasn’t had all that many Hallmark moments. (It’s not a knock on Hallmark, that’s just how my life’s turned out.)

I do have one story with a talking animal … no, that one wouldn’t have worked, either.

I think most of you know my opinion about events like the Sunshine Celebration down in Florida: they’re contrary to the spirit of egalitarianism that helped build the hobby. Having a super-exclusive event with super-exclusive horses that the same handful of people go to every darn time is a bad thing.

I wish they would stop doing them, but it apparently makes them enough money, and strokes the egos of the right kind of people. I’ve been studiously avoiding adding my commentary to all of those discussions, because I’m just too tired and distracted to deal with the ensuing Kabuki theatrics.

It looks like the "Oven Mitt" Horse really is the 2011 Holiday Horse. Some hobbyists are using it as another reason to Breyer-bash, but really, it’s more funny-bad than bad-bad. No matter how much thought or effort you put into something, every once and a while you’re going to end up with a first-class turkey.

Speaking of Breyer and Christmas, look what I found in The Spirit of Christmas, Book Four (published in 1990, by Leisure Arts):


If Reeves was looking for something a little bit different in their Holiday offerings, they could do worse than to offer a Santa on a Reindeer. Add a little dressy, carousel-inspired tack, a Victorian-inspired Santa with a sack full of (preferably non-candified) treats, and there you go. And if they really wanted spice things up, every ninth one would have a red nose (the Elk, not the Santa.)

FYI: the creepy brown thing next to the clock is supposed to be a gnome. The book includes a pattern for it, if you're the kind of parent inclined to dement your children's holiday dreams.

(And it's not even the scariest thing in this alleged holiday idea book. Two words: Santa Moobs.)

Holiday Shopping

I won’t be putting my name in for Vignette this time around. I got my JAH in time to mail it in, but I made a decision a few weeks ago to refocus the collection: fewer "ooh, pretty horsie" pieces and more "historical/significant" ones. Part of that refocus includes having at least one example of every mold: that was the rationale for my attempt at Alpine.

I love the CWP mold, I really do, but I have lots of Cantering Welshies already.

I’m thinking I’ll probably spring for a Grab Bag: based on the $350 estimated value, there seems to be a high likelihood of porcelains showing up. Party Time, Dances with Wolves, Romantico: we know those guys are cluttering up the warehouse. I don’t have many of the porcelains - because, you know, I’m a big clumsy Buffalo - and this would be a good way of getting one at a price that won’t make me hyperventilate when I do eventually break the poor thing.

Speaking of Buffaloes and Connoisseurs, I’m not sure what’s up with everyone’s insistence that there’s just going to be Connoisseurs this time around, specifically Taima. Wishing for them - nay, almost counting on them? Seems awfully cynical, if you ask me. There’s plenty of other stuff kicking around the warehouse: WEG, recent discontinues, old XMAS stock, Fest SRs, Treasure Hunt items, Fall Dealer SRs, old plushies…

With my luck, I’ll end up with the assortment with all the stuff I already have, like Red Carpet Royalty, the Pink Poodle, and Buttercream. Now that I think about it, that’s not necessarily a bad thing: my sales inventory is getting a bit low. But I wasn’t planning on doing any more selling until Spring, and I hate having too much money tied up in inventory.

Maybe I should take my recent lack of horsebuying success as a hint, and blow my teeny-tiny year-end surplus on something more practical, like socks or antibiotics. (If I don’t have whooping cough, then whatever I do have is doing a darn good impression of it.)

In other news, I’m still being kept somewhat preoccupied by the Tack/Accessories Project. I made another discovery today: the Wood Corral was a mid-year or Holiday 1982 release, not a 1983 one. Something didn’t quite seem right with that date, so I skimmed through my Christmas Catalog binders, and voila, there it was in the 1982 Aldens Christmas Book:


As most hobbyists know, the Aldens company ceased operations in December 1982: the company itself didn’t "go bankrupt," but its parent company Wickes did. They sold off as many of the divisions as they could while reorganizing, but a buyer couldn’t be found for Aldens:

http://www.nytimes.com/1982/12/18/business/wickes-closing-its-aldens-unit.html

The infamous Black Pacer - and I assume, all of the other Breyer merchandise - was shipped back to Breyer, who then passed it to other mail-order companies, most notably Bentley Sales.

Taima

Connoisseur Buffalo? Awesome.

Some folks are in a tizzy because Reeves is "repeating" a color, but it doesn’t bother me at all. Lots of real horse colors have been repeated in the series, on different molds, and this really isn’t any different. Like Silver Filigree, I think it’s something that’s going to be reserved for special runs and special occasions; I just don’t foresee the Tortuga-style coloring become a widespread technique.

I can understand why folks might have wanted to see a Decorator Buffalo in a more "theme-appropriate" color, but what, exactly?

Woodgrain is out of the question; they already did a tiny batch of them as a special run for the Ranchcraft line in the 1960s - one of the rarest of all Woodgrains, but still. There are a handful of stone-based color might work (marble, sandstone, basalt, agate?) but then you’d run in some potential conflict with Peter Stone, who seems to think he has a lock on all colors based on rocks. A metallic color might work, but then there’s the infamous "Bronze Glo" pieces to contend with.

I’m guessing they decided to play it safe with the Tortuga-style coloring; the crazy prices the original Tortuga has been bringing in the aftermarket might have had some influence on the decision, too.

I have a great deal of affection for the Buffalo mold, because I am part Buffalo, myself. "Buffalo" is a slang term for persons of Belgian/Flemish descent; in some circles it’s seen as a mildly derogatory term, but that’s not been the case in my family or any one else I know of similar ancestry.

What I was told about the origin of the term is that Buffalo, New York was the first place Belgians emigrated to, en masse, from the old country. I’ve always wondered if it had something to do with the old Buffalo nickels. Belgians are notoriously thrifty; my Grandma never relinquished a nickel without a fight. (When we moved her from her apartment to the nursing home after her stroke, we found 88 dollars of spare change in her bedroom, alone!)

Like the Elk, he’s come in multiple variations and releases in Brown, from Buckskin, to Chestnut, to near Black. The earliest Buffaloes have hand painted lipliner: mine looks like he’s got a bit of a smirk on his face. The Buffalo was also one of a handful of models to get the unpainted gray plastic treatment in the 1970s; the easiest way to tell is by the color of his (mostly) unpainted horns.

Among the most desirable of Buffaloes are the White ones: the brief regular run Tatanka, a small special run of Tatanka that was made a few years later, and a tiny batch of heavily shaded ones that were probably made for the movie The White Buffalo, ca 1977. You’ll have to part with an awful lot of nickels to add any one of the three to your collection, though.

As you might have guessed, I have a lot of Breyer Buffaloes. I’d love to have the Woodgrain, the Bronze Glo, or the Presentation piece, but so far I haven’t lucked into one via my usual sources. I’m way too much of a Buffalo to pay "retail" for any of them.

Oh, I won’t give up hope; I did manage to get a Tatanka in an extremely favorable trade deal at BreyerFest several years ago. Would have made Grandma proud!

Spot On

Did I forget to mention I got my Spot On the other day? She’s my eighth Connoisseur, so I’ve decided to call her Octavia:


I was not as enthused as I normally was when I saw my name on the Spot On draw list. It wasn’t the Connoisseur "fatigue" that some folks are quick to bring up every time a new Connoisseur is announced; I still get a little thrill every time I "win" one. It’s just that this time, that brief moment of happiness was mixed with concern over where I was going to put her.

I really have to consider my purchases very carefully now, since the recent remodel left me with significantly less storage space than I had before. It’s cheaper and easier to just avoid buying something in the first place, rather than have to go through the agony of purging something later.

I wasn’t going to decline her; I have this silly notion in my head that if I ever skip a Connoisseur opportunity, somehow I’ll never win anything again, ever - Connoisseur, Raffle, Bingo, whatever.

I’m so glad I have her now. Her paint job is simply exquisite. I kept her on my desk for several days, taking in all the nuances of shading and masking. In spite of its busyness, it seems to enhance the detail in the mold: I hadn’t noticed before what an athletic, muscular girl Roxy is. My only other Roxy is the BreyerFest one, and the flat black paint job tones down her muscularity somewhat.

I’m not real keen on her braided mane and tail. Aside from the fact that they’re slightly out of proportion to the rest of the model, the Roxy mold strikes me as more of a "jeans and t-shirt" girl. Don’t get me wrong, she "cleans up" real nice, but she looks more comfortable, and more herself, with her hair down.

There have been five releases of the Roxy mold in her first year of release, though only two - the original Roxy, and the current regular run Bet Yer Blue Boons - are readily available to most collectors. Well, maybe not the original Roxy, for much longer: I have noticed a considerable uptick in interest in her lately, more than your average BreyerFest Celebration Horse.

Five releases in one year may seem like a lot, but back in the 1960s, that was pretty much business as usual. Molds like the Fighting Stallion, Mustang, the Running Mare and Foal, and the Family Arabians all came in multiple colors - simultaneously.

Back then, there were a limited number of molds to choose from, so it made sense to release all of them in as many colors as possible, to maximize sales. It wasn’t until the late 1970s that multiple simultaneous releases became the exception, not the norm. More molds were available, and many of them were breed-specific, limiting their possible color choices anyway. The multiple simultaneous releases, ironically, became more prevalent in special run releases, especially in the 1980s and early 1990s. Special runs of the Pacer, Shire, SM G1 Draft Horse, Hanoverian, Phar Lap, Indian Pony, Balking Mule, Belgian, Bucking Bronco - all were released in multiple colors simultaneously.

Except for the some of the Treasure Hunts, and the occasional Gambler’s Choice release, these simultaneous releases (regular run, or special run) don’t happen very often anymore - with Traditionals. A recent exception has been the Ethereal Collection - I was just skimming the 2010 Collector’s Manual, and it seemed weird to see all four of them there. Doesn’t it feel like each Ethereal should have been discontinued before the following one was released?

Multiple releases are not uncommon among Classics and Stablemates releases today: they come out with so many different gift set combos in any given year, there’s bound to be a little overlap. They’re smaller, and cheaper, so for devotees of those molds it hasn’t been a huge burden keeping up with them - aggravating sometimes, but not as spatially or economically devastating as a Silver or Othello obsession might be.

Oasis and the Multi-Molds

No convenient excuses today: I was just being lazy. I had a longer-than-expected work assignment the other day, and I didn't feel like typing. Then I found a couple of movies in the discount bin at the local Big Lots that just exacerbated the problem. (Me and my fascination with cheesy vampire flicks. Sigh.) But I was actually doing some model horsey research at the Big Lots, so it wasn’t a complete waste of time.

I sent in my entry for the latest Connoisseur drawing Oasis today. My JAH took a little longer than average to arrive at the Ranch, so I witnessed most of fuss and bother from a slightly distant perspective. Was I missing something from the scans? Or was it just the usual carping and moaning? (Too plain! I hated the first tail less! Looks too much like the Bay Missouri Fox Trotter!)

Sure, she’s a little pricey, and she doesn’t have a flashy, ornate paint job that might visually justify the price. But we’re talking about a mold with multiple molding variations: two necks, two tails, two manes (so far.) All three of the known or upcoming releases of this mold differ in both color and shape: it may well be that this particular combination of mold elements may be unique, or rare. So the price justification may come not from the quality of the paint job, but in the mold itself.

Interesting new development, I think.

We’ve had significant changes to molds in the past, but for the most part these were permanent alterations: being able to switch back and forth is something new. (It’s already giving me fits in the documentation department: do I label them by their parts, or give each part combo a label? Grr. Argh.)

Stone paved the way with the ISH and his various mane and tail combos. Emboldened by the success of the ISH, they began to experiment with more drastic and dramatic changes, essentially creating a whole new subcategory of OF models now dubbed "Factory Customs." They’ve improved their processes considerably from their first awkward attempts - leaden lumps of hair being blown in three different directions - but they’re not mass-produced pieces on the same level as an average, regular run Breyer release. Most of the alterations they’ve done have been done post-molding, on a small-scale basis, and are mostly cosmetic.

One of Breyer's earliest experiments with the multiple molding variations was the Classic Shire: we had the head up "Shire A" and the head down "Shire B." We haven’t seen much of the "Shire B" variation, though. All three of his plastic releases have had rather limited distribution: the Bay in the pricey 2405 Delivery Wagon in 2002, the 2007 BreyerFest Contest model Yankee Doodle, and this year’s (now discontinued?) 620 Spotted Shire.

The Spotted Shire’s quick disappearance is being blamed on molding problems. Normally I’m not a big fan of that theory - anytime a mold is taken out of production, even briefly, hobbyists start screaming about molding problems - but there may be some justification in this case. As Reeves’s first serious "multi-mold," he might have some issues that later, more technologically sophisticated ones don’t.

The newer molds have their problems, too: the original, head-down Make A Wish has a funky double shoulder that’s somewhat covered up by her big hairdo. Mane and tail options don’t always "fit" to the body correctly, either technically or aesthetically. I’m sure these mold probably cost more than the average mold, with higher than average maintenance costs.

So far most of the newer "multi-molds" have limited themselves to insertable mane and tail changes; whether we get more molds with more extensive changes will depend on how well the Make A Wish mold performs - both in the factory, and on the shelf.

Breyer and the Fidelity Swap

In case you haven’t caught the clues, I haven’t exactly been on board with these BreyerFest-by-invitation only events. I haven’t even entered for any of them - the original in 2002, the VRE, or the LSE. I can only afford one big even a year, and I have to go with the one that gives me the biggest all-around payoff, emotionally and financially. And that’s BreyerFest.

I have been trying my best to avoid the LSE discussions; I have better things to do than moon over models I'll never hope to own. Unlike the very vocal minorities trolling the boards, I actually like most of the specials that have been announced. Chestnut is very flattering on the Roxy mold, the Halloween Horse is very clever, and I try not to think about the Smart Chic Olena too much, because I had been hoping that a(n affordable) leopard appaloosa release would be in his future someday.

I like the Peruvian, too, but he is a bit too close to the Cobrizo and the possible future Collector’s Choice Roan, but that could just be Reeves’s photography getting in the way again. The possibility of him being even more awesome in person is also something I’d rather not contemplate.

What I’m finding yucky is the sight of hobbyists falling over each other to step to the mike and proudly, defiantly proclaim how much they dislike all of the releases so far. Just a few years ago, most hobbyists would have been rolling around on the floor in paroxysms of joy over a model like Mudflap. Now they can barely contain their glee over their disdain.

Some of it is just a self-defense mechanism: better to rationalize a reason not to want something, than mope about it being unaffordable or inaccessible. (You know, it’s perfectly okay to mope every once and a while, too. Being happy all the time isn’t any better than being a perpetual mopey-dope.)

But I think an interesting new theory called the "Fidelity Swap" might explain what’s going on here.

As theorized by business writer Kevin Maney in the recently published Trade-Off: Why Some Things Catch On, and Others Don’t, businesses have to decide if their product or service will focus on Fidelity or Convenience. Fidelity is about quality, exclusivity, snob appeal, and bragging rights. Convenience is about affordability, availability, and ease. The tension between these two competing idea is the "Fidelity Swap."

The most successful products and services are either high in Fidelity or high in Convenience, but not both. Companies that try to achieve both are less likely to succeed: it confuses and frustrates the consumer. Consumers who prefer Convenience will be disappointed when the company produces products they find unaffordable and/or unavailable, and the consumers who prefer Fidelity will be disappointed by the lack of exclusivity or higher quality.

Sound familiar?

It’s pretty obvious I’m in the Convenience camp: of course I want my horses to be of better-than-average quality, and I am not immune to the snob appeal a rarer or prettier-than-average model brings to the herd. But I am very frustrated when models become so limited in distribution, or so expensive in price, that any hope of achieving those models approaches zero.

And there’s been a lot of those kinds of models lately. A lot.

Part of the appeal of the hobby to me was in its affordability: I could have the ginormous herd of my dreams with minimal expense, little acreage, and no vet bills. (My teenage fantasy ranch, by the way, was located in Wyoming. I’m not sure why: it just was. Oh, the elaborate facilities I drew up!) So when I see people forking over enormous sums of money for these models - and complaining that a 100 piece SR isn’t exclusive enough for them - well, it runs counter to what my notions of the hobby are.

There really aren't that many hobbyists out there that can afford the high fidelity models, and that's part of the problem: having a special class of folks who end up with the majority of the rarities is a recipe for resentment.

The second thing that might happen - that is actually happening with the Connoisseur models at this point - is model fatigue, or boredom. Connoisseurs aren't perceived as being rare or exclusive enough anymore. Any SR that breaks three digits isn't rare or exclusive enough anymore.

Honestly, I can’t see anything that would make them happy, short of giving them all test colors and made-to-order factory customs. And here I thought we had at least all agreed to make fun of the Peter Stone business model, not admire it, right?

Not Just About Horses

Normally I'm not given to obsessing over particular test colors, because the odds of me owning any one of them are pretty close to zero. Oh, there are a few on my list – the seal bay Peruvian with speckled stockings (in a BreyerFest auction, a few years back), the Dapple Gray Traditional Man o' War, Marney's Transparent Belgian – but I've tried to keep the list short, because there really are better things to daydream about.

But I think I'm in love with the Walking Black Angus Bull from last Thursday. The one in blue roan. He's going on the list.

It's been a really, really long time since we've even seen the Walking Black Angus Bull in production: 1977, to be precise. There's a possibility that he was rereleased in the 1980s, but I'm not sure if these models were part of an actual production run or simply factory leftovers. (I'll discuss that more fully whenever I finally get around to the Breyer Weathervanes.) It's been a long time, either way, and I'm glad that Reeves may be considering his return.

I know most collectors focus on just the horses – sometimes even to the exclusion of the accessories the horse may come with – but back in the 1950s, Breyer apparently had a broader vision of their line. They weren't "just about horses" back then: by 1953, they adopted the name "Breyer Animal Creations" for their toy line, and in a 1954 Directory of Toy Manufacturers published by Playthings Magazine, they list its main products as “Plastic horses and dogs.” (The 1953 listing only mentions “Money manager banks,” an odd discrepancy.)

As late as 1958, the non-horse molds outnumbered the horses: there were seven different horse molds listed, but eight non-horse! On the horse side, we had the Arabian Mare, Arabian Foal, Western Horse, Western Pony, Fury-Prancer, Racehorse, and Clydesdale. On the non-horse side, there was the Brahma Bull, Walking Horned Hereford, Boxer, Lassie, Rin Tin Tin, Poodle, Elephant, and Donkey. There's more if you'd consider the Rigid Riders, but classifying them as non-horse molds is just weird. I don't count the Small Poodle, since it was not officially released back then.

You might notice that the Walking Black Angus was not on the list. We're not 100% sure of the Walking Black Angus's release date; he's another one of those models that was released somewhere in that undocumented gap between 1958 and 1963. The 1960 you see is just an educated guess.

Horses didn't start to dominate until the early 1960s, but even then, Breyer was still releasing a fair number of new non-horse molds: Bear, Bear Cub, Deer Family, Bassett Hound, Kitten, Elk, Buffalo, Moose, and the Standing Polled Hereford Bull were all introduced in the 1960s. The 1970s saw a significant number of new non-horse molds, too: Cow, Calf, Spanish Fighting Bull, Pronghorn, Bighorn Ram, St. Bernard, Jasper, Brighty, Rocky Mountain Goat, Charolais Bull, Benji, Tiffany and the Standing Black Angus Bull.

So throughout much of Breyer's early history, the non-horse molds made up a significant percentage of their mold base. Far higher than they do today, even if the Companion Animals are factored in. (I haven't done the exact calculations, sorry!)

The only problem with the non-horse molds is that for many of them, there's a rather limited number of colors to choose from. And most of those are brown. What they lack in versatility they tend to make up with longevity. An excellent example is the #74 Standing Polled Hereford Bull: he had an insanely long production run, from 1968 through 2004 - that's 36 years! They're not huge sellers, but they're steady ones, often purchased by noncollectors as home accents.

I know there has been some grumbling about “The Widow Maker's” non-equine nature, but I think it's high time that one of the many non-horse molds that helped build Breyer is finally being honored with a Connoisseur release.