Scary Things

I knew I had a rough couple of weeks, but I didn’t realize just how rough until I was at the 7-11 after work on Friday, and the night cashier walked up and asked me:

“Are you okay? You don’t look okay. I’m worried about you.”

Anyone who’s had the privilege working the night shift at a convenience store knows that you sometimes see unspeakable things, so I’m not quite sure how to process the fact that I managed to scare the night cashier at 7-11. Dang.

Onto lighter topics. Let’s talk about a couple of things in the September Newsletter!

I was aware of the existence of “The World of Breyer Horses” promo video, but I can’t recall if I ever got to watch it in full before; it was made during my live show heydays, so when they started showing photos from contemporary live shows, I was momentarily terrified I’d see a picture of myself.

Lucky for all of us, I was not present. 

There are other Breyer videos out there with me in them; at least one of them was shot a few years after this video at a very early BreyerFest, back when the live show was still held in the Covered Arena. 

And Reeves probably has more photos of me on file than my family or workplace does. It (morbidly) amuses me that if anything newsworthy-dreadful actually happens to me, chances are any of the photos you see of me on the news will be from Reeves. I take some consolation in the fact that I will be smiling in most of those.

They failed to mention (on the website, at least) that the narrator of the video was also the model for Bitsy Breyer. From her last name you can kind of figure how she got the job!

A lot of the kids featured in Breyer promotional materials in the 1970s and early 1980s were the children of friends and family, incidentally. This is nothing unique to Breyer; a lot of the family-owned and operated businesses I have either done business with or worked for worked that way. You are not just a member of the family, you are also an employee...

I have no idea who the mystery model is in the Sneak Peek:

Since I am trying to behave, I already told myself that I’m going to avoid entering for most of the Winter Web Specials, unless an Elk, the Deer Family, or one of the Dog molds is involved. If the Christmas Day Surprise is an Emma I’ll probably spring for that one too, of course, because Emma. 

I’ve had a good year, so I think I’m entitled to a break. 

Next time – I finally unwrap my Surrey and Axle!

Lost in Translation

This has been another not-great week, and I will be grateful when it ends. (Without injury, I hope. No guarantee there, unfortunately.) 

I am currently self-medicating with an extremely elaborate quilt piecing project, art restoration videos, and homemade pound cake.

Let’s focus on some positives. First, the pound cake was a new recipe, and freaking delicious. And second, the latest Vintage Club release has been revealed – a Gambler’s Choice Silver, named Thunderbird!

Boy, that guy was a hard secret to keep under wraps. He looks awesome in all four colors; it appears that the Appaloosa is the online crowd’s clear favorite, but I will be happy with whatever one I comes my way. 

(And he’ll definitely cheaper than trying to buy something like a Goldfinch on the secondary!)

I also managed to secure a spare couple of hours of free time earlier this week, and used that opportunity to sort through some e-mails and ephemera, which wasn’t quite as big a mess as I thought it would be. (But yikes, I’ve got some gaps to fill.)  

It also reminded me that I needed to show you guys my other big Ephemera find at BreyerFest this year: 

Breyer got a lot of mail from its fans in the 1970s and early 1980s, to the point where they had to generate in-house materials to deal with it. There was a preprinted postcard that acknowledged your suggestions for future models, that infamous (and somewhat inaccurate) historical list of Breyer releases, and – news to me! – a short history of Breyer (above), and an explainer on how models were made (below):

There’s nothing new or revelatory here, but the wording on the history page is both more clear, and more nuanced than the initial history I heard bandied about it my early days in the hobby. The game of telephone did it no favors! 

The ways information get conveyed, interpreted and distorted haven’t improved much in the decades since, but that’s more of a statement about human nature than of the hobby itself. 

The 1967 Pricelist

Another quick check-in; I had some unamusing, weather-related difficulties which set me back on my project a bit, so here’s a larger-than-average picture (click on it) of one of my favorite BreyerFest acquisitions this year, in hope that it keeps you occupied while I’m still cleaning up my mess:

It’s an original – not a copy! – of the 1967 Pricelist. These things are so scarce that most of us had to content ourselves with copies, or copies of copies, so this is a major upgrade for my archive. I was honestly kind of surprised it was still available on Saturday, when I found it!

1967 was a transitional year for Breyer; many older, long-running releases were discontinued at the end of 1966 to make way for the more realistic and breed-specific molds the market was now demanding. A year later, the first Collector’s Manual would make its appearance, using the same photos and duotone printing technique.

Stripping for Fun and Profit

Just some random ranting to start my day.

I knew it was going to be a dry year, but the ground is literally cracking, leaves are already falling off the trees, and I legitimately cannot remember when we had measurable rain (my birthday, maybe?) Ugh.

In other annoying news, I attempted to strip a Proud Arabian Stallion body I found loitering on my workbench. But whatever paint the original customizer slapped on him, it’s resistant to everything short of a blowtorch. 

At this point it’s about 50/50 of whether I’m going to toss him in my free box, or keep him on the workbench because dammit I don’t want him to beat me. But I have no idea what I would turn him into, and far too many projects already cluttering up my life. 

Anyway, I was sorting through a pile of ephemera I found while finishing up my saleslist, and and thought this box might be worth at least a quick discussion:

Many hobbyists make the blanket assumption that any obvious paint removal via acetone is an aftermarket alteration, but that’s not always the case. It was one of the many techniques used, especially in the Chicago Era (pre-1985) for Test Color experimentation. 

This was the era prior to use of adhesive die-cut stickers, and creating a painting mask was a very labor-intensive process. Before going through the effort, they’d sometimes paint up models and then apply acetone – they used it to fuse model parts together, so they had gallons of it – to remove paint and alter markings and patterns until they finalized the design.

And as you can see on the box for the Action Stock Horse Foal, these Test Colors sometimes made it onto the box, often to the annoyance of many collectors And very occasionally out in the wild; the irregular star on my Test Color Phar Lap, on the Traditional Man o’ War mold, is very obviously acetone-retouched. 

In case you were wondering, the opposite was also true, but somewhat less common: every once and a great while I’ll find a model that was touched-up at the factory with a hand brushed application of paint. 

The few instances I’ve seen have all been with solid black paint, which makes sense: no need to worry about subtle gradations of color or blending, especially when the acetone-based paint itself dries in a matter of seconds!

It’s pretty remarkable they manage to get the effects they do, working with a finicky medium like that. 

More Ephemeral Things

The second Spooky Stablemate has arrived:

Yay, something different! I like the Stablemate version of Samhain better than the Traditional, but that’s because while I like Wixom just fine, I still pine for a pumpkin-themed original Hess Belgian instead. And the Stablemates Belgian mold reminds me a lot of him...

Even though I said I didn’t have any preferences when it came to the current crop of Halloween Stablemates, I was a little bummed that I didn’t get the Mischief Night: that’s the only one of the three that I have in its original, larger form. Alas, no twinsies for me!

I was a little more excited, actually, that I got this year’s Holiday Catalog:

Last year’s arrived mangled, and the year before I didn’t even get one at all, so getting a completely intact one was a happy surprise.

As a dedicated ephemera collector, I figure I’ll snag the 2020 (and a better copy of 2021) in somebody’s free box at BreyerFest one of these days. As much as I’d like to be an ephemera completist, they are not a thing I consider absolutely essential for research purposes.

I didn’t find a lot of paper freebies in Kentucky this year, mostly because I didn’t get in as much Clarion shopping as I wanted to. And when I did, the freebie boxes were pretty cleaned out. 

One thing I did pick up was this very amusing misprinted early Classic Racehorse box. It’s not in the best shape, but c’mon, how could I pass this up? 

“Quality Control was so much better in the old days.” Not really guys, not really!

The weather is going to be cooperative for the next couple of days, so I need to get hopping on all the photography I’ve been putting off. 

I’m aiming on reducing my inventory to half of what it currently over the next several months. Partly to accommodate the totes for a potential entry to BreyerFest Live next year, and also because of the big sewing project I have planned. 

I need to be ruthless with my overgrown fabric stash, and once I settle on some patterns, I intend on converting a lot of it into pony bags. Some to use (obviously) and the rest to sell at BreyerFest. Maybe even some to give away, depending on how productive I am. 

(Lately, not so much!)

Line and Form

Today was not a good day, and I would very much like to crawl under a rock. 

Aside from everything else that’s going on, I thought I’d take my live show paperwork to work to finish it during break and lunch. Not only did that not happen, I didn’t discover until I got home that had left it all at work, so now I won’t be able to work on it at all today at home, either. 

So now I can’t finish it until tomorrow, when I had planned on getting to bed early and catch a couple extra hours of sleep, since I am not going to get much on Saturday because of the scheduling conflict I mentioned before. 

That’s just awesome. And pretty much par for the course this week.

Since I never got around to my Chicago Worldcon report (those notes are also with the live show paperwork. Like I said, not a good day), I want to at least highlight one of the things I bought there: a tiny piece of art I bought from a dealer who had purchased the archives from the estate of Virgil Finlay. 

I wasn’t comfortable buying one of the dealer’s more expensive pieces, but I thought this item – a cover proof from his time illustrating astrology magazines – was both very affordable, and so very, very on point for me, as a horse person attending The Science Fiction Convention in Chicago. The spot colors were also a plus: a very Breyer-esque Blue and Yellow!

I may get it framed some time in the future, but for now it’s just going to reside in my ephemera archives.

Virgil Finlay has always been one of my favorite science-fiction illustrators, and the dream would be to own one of his originals. The dealer had some sketches of horses (not full-on, finished artwork) that were a temptation, but maybe another day, or another lifetime.  

Some of his artwork was on display in the Korshak Collection room at Worldcon – in addition to works by Frank R. Paul, Hannes Bok, Emsh, the Brothers Hildebrandt, and so many others – but the piece that really caught my eye there was Stanley Meltzoff’s cover illustration for the paperback edition of Robert Heinlein’s The Green Hills of Earth. It had a beautiful, painterly quality to it that reproduction just cannot capture. If there was one painting in that room I could have stolen, it would have been that!

(Just being in that room was one of the many highlights of Worldcon.)

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 News, Last Minute Prep, and Volunteer Stuff

Things are going… okay? 

A stressful thing we had been waiting on at work finally happened, and it went really well! (Whew!) Alas, the party to celebrate will probably happen while I am away, bummer…

I went through my summer shorts and found that most of them still fit. I was a bit worried since I gained a few pounds during the pandemic, but fortunately it wasn’t quite as much as I had thought. (I still need to do something about it, but I’ll worry about it after I get back.) 

The Sampler is done and just needs to be printed; I’ll be picking up the toner cartridges Saturday afternoon since I’m almost out. Sunday will probably be spent yelling and/or glaring at my printer, getting it to all work. I am hoping to have the PDF up by the time I leave Tuesday morning, but my schedule is tight and I can’t make any promises. If not, it will be the first thing I put up when I get back the Monday morning after.

I will have a very limited number of hard copies of the 2020 and 2021 Samplers on hand. The 2020 is on my other computer and involves some obsolete fonts, and I’m not sure I’ll have the time to deal with fixing all that ahead of time. 

The car is already partially packed; I have to work Monday, and it’s going to be HOT here, so the actual horses can’t go in the car until Monday afternoon at the earliest. I’ll also have to dig some of my usual prep stuff out of the closet, but since I have to work Saturday too I won’t be able to get around to that until Saturday night at the latest…

And finally, I have to get my displays ready for BreyerFest. 

Remember how I’ve been joking about having a meet and greet at the Kentucky Horse Park during BreyerFest? Well… I kinda-sorta do have one in the Hobby Information Booth this year! As a part of my volunteer duties, I’ll be in the tent from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. on Friday to meet all of you in an official capacity and answer any questions on Breyer History you want to throw at me! 

As I’ve said before, a lot of times it’s hard to judge if something is authentic or not unless I get to examine it in person; if you happen to have something you want me to look at, feel free to bring it and I’ll do my best to give you a fair assessment of its authenticity, and everything I might know about its origins. 

I won’t do price estimates, though. With the way the market is right now, I don’t think I have a really good grasp of what anything is going for, and there are others out there who specialize in that sort of thing anyway. (I would also end up giving you an estimate of what I would pay, and I am notoriously cheap.)

In addition to bringing out some of my rarities, I’ll see about bringing some of my scarcer bits of ephemera for you to ogle at too; how much I bring will depend on how much room I have in the car. 

I’ll also be in the Hobby Information Booth from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday, primarily as a Greeter, but I’ll be available to talk about history and answer questions, too. Because you know, history dork here!

And in one last exciting bit of news: It really looks like a Legion of Super-Heroes series is coming to HBO Max! I thought they were kidding before, because us Legion fans are kinda sensitive about the subject, but it’s apparently really going to be a thing. Sprock, yeah!

Enter Sandman

Darn it, lost another post to a power outage! I was only a couple of paragraphs in, but I totally lost my mojo on that one. 

I spent most of the weekend going through all my assorted ephemera, looking for my old live show paperwork. I found most of it, but a lot of the names and identities of the unplaced horses are still missing. Since they technically don’t “exist” in the live show system (such as it is) it’s not that big of a deal. Other than the fact that it’s going to take some time to re-create, and time is one thing I do not have in abundance.

While I am generally of the opinion that no good comes from keeping things in the closet, some of the other paperwork I discovered along the way should probably stay there. At least until the rest of the participants are no longer with us.

Reading through some of it was reassuring, in the sense that it showed me that my memory is better than I thought it was. Some of the things I remember seemed a little too wild or bizarre to be true, but apparently not!

No, you’re not going to get anything more out of me than that. Like I said, some of these folks are still in the hobby, and may not even remember the incidents involved, themselves. 

It is also worth noting that the hobby has always been kind of… dramatic? Social media is simply amplifying what has always existed. The bigger issue is that people are marinating in that media environment all day, and mistaking it for reality.

But back to the matter at hand. You really can’t really rely solely on your memory: the brain tends to edit and reinterpret things to fit our biases, often without us even realizing it. That’s why documentation is so important in the first place: people can change their minds, but a piece of paper cannot. How you interpret that documentation is another matter, but I’m probably going a little too far into the semantic weeds here.

But let’s go back to reality: I am super excited about the next Vintage Club release, Sandman!

I know a lot of people were wondering when he’d finally show up in the Vintage Club, and I was quite pleased that he finally came to fruition. The documentation I did for him was probably my favorite among the batch I did for the Vintage Club this year. 

(Sorry, no clues on the others. I’m suffering just as much as the rest of you. Just in a different way!)

We haven’t seen the mold much in recent years, aside from the Warehouse Find that was a re-release of the original Smoky, and the 2012 Passage to the Pacific Centerpiece “Surf’s Up” in Florentine that I want dearly but I’m not willing to sell my car for it. 

(The shading in his mane and tail slay me every time I see one. Argh!)

So anyway, I’m going to be scarce for the rest of the month, as I attempt to get my act together for the show on April 2. Today is Stablemates Excavation Day!

Holiday Things

Apparently there was some sort of mix up in Reeves’s database, so now everyone (well, almost everyone) who receives one of Breyer’s Holiday 2019 catalogs is getting the gift of … a new name!

This is hilarious and awesome, and I am totally wearing a “My Name Is” nametag at BreyerFest with my new Breyer Given Name “Dona” written on it.

(I was kind of surprised that it wasn’t Audrey, but that is a story best told in person....)

The only other thing worth noting about the catalog is that it includes all the Web Exclusive Holiday merchandise – the Unicorn Mare and Foal set Mira & Antares, the “Pony for Christmas” gift set featuring a Haflinger similar to Donner, his royal purpleness Zenith, and a lot of the new 70th Anniversary merchandise and other swag.

As someone who has made several t-shirts featuring old Breyer graphics and ephemera, I am definitely buying this at my earliest convenience (CC Appreciation Sale, cough cough…)

I wasn’t anywhere near my computer when Early Access to Breyer’s Black Friday sale dropped, so no Darwin for me. The only other items of mild to moderate interest were the Gettysburg (also sold out) and Celeste, a mold that I try to love and I am still not feeling it.

I seem to be in the minority of this opinion, but I like the PC Lipizzaner Mare and Foal a heck of a lot more than the PC Andalusian Mare and Foal. So it’s no surprise that I am also taking a pass on the Mira and Antares (in Chestnut and… purple?) and hitting the Enter Now button as much as legally possible for the Winter Web Special Avoriaz – the Lipizzaner Mare in a Gambler’s Choice of Rose Gold Florentine or Rose Gold Charm:

This is an entirely new Decorator color and it gets a big thumbs up from me. While I am not a fan of Rose Gold when it is used in jewelry, I love the color when it’s applied to other things – it’s even one of the few pastels I’ll actually wear!

I am a little hesitant about them applying the Gambler’s Choice option to a relatively limited (350 piece) Special Run, though: these Winter Web Decos are hard enough to win as it is. After what happened with Benasque last year, we really don’t need to encourage more people to enter the drawing with dreams of dropshipping them for some extra holiday cash.

Scanners Live in Vain

What the local annual book sale lacked in quantity (for me) it made up for in quality. Among the finds are the 1950 translation of the definitive book about German Shepherds written by the guy who invented the breed, a 1984 edition of the FEI rulebook for Driving(!), and a First Edition-First Printing of Misty of Chincoteague from 1947:

My original Misty of Chincoteague was a 1948 edition that had seen better days, so I was super happy to find an upgrade that was not only in better condition, but was a first-first, too!

Take that, annoying book scanner people!

For those of you unfamiliar with shopping at charity used book sales, there’s a certain class of resellers who use handheld scanners or phone apps to determine if books are worth buying for resale.

They tend to be indiscriminate in their purchases, and focused on more modern books that have scanable barcodes or ISBN numbers. Unless a sale specifically bans them in the first day or hours, they will absolutely overrun the place.

I don’t have an issue with them having an online bookselling business, because I do as well, but a lot of these people are such amateurs.

I showed up an hour late for the sale – aside from the bad traffic, I also had to make a run to the bank, because my Salvation Army shopping spree earlier in the week left me without any fun money at all. Yet I still managed to score some pretty valuable books that were essentially invisible to the scanner people, who were too focused on what their scanners were telling them.

Is there a model horse lesson to be learned from this story?

Of course there is: a tool can’t replace knowledge or experience. A tool is often incapable of distinguishing the subtle nuances that differentiate the valuable from the valueless. This applies to either books, or Breyers.

A Matte Palomino Family Arabian Stallion in ordinary condition? Probably body box material. A mint-in-box Chalky Palomino Family Arabian Stallion with all his paperwork and receipts? That’s a major score!

You want to succeed at collecting? A tool can only take you so far. Work on building the database you carry inside your head.

My other edition of Misty will be going in my BreyerFest book stash (which was absolutely decimated this year) along with a couple of the others. The Fury book is going into my reference library, unless they reissue the Fury mold for BreyerFest next year. (I hope!)

The GSD book will be put online in the near future, because vintage dog reference books have been a really good niche market for me. Just as it was for horse racing, the Metro Detroit area used to be quite a hotbed for dog breeders!

One Project Down...

Whew, just finished reorganizing my horse files. It sure is nice to get both the floor space and headspace back! By the way, does anybody need a box of my duplicate ephemera?

($15 plus Media Mail postage for a single, six-pound box. Not all of it shown/visible, obviously. Shoot me an e-mail if you are interested.)

A lot of my “new” material turned out to be stuff I already had: since a significant portion of the paper I’ve picked up over the past year was other people’s unsorted slush piles, that was not a huge shock.

Those slush piles are worth the risk, though, because (a) I really do love the whole process of sorting and filing, and (b) sometimes wonderful things show up, like diamonds in the dirt:

(I will give you all a moment here to hyperventilate.)

Also, I don’t have everything – I really need to catch up on the most recent ephemera, for one thing – but sometimes it feels like I do. Going through these slush piles reminds me of just how much I don’t have yet.

On the plus side, it looks like I won’t be needing as much in new filing and storage supplies as I thought – just a couple more flat file boxes, two more binders, and (as always) more sheet protectors.

I do need to do some labeling and indexing, and there’s a separate collection of materials that I need to handle a bit differently, but for the most part I’m now ready to catch up on my research and update my electronic “quick reference” files.

When those are done, then maybe I can finally get going on that grand dream of a comprehensive online Breyer reference guide – something that goes beyond just the basic names, dates and numbers.

But that is a long way off, and I have a few more pressing projects to take care of in the meantime.

One of those projects involves digitizing some of my more requested materials, like Marney’s photo albums of Test Colors, auction price lists, correspondence (the letter from Wild Horse Annie to Marguerite Henry, talking about Hobo, is a treasure I want to share with everybody!), Model Horse Congress fliers and show results, stuff like that.

I doubt I’ll get that done before BreyerFest this year, but it’s definitely on my docket.

First come the tax returns. Then finish the paperwork for all of my “new” arrivals (i.e. last year’s keepers). Then finish at least a dozen of my larger quilting projects. Then all of the usual BreyerFest prep.

Yikes. No wonder I slept in so long today!

Rising Above

I do not have much to offer today; I’ve spent most of my extended weekend cleaning and organizing things, with a little bit of crafting on the side to break the tedium.

It rained this morning too, so there are no fun new “finds” to overanalyze. This is for the best I suppose, with that carousel auction coming up next weekend, and a possible mini road trip later in the week for a garage sale.

So here’s a picture of one of my BreyerFest finds, a nice example of the 2003 BreyerFest Rugged Lark Special Run of The Lark Ascending. He was cheap, he was in mint condition, and he was signed. He didn’t come with his teeny-tiny “Certificate of Authenticity”, however.

The last year they handed out certificates for the larger run BreyerFest Specials was 2006. The practice is now reserved primarily for prize models; as much as the hobby loves and lives for its paper documentation, it was stunningly impractical to hand out certificates for models with piece runs in the hundreds or thousands.

I kind of wanted The Lark Ascending that year, but when I managed to get a really good place in the line for a change, the two porcelains – the Othello Galway Warrior, and the Stablemate Seabiscuit – took priority instead.

The Lark Ascending has been a backburner want since then. They did a nice job on his color, with extra shading and metallic undertones to add a bit of sparkle to what could have been another ho-hum Bay paint job. The more I saw him, the more I thought Yeah, I think I need that guy.

The release exists in that strange state of being both relatively rare (only 500 pieces) and somewhat undesirable (being on the Rugged Lark mold). While it wasn’t hard to find one for sale, finding one at a price I was comfortable paying was the real trick. Physical rarity alone is not, and should not be, a guarantee of an elevated resale price.

And then this guy turned up during my late Saturday CHIN shopping marathon, at a price I literally could not walk away from. Sure, he didn’t have his little certificate, but I have gotten used to coming home from BreyerFest without them.

A Golden Anniversary: Breyer’s Man o’ War

As I am really busy right now taking care of various odds and ends, I will post the contents of the flier I created for the Man o’ War display I presented at the Hands-On Hobby at BreyerFest this year. I will make paper copies of the original available to everyone who wants one, eventually, along with extra copies of the Sampler. 

In the meantime, does anyone have any spare 28-hour days lying around? I could really use a few...

Man o’ War’s history with Breyer began in 1967, with the release of the #47 Race Horse – Man o’ War. Sculpted by Breyer’s original moldmaker Chris Hess, this Traditional-scale piece was one of four new molds – including the Pacer, Bear and Bear Cub – to debut that year.

Many collectors are aware that Breyer’s original #36 Racehorse is based on a wooden sculpture of the famous racehorse Whirlaway, made by Grand Wood Carving Company of Chicago, Illinois. Less well known is that the Traditional Man o’ War (the model that eventually replaced the Racehorse, discontinued in 1966) also appears to be based on a Grand Wood Carving design.

Like most Breyer releases of the 1960s and 1970s, the #47 Man o’ War would go through many subtle – and not so subtle – changes through the years. The earliest Man o’ Wars, for instance, came with opaque “Battleship Gray” hooves and large, prominent eyewhites, a beautiful and eye catching variation that is highly sought after today!

Another scarce variation of the Man o’ War was the one released as part of the Presentation Collection in the early 1970s. This series consisted of then-current production models, mounted on wooden bases with brass nameplates, and marketed as trophies and home decorating pieces.

It wouldn’t be until the 1990s that Breyer enthusiasts would see more unique and distinctive Man o’ Wars. In 1990, a Special Run in Gloss was issued in a three-piece “Race Horse Set” (along with a Gloss Sham and a Gloss Secretariat) that was available through the Sears Wishbook.

He was also chosen – along with the Legionario, the San Domingo, and the Sham – to be a BreyerFest Raffle model in 1991. Twenty Gold Charm Man o’ Wars were raffled off at the BreyerFest in Kentucky that year, with another being sold at the Benefit Auction.

Although the mold itself has come in many other colors since the original release was discontinued in 1995 (most notably as his son “War Admiral” in 2003-2004) the original Man o’ War has also been re-released twice since then.

Man o’ War first reappeared as a Special Run, with slightly different shading and a Certificate of Authenticity, for QVC in 2002. He returned a second time as a Special Run for the World Equestrian Games, when the event was held at the Kentucky Horse Park 2010. Only 48 pieces of that particular Special Run were made, featuring a laminated hangtag and a more accurately masked star and stripe.

A Classics-scale mold of Man o’ War, a Hagen-Renaker design by Maureen Love Calvert, joined the Breyer line in 1975. The original #602 release remained in production until 1990 and like its Traditional counterpart, he also came in multiple variations. There are least three different facial markings – a straight blaze, a broken stripe, and an irregular star – and multiple gradations of Chestnut, from light orangey brown (usually earlier) to dark red (usually later).

Although it was included in a “Famous Race Horses” gift set available in the 1975 Sears Wishbook, it wasn’t until this year that the Classics version was formally re-released (as #9149) for Man o’ War’s Centennial.

In 2013, Breyer issued its third unique Man o’ War release, a Christmas ornament (#700662) in their popular Race Horse Series. But for fans of “The Mostest Hoss There Ever Was”, every day is a reason to celebrate his life and legend – whether it’s with one special Breyer Man o’ War model, or more!

BreyerFest 1990: Page Three

The third and final page of Sue’s BreyerFest 1990 report.

The Benefit Auction was a mix of stuff – some Tests, some historical/archival items, and Regular Run items that people bought just to nominally donate to the Misty Foundation.

It’d be a couple more years before the Auction would morph into a strictly Test Color/Factory Custom thing, with all other items going to the Silent Auction.

And before you get all excited – or depressed – about the auction prices, remember that this was 1990. BreyerFest tickets that year were $35 (I think ?) and the average, Regular Run Traditional would set you back $15-20.

For a variety of reasons, I never went – or even entertained the thought – of going to BreyerFest in 1990. I was in one of my rare hobby “lulls” – I was still buying the occasional model, getting Just About Horses and other newsletters, but not terribly active in any other sense.

Although I did attend BreyerFest in 1991, and volunteered at a Breyer Event in Ohio that year as well (a PEZ convention was involved! A very long story…) it wouldn’t be until 1992 that I got back into the swing of things.

And it all started with a phone call from Breyer. But that, too, is a very long story….

BreyerFest 1990: Page Two

As this posts I should be on my way south (more or less – construction on I-75 will be making things interesting, of course).

Since my brain is more or less fried from prep and other things, I’ll just be posting the two remaining pages from Sue Sudekum’s BreyerFest 1990 account. Here’s page two:

Worth noting: condition and quality issues on the Celebration Horse (all Breyer models since the beginning of time, to be honest).

Also, I miss the food they served at the earlier ‘Fests. It wasn’t chef-quality, but it was decent, and a nice gesture.

BreyerFest got too big for that sort of thing to continue, and some of the griping and moaning about the food probably didn’t help. (Honestly, you’d think we were being served prison food, the way some people complained…)

Time Is Not on My Side...

Due to some last minute commitments and technical issues, it doesn’t look likely that I’ll be doing the Costume Contest this year. I might wear a part of it during BreyerFest, but it’ll depend on my time and energy, and it doesn’t look like I’ll have a lot of either to spare in the next few days.

On the flip side, I am very pleased with my Diorama entry! I am hoping to have it completely – or almost completely – done by the time I leave Tuesday morning. That will be a nice change of pace.

The itinerary for next week isn’t too different from the past few years’: a Tuesday afternoon arrival and setup, and focusing mostly on selling rather than buying. I will have a huge body box (again) and a pretty decent selection of goodies to sell, from cheap to not-so-cheap. (But mostly cheap.)

I kind of liked having that one “big” find like last year’s Man o’ War, so I’d be open to making another purchase along that line, though I can’t imagine what that’d be (Marshall, at cost? The SR 1980s Black Appaloosa POA? A Test Color Duchess?) I’ve made some pretty good finds in the past year, so I have no urgent need to score anything spectacular.

Though if it happens, I won’t complain.

Since I have to get back to the prep, I’ll leave you with an amusing bit of ephemera I picked up very recently (as in, over the weekend):

(As always, click to enlarge.)

I might post the other two pages of this vintage hobby humor by Sue Sudekum during BreyerFest, if I can find the time...

(FWIW, 1990 was the only year I did not attend, so I cannot vouch for the accuracy. But it seems pretty legit to me.)

A Short History of Alabaster: Part II

For some reason this did not drop as scheduled on Saturday. So here is the conclusion, four days late....

I don’t think it was a popularity issue that doomed the “new” White paint job, but a manufacturing one: it was hard color to maintain consistency from model to model and the gray paint, applied over (not under) the Matte topcoat, rubbed off easily.

Confusing? Yes, very.

Honestly, this color confusion shouldn’t really be too surprising: we are talking about a company that had a hard time distinguishing between Bay and Chestnut. Having all these different names for a color as allegedly uncomplicated as White? Just par for the course.

Some argument could be made that Alabaster was in itself just another one of Breyer’s “Decorator” colors, albeit its simplest and most subtle. Like Smoke and Charcoal, Alabaster is not a term that was used in the real horse world to any significant degree, and bears only a coincidental resemblance to colors horses actually come in.

Matte finishes were still relatively uncommon at the time and used then primarily as a sealing topcoat for Woodgrains. The term might have been invented to help call out what was then something unusual and distinctive. Or as I’ve speculated with the color Charcoal, the term may have come from an offhand reference in a book or magazine.

Another point in favor of labeling Alabaster a Decorator color is that the term Smoke – another quasi-realistic color – debuted on the Running Mare and Foal at exactly the same time as Alabaster, and was even paired and marketed with it in deliberately mismatched Mare and Foal sets.

Then there is the matter of Gloss Alabaster: believe it or not, this term never comes up in early Breyer ephemera. It appears to be a hobbyist creation: through the 1960s and until Gloss finishes were phased out, Breyer always referred to Gloss Alabasters as White.

There were a number of reasons why white-colored horses, in all their names and forms, became a staple in the Breyer line through the 1960s and 1970s.

First and foremost: yes, they were a little cheaper to manufacture. They required fewer painting steps, and less paint. There was also less production waste. In an era where multiple simultaneous releases of a mold were the norm, it was common practice to set aside lighter-colored culls to repaint with a darker color later, rather than discarding or regrinding them.

But white was one of the most popular horse colors with the general public too, partly fueled by pop culture figures like The Lone Ranger’s Silver and Hopalong Cassidy’s Topper.

Although derided in recent years as a cheap, plain, and (at times) a downright lazy color to paint, careful examination reveals that too is not as simple as it seems. The simplicity of the color itself is a deceit: unlike other paint jobs, there’s no place for a minor decorating or molding flaw to hide.

In effect, we see the mold as the moldmaker sees it: no more, no less. That so many molds still succeed and delight is a testament to the craftsmen who helped bring them to life in the first place.

A Short History of Alabaster: Part I

Since I am going to either be away, or occupied with other things through the weekend, I will be queuing up the article I wrote about the history of Alabaster for this year’s Sampler.

Even though Breyer’s history began with a white Western Horse, the term “Alabaster” – the word hobbyists most commonly use to describe white-colored Breyer horses – did not appear in any official Breyer ephemera until ca. 1962.

My recent research has determined the reason why: “Alabaster” was created as a descriptor not just of a color, but a finish. In short, Matte White = Alabaster.

The history of Breyer’s plainest and most basic color, however, is far more complicated than that.

The earliest white-colored Breyer horses of the 1950s were literally White, in both form and name. Models like the Western Horse, Western Pony and Fury Prancer were uniformly described in the ephemera of the time as White: and they were, save for a few touches of gray shading on the hooves and head.

It wasn’t until 1958 that models with more extensive gray shading arrived, in the form of the Old Mold Mare and Foal (and a year later, on the Stallion). While the paint job on the Old Mold Family was very similar to the color we think of as Alabaster (gray manes, tails and body shading) they still weren’t labeled that way. The early ephemera still referred to them as White.

Other white-colored models began to show up shortly after but they were not labeled Alabaster, either. The Shetland Pony, with her gray mane and tail and pink hooves and muzzle, was still White. The Mustang and Five-Gaiter were described as Albino, presumably because the earliest pieces were issued with dark pink eyes, not black ones.

It wasn’t until ca. 1962 that the term “Alabaster” finally appeared in print, to describe the brand new Running Mare and Foal, and a revamped White Fighting Stallion.

What did these three releases have in common? The Running Mare and Foal and the re-released Fighting Stallion all came in a Matte finish. They were followed shortly afterwards by the Rearing Stallion (1965) and Running Stallion (1968), both Matte, and “Alabaster”.

It wasn’t until 1969 that the Family Arabians and the Shetland Pony – among the last remaining glossy White pieces in the Breyer line – were officially labeled Alabasters in existing ephemera. This is almost exactly the same time that Breyer officially began phasing out gloss.

1968 Pricelist:

1969 Pricelist:

I do not think this was a coincidence. Especially since the third white release in the line at the time – the Western Pony – remained glossy. And was still labeled as White.

There seems to be quite a bit of evidence that Breyer was being careful and nuanced when it came to their color terminology in the late 1960s and early 1970s, especially with their expanding repertoire of gray-based colors. One that expanded further with the release of the matte Dapple Gray paint job on the Proud Arabian Stallion in 1971.

To complicate matters even more, the term White was still being used. In spite of the fact that neither the Old Timer (released in 1966) nor the Indian Pony (released in 1970) ever came in a Gloss Finish, they were both consistently described in catalogs and other price lists as White well into the 1970s.

What I think was going on there was that a decision was made to turn that particular descriptor into a term for a matte white finish with heavy, almost Smoke-like body shading.

This “new” White didn’t last long: all subsequent “white” releases in the 1970s and 1980s were labeled Alabaster, regardless of the amount of gray shading they came with.

When Breyer Met Mego (no, the other Mego)

It was another weird and wonderful day at the flea market, the kind that makes me wish I had a booth at one of the local antique malls so I could justify buying stuff to stock it!

I passed by most of the horses – they were either overpriced, or simply not that interesting – but I did find one interesting bit of Breyer-related ephemera from the same vendor I purchased that photo album from:

Dinah-Mite paper dolls!

Dinah-Mite was Mego’s version of Barbie, whose biggest selling feature was that she was – as you can see from the cover of the book – far more posable and versatile.

She didn’t last long – she was discontinued ca. 1975, in favor of Mego’s better-selling Star Trek, Superhero, and Planet of the Apes lines. But not before she acquired some interesting accessories, including a horse “Golden Pal”, who was a motorized knock-off of our friend the Palomino Family Arabian Stallion:

http://www.megomuseum.com/dinah/v_horse.shtml

And a boyfriend “Don”:

http://www.megomuseum.com/catalog/1974/images/dinahmite2.jpg

Both of these accessories were not originally her own; Golden Pal was originally the Planet of the Apes “Action Stallion” and Don was simply a Mego Superman in civilian clothes. Mego was thrifty (and/or creative) that way.

So why am I going on about this obscure doll from the early 1970s? It’s because the original, elusive, rarely-seen Breyer Rider Doll from the 1976 Breyer Rider Gift Set was… a repurposed Dinah-Mite:

Or at least, the prototypes were.

There are all sorts of stories floating around about why the original Breyer Rider Gift Set never materialized; the original one I heard was that there was a safety or manufacturing issue involved. But if the plan was to just repurpose/reissue Dinah-Mites – and not merely hijack a few for the prototypes – something else might have been going on.

There are enough Mego resources online to solve that riddle, but like so many other things, I haven’t had the time to find out.