The Deluxe

Originally I was going to wait until either Easter or my birthday to open up the “Deluxe Grab Bag” I bought, but work’s been kinda exhausting and a little nuts and I figured eh, go for it. I would have probably found out what everybody got by then anyway, and by opening it now I’ll still be able to enjoy the element of surprise.

I think you’ll find the results interesting, to say the least. My Grab Bag (#3) contained:

• 2021 issue of Just About Horses
• Stablemates Friesian Cross
• Stablemates Paint Horse
• Stablemates Appaloosa Sport Horse
• Stablemates Mustang
• Fairytale Friends Sage
• Stablemates Suncatcher Set
• Unicorn Serendipity
• Matte BreyerFest Rheverence
• Charm and Gabi Rider Set
• Crafting Til Christmas Advent Calendar
• Stardust Styling Head
• The World of Breyer Puzzle
• Hope of the Year
• Breyer Breeds Chestnut Trakehner
• Classics Silver Bay Morab
• Elsa

Yeah, you read that right: Elsa. I won’t bore you with the details of how this happened, but this now means I now own THREE of the Normande Cows now. 

It was definitely not by design! So if anybody out there needs a NIB Elsa at retail plus postage, I got you covered, yo…

As far as what I’m keeping from this box, I think it’s just going to be the Serendipity and the Puzzle; the Hope appears to be nicer than the one I got back in December, so that’s probably an upgrade, too. Everything else I either already have, or don’t want/need. I was kind of hoping that I’d get one of the Breyer Breeds releases I didn’t already own, like the Chalky White Roy or that pretty Silver Bay Black Beauty, but no such luck.

But I took a gamble on this one because I figured Reeves learned their lesson on the previous less-than-stellar boxes, and it looks like I will come out ahead of this deal financially. A refreshing change of pace from the two BreyerFest Grab Bag Bummer Boxes I got stuck with last year! 

Yeah, technically they both got canceled out by the Gloss Quelle Surprise in the NPOD Grab Bag Box and the Two Dollar Test Color Ginger stomped all over everything, but I still ended up with way more stuff to sell than I was expecting.

And now I have even more! Needless to say, if there’s anything here that anyone is interested in, drop me a line and I’ll see what I can do, because I definitely do not have enough room in the car for all this nonsense at BreyerFest.

The Box

Still no Tahoe, which should come as no surprise. Elsa has arrived, and guess what, I am totally dorked out about the box she came in:

The Big Poodle is on it!

I know it probably means… nothing. The Big Poodle – as opposed to the Small Poodle, which has had a few releases since its rediscovery in the 1990s – has been out of production for nearly fifty years now, longer than any other animal mold other than the German Shepherd (who is damaged, and not functional), the Modernistic Buck and Doe (who are just plain weird). 

I suppose the In-Between Mare still counts as the Queen of All This: she was out of commission for nearly 60 years before she came back. 

The Big Poodle was in production, in one color or another, for about 15 years. It was officially released in 1958, but it was also for sale in Christmas catalogs and magazine advertisements by late 1957. Which would have made some sense back then: Poodles – both as pets, and as decorative accents – were very much a thing in the 1950s. If the mold was ready for production in time for the upcoming holiday shopping season, why delay the release and miss all those potential sales?

Especially since their first attempt – the mold now known as the “Small Poodle” – failed to find a market a couple years earlier.

By the 1970s, Poodles were no longer as popular as they once were, and with the looming oil crisis making Cellulose Acetate hard to come by, the Poodle mold was one of many things that ended up getting the axe in 1973. Anyone who has owned a Breyer Poodle or two knows that they are pretty hefty – usually scaling up at around a pound. 

For comparison, the Proud Arabian Stallion – one of the hottest new molds of the early 1970s – comes in at a rather svelte 11 ounces. In other words, you could make about three Proud Arabian Stallions for every two Poodles!

But anyway, I was momentarily excited by the possibility that the Big Poodle might return – if you’ve been to my house, you know I have a lot of these big boys – but the economics of it are probably just as unfeasible now as they were in the early 1970s.

Stranger things have happened: I don’t think most of us (even me!) expected the IBM to return. 

(The question is… when next? LOL’ing if she turns out to be this year’s XMAS surprise…)

(Honest, though, I’m just as much in the dark as you all.)

Elsa and Other Madness

Just a general head’s up here, guys: I’m not in a mood to put up with anyone else’s nonsense for the next week or so. I’m not singling out anyone in particular – everyone in my orbit is being undelightful to be around, and I am going to be charitable and chalk it up to the season, both holiday and weather. 

The darkest times of the year sometimes bring out the darkest parts of us all. 

Go get yourselves some sun lamps, go for a walk, go fire up the Dremel drill and cut up a random body in your body box. Just do something besides getting yourselves riled up over something you read on the Internet. 

(In case you’re interested, I’ll working on an old string pieced quilt top this weekend, whenever I’m not toiling away on a work project.)

I like Elsa. I think she’d make a lovely companion to my beloved BreyerFest Celtic Fling Special Run Angus Bull Hamish. I would still have preferred any other animal (especially since she was already used for another Holiday Animal Special Run in 2017, the Gold Charm Eldora and Sol), but Breyer Cattle collectors are nothing if not devout and loyal buyers:

I do not care that they’re making 1000 pieces of her. I am uninterested in her future resale value: that’s not how I roll. If Reeves thinks they can sell 1000 of her, that’s their business. If they discover that they’ve made a mistake, they’ll eat the loss, learn the lesson, and move on.

I didn’t think they’d sell nearly 500 pieces of that black and gold polka-dotted Bighorn Ram, but they did. I didn’t get picked, and I know I wasn’t the only one. (I’m good, guys: I have no burning desire for one. Bunyan, on the other hand…)

Elsa is prettier, and glossy, and on a Cattle mold, so I understand some of the mathematics behind the decision. I am not keen on the price, but I suspect that they did not have enough bodies lying around since the last time they used her in 2017, and firing up an infrequently used mold is not cheap. (And also not something you do for a few hundred pieces.) 

If the increased production numbers manage to suppress the urges (or profit margins) of potential flippers, more power to them. It’s depressing enough to see so many people so willing to cough up such enormous sums of money for certain rarities (like the Ponies and Palm Trees Centerpiece Afgana, ugh.) 

Even though I’m pretty good at securing rarities myself, I also have resources and a knowledge base that is not typical of most hobbyists. 

I’d rather more people get what they want, rather than the same handful of collectors not only getting what they want, but dictating the market prices for the rest of us.

On Golden Cows

Good grife, I hate reruns.

Went to bed before it went online Tuesday night, didn’t check anything model-horse-related for the five minutes I was online Wednesday morning, and when I finally got home from work Wednesday afternoon, the Gold Charm Cow and Calf were – of course! – sold out.

Again? Again??

Just lovely.

I wasn’t all that mad at Olaf – the Longhorn Bull is a shelf hog, and I’ve been trimming back my Bull collection a bit anyway. And my fun money fund really could go to other things. (In fact, I had transfer a chunk of my Paypal balance to another account the day before, for just such a purpose.)

I have access to multiple independent toy stores, farm stores, fabulous thrift stores, one of the world’s greatest flea markets and all that. This year I acquired numerous Monrovia H-Rs, several fabulous Hwins, another lovely Volunteer Model…

Yet relatively plentiful, first-come-first-served Holiday Animal Special Runs? It is starting to look like the Universe is telling me no-can-do.

I’m fearful it’s going to get put on the list of my other hobby no-can-dos, like getting picked from the Wait List for anything. (My win rate on Web Special draws is about average, but in the 200 or so of those drawings I have entered for, not once have I been pulled from the Wait List.)

As I predicted last year, the going price for Olafs today haven’t strayed far from the original issue price. I suspect Eldora and Sol will be the same in a year or so, when I’ll somehow probably manage to miss the next Holiday Animal Special Run.

It feels super weird that I can manage to score rarer things, but completely whiff on the stuff that’s specifically designed to almost be a “gimme”.

It’s not really that big of a deal. It’s not something that I was specifically pining for – it wasn’t a Deer Family, a Saint Bernard, or an Elk. And I do have a couple of kind and interesting offers to mull over.

But it still carries enough of a personal sting for me to consider washing my hands of the whole deal, as I have in the past with other models I shall not name.

Besides, it’s a Special Run that includes a Golden Calf whose name could also be interpreted as an acronym for how I’ve been feeling lately. I should just take those hints and run.

Another Unexpected Thing

And here comes another unexpected thing, in the form of Diwali:

We’ve had years with more than one Nonhorse Special Run: 2002 comes to mind, which gave us the Glossy Buffalo Choc, and the Cougar and Wolf set Kohana and Bandit.

Since we already had one announced as a Pop-Up Store Special (Holi the Elephant) and one as a part of a Store Special (Dally the Jack Russell Terrier, in the Dally and Spanky set), having a third Nonhorse as a Ticket Special seemed unlikely to me.

There have been numerous small Special Runs on the Cow, but most of them have been variations of the original five releases – Holstein, Jersey, Brown Swiss, Guernsey and Ayrshire. The one deviation was the 2008 BreyerFest Special Run Simmental Cow and Calf Heidi and Edelweiss.

Aside from being in a new (for her) color, Diwali is an entirely different finish from all other Breyer Cow releases too: she is both Glossy and Chalky. No other official production release of the Cow has ever been Glossy, and although there are a handful of Chalky Holstein Cows floating around the hobby, she’s so rare that chances are good that you have never even seen one.

As someone who makes her extra hobby cash reselling flea market finds, I’ve found that the Cow (even the common Holstein) is also one of the quickest and easiest of Breyer molds to resell. Whenever I’m lucky enough to bring one to sell at BreyerFest, it’s usually one of the first things to leave my room.

So even though the past few Nonhorse Special Runs didn’t sell out in Kentucky, I have a feeling that Diwali might. That adorable red and gold blanket doesn’t hurt, either!

Reeves is making it very hard for me this year, and extending the deadline for Early Bird tickets by a couple of days is not helping.

And Now, a Regular Run Gambler's Choice?

Loose-Maned Newsworthy/Connemara Ponies have been found in the wild; apparently Reeves is doing a “Gambler’s Choice” with the two different versions, though I suspect the Loose-Maned will be scarcer, at least at first.

It’s nice to know that the option is out there, since the positive online response to Persimmon is making it less likely for me to get picked for one. (More people entering, more often = worse odds.) I’ve heard almost nothing but nice things about the paint job for the Connemara, too, so it won’t be a mere consolation prize when I find one.

While we’ve had simultaneously released finish variations (Gloss vs. Matte) for both Regular Run and Special Run items for a while now, simultaneously released mold variations are a relatively new thing.

This is because the ability to release multiple mold variations simultaneously is a relatively new thing.

But not a new-new thing. We’ve had separately molded and theoretically swappable parts on molds since the 1950s, primarily via the various “saddled” horses (Horse, Pony, Fury/Prancer, Western Prancer) and the cattle with their separately molded ear and horn pieces.

The closest corollary to the Connemara, I believe, would be the original Breyer Dairy Cow, who had unique horns or sets for its five different releases: Ayrshire, Holstein, Brown Swiss, Jersey and Guernsey. They were not always consistently placed, or done with the correct pieces, but the effort was made.

The Dairy Cow experiment ended after a couple of years, but not due to technical issues: being the most popular dairy cow breed in the U.S., the Holstein outsold all of the other Dairy Cow releases, plain and simple. So much so that many of the subsequent releases, reissues and Special Runs were some flavor of Holstein, like the Weber Scientific Cow:

The two-year production run for the other Cows (and Calves) was atypical for Breyer releases in the 1970s, but it’s fairly average for a release today. It’s a different market, requiring different marketing techniques, so I wouldn’t “read” too much into the length of the Connemara Pony’s run, one way or another.

Though I do think the release will get a little bit of a bump in sales, since a scarcely produced and previously much more difficult to obtain mold variation is now in the mix.

All I’m asking for is that it run long enough for me to find and procure one at a reasonable price. This might take a while, since my work schedule has not been conducive to pony shopping lately.

Mane and Tails and Horns, Oh My...

It’s not the questionable claim about leaving 140 pieces behind in New Jersey that bothers me about the "Let’s Celebrate!" Special Run. They advertised it as a 350 piece run in the free program, sold about 350 pieces at the Horse Park - but hey look, it was actually a 500 piece run after all! Not the craziest story I’ve heard, and I suppose it’s possible that they ordered 350 and got 500 instead ...

No, what bothers me more is the hairdo; the mane - and especially the tail - on the Let’s Celebrate! have a "wiggy" look to them. I prefer the sleeker look of the original mane and tail the mold had as Sir Buckingham.

The paint job - that I was originally a little bit skeptical about - I like a lot, actually. I’m not enthusiastic enough to enter for him every day, but if my name does get pulled, I’m not turning him down!

Speaking of mold variations, I picked up a nice little pile of postcards over the weekend. In the pile was an old Hoard’s Dairyman illustration of the "Five Queens". Look familiar?

I very, very quick Google search says it was copyright 1961 - over ten years before the Breyer Cow was issued, in 1972. I don’t have any evidence one way or another for this, but it wouldn’t surprise me if this illustration was in the reference file used to create the Cow mold.

The Cow was one of Breyer’s earlier attempts as creating multiple mold variations within the same mold - in this case, via separately molded and installed horns.

The physical differences between the five different breeds go well beyond horns, obviously, but this was still fairly sophisticated stuff for 1972 - especially considering it was done for a Nonhorse mold, and they tend to be modest but consistent sellers.

Hmm. Come to think of it, that’s probably why.

Certain horse breeds and molds fall in and out of fashion, but I’ve never had one iota of a problem selling extra Cows that come my way. Breyer hasn’t had any issues, either. Even though four of the five original breeds were discontinued within two years, the Holsteins remained in the line until 1991, and there have been numerous Special and Regular Runs over the years.  

A few more would be nice. (Red Holsteins? Another Ayrshire? Purple?)

Shades of White

Okay, so now the scuttlebutt is that the Shetland Ponies I mentioned last post might/will be a Vintage Club release, so the reference to last year’s e-mail photo was probably the correct one.

I am a little ambivalent about the concept only because, duh, there never were any Decorator Pintos. There were rumors of Decorator Pinto Test Colors floating around back in the day, but I found those rumors even less substantial than the Christmas Decorator ones.

(I swear Reeves does these sneaky reveals on the "Kid Tours" just to mess with us, knowing the kids are going to be fixated on the newer molds in more realistic colors.)

I found some charged batteries, so here’s the Calf I mentioned previously, with his Regular Run cohort:

So now you see why I am not so eager to send the little bugger back!

Yes, I know my Regular Run Calf is yellowed, but it looks worse than it actually is because the Oddball is very stark white - not Chalky or Opaque White Plastic, but I could see how some people could mistake it for such.

That sort of thing happens, from time to time: someone at the factory - possibly by accident - came up with the perfect mix of virgin (fresh) plastic, plasticizer, and colorant. I have an Alabaster Western Pony that’s so white it almost glows in the dark. (Discontinued in 1970, if you’re trying to do the math at home.)

It’s been recently reported on Blab that someone found an older Chestnut Belgian that was actually made of a mix of standard white and Chalky white plastic, which only really reveals itself when held up to a strong light. (Ooh, swirly!)

This does not surprise me at all. Breyer was experimenting with whatever plastic they could get their hands on in the early 1970s (the Chalky Era), and it undoubtedly included many different colors of white in addition to all those funky reds, browns, grays, purples and greens.

In the sometime questionable light of a factory, the mixing of these various whites would become an inevitability, if not an economic necessity. 

It’s even happened more recently, with some of the Stablemates molds: at some point, the Glow-in-the-Dark plastic that was used to make the Giveaway Andalusian Keychains was mixed in with the standard white stuff, giving some later releases a faint luminescence.

Other colors sometimes got swirled into the standard white plastic, especially in the Chalky Era, but they generally got painted over - either by a solid dark (or black) paint job, or with a Chalky basecoat first. Reeves does this even today, as many faux finishers have discovered first hand.

And…I just opened up my Yellow Mount that I bought from That Guy, and guess what? Aside from being one of the nicest Yellow Mounts I’ve ever seen, his plastic is also snowball-white.

Interesting.

(His variations are pretty subtle - tan instead of pink shading, more gray on his muzzle - but I bought him mostly because I wanted a nice Yellow Mount at a nice price. Done, and done.)

Rumor Roundup

I really need to learn how to estimate my time better: I’m still dreadfully behind on my To-Do list. And so much has happened in the past couple of days in model horse land, it’s like a whole new landscape every time I log on.

Since I still haven’t located the thumb drive with those extra posts I wrote during my Illinois excursion, we’ll do a brief roundup of that news…

The latest Collectors Club Web Special is the Show Jumping Warmblood in a Glossy Solid…Chestnut? Palomino? Dunalino? Something warm and sunny, appropriate for the god who totes the Sun around in his chariot: Apollo. A solid color on a Web Special is a nice change of pace, and he is quite handsome, but my even my emergency fun-money fund is completely tapped out. I hate to pass on him, but I just might have to.

I made a late-night semi-awesome Buy It Now purchase on eBay a couple days ago. You’ll see why I jumped on that BIN button like Vita on a bone when it gets here in a few days.

In other eBay purchases, another one of my lots from That Guy with That Stuff on eBay has arrived, in another painfully small box. The Cow and Calf set I bid on was not the Cow and Calf set I received. Normally this would be an automatic return, but it’s a little more complicated than that: they were not the oddities I bid on, but they were still oddities nonetheless.

The auction pictures showed a Holstein Cow with a gray udder, and a Calf with tan hooves. What I received was a Holstein Cow that appears to be a cull, and a Calf with gray ears, gray muzzle, and a solid black tail.

(I’d show you all a picture, but my battery charger for the camera is packed away. Also.)

So yeah, kind of a weird situation. I don’t have time to deal with any extra drama at this point, so I think I’ll just let it go. At the price I paid, they could have been ordinary Regular Runs, and I still would have been a good deal. Anything after that is a bonus. (I also don’t think there was any genuine malice intended: That Guy, like so many of our friends and family, might not be able to tell one subtly different set of Cows from another. So it goes.)

Reeves released the BreyerFest 2013 App, which would matter to me more if I did anything more with my phone than send and receive phone calls. (I’d rather not even have one, but that’s another issue entirely.) Half the hobby is complaining about having to pay a whole 99 cents for it, and the other half are complaining that it’s not available on Android.

My brother actually downloaded the 2012 App to his phone last year just for kicks (allegedly) and found it quite admirable, and I generally take his word with these sort of things. (BTW, my brother is fully BreyerFest-trained and knows what Woodgrains, Decorators and Hagen-Renakers are. And he’s single. If you're looking.)

Per intel from the Mother’s Day Kids-Only Breyer Headquarters Tour, the previously announced mid-year release of "Trooper" is going to be on the Cleveland Bay mold. The photographs I’ve seen are all fuzzy and somewhat unreliable, so there’s no way I’m going to pass judgment on him based on that. A Dark Bay/Sunburnt Black Cleveland Bay seems like a winner to me, at least conceptually.

Also speaking of unreliable, the same source just happened to spot what appeared (to them) to be some Decorator-y Shetland Ponies. That’s all there really is to that bit of news, Everything else is speculation - including the initial reports that you have, or will run into in the next several hours that they might be somehow related to this year’s BreyerFest Surprise/Gambler’s Choice model.

It must also be noted that the much-circulated photo of proposed Vintage Club SRs from last year also featured a Copenhagen Pinto Shetland Pony, so it might also be related to that. Or any number of things. Might not even be a Shetland Pony at all, for all I know. 

There was more than that, I'm sure, but that To-Do List is not going to complete itself. Unfortunately.

Holy Cow

Like many of the best things in my collection, I found the Weber Scientific Cow by accident.

At BreyerFest that year (2003), I had made up my mind, more or less, to focus on non-equines. I hadn’t completely ignored them up to that point, but my collection was definitely … lacking in that department. I wasn’t planning on buying up Woodgrains or other rarities, just the right kind of pieces at the right kind of prices.

I can’t remember the exact time I got to the sales tent in 2003, but I do remember it being a couple degrees less crazy than it is today. It was still possible back then to get a decent night’s sleep and make it to the sales tent before all the "goodies" were gone. There would be some random items thrown in from time to time, like the Buffalo Skull Bolo Tie reissues, but most of it back then consisted of old regular runs, Holiday and QVC Specials - good stuff, but nothing worth throwing a punch for.

Anyway, as I was making my way around the sales area, I spotted a pile of plain white shipper boxes marked "Holstein Cow," and priced at $25.00. My first thought: it must be the then-current release of the #402 Holstein. My second thought: I don’t have one yet, and the price is right. Onto my buy pile she went.

The packaging did strike me as a little odd, but I initially dismissed it as a mail-order catalog repack thing. JC Penney and Sears sold regular run items from their Christmas Catalogs in shipper boxes. The Cows could have been for some other mail-order client I wasn’t aware of at the time.

I didn’t think too much about it until later in the day, when I was back at the hotel unpacking my day’s worth of treasures. I opened up the box and - gosh, what’s this crazy tag? Wait a minute - there’s a blue logo on her hip! Holy cow, it’s a Special Run Cow!

I fell back on my bed and started laughing hysterically. The neatest, coolest and possibly rarest thing in the tent that year, and by sheer, dumb luck, I just happened to get one. Yay for me!

Weber Scientific makes products for the dairy and food processing industry. They have a Frequent Buyer’s Program that operates like a lot of other rewards program you might be enrolled in: the more stuff you buy, the more points you earn, which you then apply to the free gift of your choice. Back in 2001, one of those gifts was this Cow.

Other than the tag and the logo, she’s identical to the #402 Holstein Cow, though considerably scarcer. How much scarcer, I do not know. I can’t recall seeing more than two or three for sale since I acquired mine, so I’m guessing pretty darn.

The tag is nothing remarkable, just a listing of fun facts about "The Holstein-Friesian" that I assume most clients would have already known. "Holsteins dominate the United States’ dairy industry." "The average productive life of a Holstein is 3-4 years." And "Holsteins are large, stylish animals with black and white color patterns."

("Stylish?" Alrighty, then.)

Weber Scientific still runs their Frequent Buyer’s Program, but the current rewards - hoodies, watches, gourmet cheeses - are somewhat less exciting than a Special Run Breyer Cow.

When Breyer met ERTL

My Tonka post reminded me of another strange Breyer toy truck connection – not with Corgi, but with ERTL.

While I do modestly well horsewise at my local flea markets, I haven't found much model horse ephemera there. I've found a few things – some old JAHs, a stack of vintage Western Horseman magazines from when Breyer was heavily advertising there, a few vintage Christmas catalogs. I did find an old Hartland flier in a NIB Hartland Polo Pony once (I almost fainted when it fell out of the box!)

It's not just the esoteric nature of the materials that is the issue, but the market too: the ephemera collectors around here are a little more dedicated than most. Whenever I see an old guy in a flannel shirt hunched over a cardboard box, that usually means someone's brought a box of fresh old paper. (Or toy trains.)

By the time I get my turn, it's already been picked through quite thoroughly, but not always.

I got lucky one day, and found a 1983 ERTL Dealer's Catalog. I couldn't pass it up: not only did it feature some of ERTL's early attempts to break into the model horse market, it also featured a number of Breyer knockoffs scattered randomly throughout. Here's a detail of the accessories that came with “The Alamo Quarter Horse Farm Set”: mini FASes!


Knockoffs of the Breyer Cow and Calf are also very prominent – in fact, they seem to be a decorative element on just about every other page in the catalog. Here they are, inexplicably chillin' next to the Wrangler Helicopter Set:


(The catalog text helpfully notes “Accessories not included.” )

But the biggest surprise was found in the “Farm Animals – Plastic” section. A full page is dedicated to their new “Deluxe Animal Assortment.” One of these things is not like the other:


Why on Earth is the Polled Hereford Bull there?

The catalog text notes that a Hereford Bull is included in the assortment. The PHB itself was obviously NOT going to be included: the standard box size is listed as 4 7/8” long, 1 1/2” wide, 3 1/8” high, far too small to contain the PHB's massive bulk. Was he just meant as a stand-in for their own Hereford Bull? Was their own Hereford Bull not ready yet? Or was it a mix up at the printing plant, or by the photographer?

Breyer was still in Chicago at that point, and ERTL was in Iowa, so the mix up theory is a little more plausible than you might think. The style of photography is very similar, so it wouldn't surprise me if the same photographer or studio was involved.

Another thing that strikes me is how much nicer the contemporary Breyer Dealer Catalogs were, from a design standpoint. I don't have the motivation – or the time – to go through my argument on a point by point basis. The Breyer Catalogs are just slicker, cleaner, and more “professional” looking than ERTL's. That's probably just a function of Breyer being in Chicago, rather than Iowa, and thus having a deeper talent pool to draw on. It's not something I've given a lot of thought to, but I probably should. There might be some fruitful research there.