Behaving Myself

Looks more of the seasonal merchandise is finally in at Breyer, including the Neva that I’ve been eyeing: https://www.breyerhorses.com/products/neva-freedom-series-winter-decorator

There’s also another sequined blanket this year, but unlike the one that came in a gift set with Le Mer, you can buy it separately! (And it’s pink and yellow, one of my favorite quilting color combos!)

Breyer is definitely making it a challenge to behave myself.

But what’s really throwing me off is the Vintage Club announcement, and the picture of the first release in next year’s set, the Fury Prancer Rustler. Who also happens to be a Musicbox Prancer:

https://www.breyerhorses.com/products/2023-vintage-collector-club-membership-deposit

The surprise isn’t in the item itself – y’all know I’ve known about it for months, my homies – but that they just kinda-sorta snuck the reveal on the web site with all of the other stuff. For a couple of seconds there I was worried I had accidentally leaked something! 

(The line between me knowing things and predicting things is one I have to monitor constantly, as you may know.)

But anyways, I am glad the first release has been revealed. I’ve been wanting them to do a Musicbox Prancer for years now, and I am very pleased at the way he turned out.

I haven’t had the good fortune of owning a vintage Musicbox Prancer yet: like most things, it’s been a matter of either timing or money. While they are still hard to find, they’re not as rare as many collectors imagine them to be. 

Like Ranchcraft Lamps and various iterations of the Groomers, a higher percentage of them have survived because they had a purpose beyond being toys. Consequently, they were treated a little less roughly, and were less likely to incur the kind of serious damage that would get them thrown into the trash.

As for who and what’s in store for the rest of the 2023 Vintage Club lineup, you know the rules, guys: just wait and see. 

(I think it’s great, but I am also a little biased, LOL.)

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!

More Fun with Fury

Here’s a picture of a couple of scarcer-than-average variations of the original #27 TV’s Fury for your examination:

Most Furies are either solidly painted or (more rarely) molded black plastic with overpainted markings. These two early, pre-mold mark fellows have bare plastic markings instead.

The “tan” hooves on the sockless Fury are actually just plain, slightly yellowed plastic. The facial markings on both are also irregularly shaped, as if they were tape-masked, though I don’t know if that was actually the case or something else was going on here:

There are a lot of variations on this release, which really isn’t shocking for something that ran nearly ten years (ca. 1957/8? through 1965). However, I’d consider any individual variation from the standard Black with overpainted markings to be scarce, at least in terms of volume.

Most of my variations – I think I have five or six of them, total – either came in box/body lots, or were found locally. Like my Black Stretched Morgans, I don’t go out of my way to find them, but they do seem to go out their way to find me!

It doesn’t hurt that I’ve been collecting for what seems like forever, and I have a fondness for the oddballs. They tend to stick around, while the more common/ordinary ones move on.

As common as the model is, they can be a bit of a challenge to collect, online or off. It’s not realistic enough for noncollectors to automatically assume it’s a Breyer, and since the mold was in production for a few years prior to the addition of the mold mark in 1960, a significant portion of Furies don’t come with it.

On the flip side, this lack of recognition as a Breyer does help when one is found “in the wild”. Just another toy horse, nothing to see here…

Adios’s Little Star

Since I mentioned it in passing last time, here’s a close-up of the original Adios’s teeny-tiny star:

(The spot on his nose is just a rub, not some rare or obscure variation.)

You might notice that this example has extra black shading around his eyes, because he’s an early release of this model, ca. 1970, with a near-complete Blue Ribbon Sticker. Some examples even have fully blackened ears; mine has black ear tips, but I wasn’t quite able to pick them up in the light of my office.

The only thing that would make this guy any better – besides a sticker in slightly better condition – would be if he didn’t have the USA mold mark, but that’s a pretty rare trick to pull off for an Adios, sticker or no.

Early Adioses with Blue Ribbon Stickers seem to be a bit of a hot commodity lately, so I am not going to think about upgrading, unless one miraculously drops into my lap at my local Salvation Army or something.

Adios was not the first Breyer “portrait” model – as true Breyer aficionados know, Lassie and Rin Tin Tin can claim that title, both being released in 1956. (I think Lassie came out a couple months before Rinty, but that topic deserves a post in and of itself.) And then there is the Circus Boy set, which came out in late 1956 or early 1957: the actual “Circus Boy” is a fairly decent depiction of a young Mickey Dolenz in his pre-Monkee years. 

Adios isn’t even the first equine portrait model: that title would go to the Fury Prancer release of “TV’s Fury” ca. 1958. The second? That was the #47 Man o’ War in 1967.

But other than being “a black horse with white markings”, Fury looks little like the actual Fury; and as much as I adore the Traditional Man o’ War, it wasn’t until 2010 that the WEG Reissue accurately portrayed his actual star and stripe.

Adios is thus the first equine portrait model that made a real effort to look like the actual horse, both in form and in the paint masking.

More Additions to the Reference Shelf

Here’s an unusual and unexpected addition I made to my Marguerite Henry First Edition collection. Though, as you will plainly see, I rather doubt they’ll ever be making a model or gift set out of this one:

There are no horses in Geraldine Belinda, just a selfish little girl who learns how to share. It’s from 1942, a few years before Henry wrote Justin Morgan Had a Horse.

I found it while poking around a dollar table at the local flea market; I only happened to pick it up because my mother’s name is Geraldine. She’s never been fond of it, but I thought it might cheer her up a bit to know that her name was at one time considered pretty enough to grace the cover of a children’s book.

(And who knows? Maybe that’s really where Grandma Jankowiak got the name. It’s from the same time period. Though Mom’s middle name is actually Virginia, not Belinda.)

Another fun addition to the library was this hobby catalog from 1959/60. I was really excited when I found it, since it falls within that largely undocumented period of Breyer History. It’s an engrossing read but alas, animals of any kind are scarce within.

Horses are rather complicated creatures, anatomically, and not easy to “make right” even as preassembled pieces. Most kit horses that do turn up (that aren’t “The Visible Horse”) are usually a part of Western-themed or historical kits. Throughout the 1960s, however, both Aurora and Revell came out with a small line of 1/8 horse kits:

http://www.oldmodelkits.com/index.php?detail=13160&page=1
http://www.oldmodelkits.com/index.php?detail=9581&page=71

(Breyer had the license for Fury through 1966, so Aurora’s kit was clearly not considered direct competition.)

I’ve always wanted to find just one of these kits – assembled or otherwise – for my collection, but this is a fairly big area for modellers, and vintage kits of any kind tend to be scarce and/or expensive.

Breyer didn’t start making kits of their own until the 1970s, and of accessories, not the horses themselves. But I’ll take about that some other time.

Prune Brown

Head’s up: I’ll be starting to sell stuff again within the next week or so. The outdoor flea market season opens soon here, and I will need some walking-around-money for that.

The Special Run we thought would be a vintage model turned out to be the Croi Damsha in Dappled Sooty Palomino: it’s the very antithesis of a Vintage Model. Huh. I wasn’t expecting another release on that mold until the Fall.

You know, from a distance, in passing, and if I wasn’t wearing my glasses, a Palomino Croi Damsha could pass for a Palomino Family Arabian Stallion. There’s that, at least.

(Hmm. A Reissue Palomino FAS in Dappled Sooty Palomino. I had not considered that a possibility until now.)

The final model in the Ticket Special Lineup will be a Gloss Dappled Rose Gray Wixom, if the rotating banners on the Breyer web site are to be believed. (A Percheron, finally!) Unless it turns out to be a different kind of something, like a Store or Souvenir Special.

Regardless of what she is, I doubt her inclusion there is an accident. It feels more like a way to drum up interest for the last weekend of Early Bird Ticket sales: Let’s drop a previously unknown/unseen Gloss Special Run on the front page!

Back on topic. Here are a couple of actual Vintage Models: a pair of Western Ponies in Dark Brown and Black Beauty:

The Dark Brown variation is comparatively rare; it appears that it was only issued ca. 1956, or shortly after the discontinuation of the Davy Crockett Horse and Rider set. It really was listed as "Dark Brown" on at least one piece of ephemera from the era, so it was a genuine release, and not a variation.

My theory for its existence - and relative rarity - is that the #40 Dark Brown release was created to help use up the "Plum Brown" acetate that was purchased for the manufacture of the Davy Crockett Horse and Rider set. The Davy Crockett fad faded almost as quickly as it rose, and Breyer may have been stuck with a load or two of Plum Brown plastic.

But not too much: the Brown Western Ponies aren’t easy to find today, and (as far as I know) there aren’t any other Plum Brown models floating around, other than the Fury/Prancers. The "Brown and Gold" Western Horses that occasionally cause a stir on eBay are just early (and not very good) knockoffs.

The color of the Brown Western Pony is dark enough that in the right setting and the right lighting, it’s almost indistinguishable from the Star-faced Black Beauty, so it might be slightly more common than we actually think. And the Star-faced Black Beauty slightly more rare.

Through the 1950s and early 1960s, Breyer seemed to have an "as above, so below" policy when it came to the Western Horses and Ponies. Except for the Dark Brown - and the Star-faced Black Beauty Ponies, who share the same item number. That, and their decorative similarities lead us to the conclusion that the Star-faced Black Beauty Western Ponies were the variation - of the Dark Brown, created when the Plum Brown plastic finally ran out.  

Due to the ephemera gaps of the 1950s, we can’t be sure when the transition happened. It was somewhere between 1956 and 1958, since the No. 40 Western Pony is listed on a 1958 dated price list - and is shown in a ca. 1958 Dealer Catalog - as "Black Beauty". I tend to believe it was earlier rather than later, hence my "ca. 1956" dating.

On a final note, I have to admit that I snicker a little bit every time I see or hear the term "Plum Brown" used to describe this brown plastic we’ve been discussing today. "Plum Brown" has always struck me as a very pleasant euphemism for the word "Prune".

We’re very fond of describing horse colors using food words: Olive Bay, Mulberry Gray, and Peach Dun. But Prune Brown? It doesn't sound quite so yummy.

Mold Marked Fury Prancers

Something short today; I am still recovering from the minor medical procedure I had done on Wednesday. Again, it’s nothing serious: I had to change my sleeping position until the incision heals, and I am not getting a lot of quality sleep time as a result.

I was fortunate to acquire a number of Fury Prancers in one of my recent collection purchases, though space being what it is around here, I wasn’t able to keep any for myself. What was most interesting about them was that most had the circular mold mark. You can just barely see it on this Palomino one:

The Fury Prancer was issued in multiple colors - Palomino, Alabaster, Black Pinto, Palomino Pinto, Black Beauty - from ca. 1956 and probably through 1961, being replaced ca. 1962 by the Western Prancing Horse. (It was also issued in Woodgrain and in Blue, but both of those appear to be special run/special order things with very narrow production windows that didn't cross the mold mark divide, either way.)

Like most molds still in production at the time, it received the circular mold mark ca. 1960.

The #27 TV’s Fury - the solid Black, with 4 socks and a star - isn’t uncommonly found with it; they did make him for at least another five or so years after that, through 1965. But other Prancers in other colors are somewhat more difficult to find, which makes sense: they were made for two years, at most. It’s the two years near the end of their run too, when production quantities already tend to be lower.

While I was a bit bummed that I couldn't hoard them like I wanted to, I took some consolation in the fact that Mold Marked Fury Prancers are not extravagantly more rare than the unmarked ones, and many collectors haven’t turned their attention towards that mold variation - yet.

As more collectors focus on collecting specific molds, colors, or eras, I think mold variations like this will become more significant in terms of collectibility and value. As they already have with the Clydesdale Stallion, and are beginning to do so with the Family Arabians and the Quarter Horse Gelding. 

I wasn’t able to detect any other obvious or subtle mold changes between the pre-mold mark and post-mold mark Fury Prancers, but they didn’t stick around long enough for me to notice, either. Another research topic tossed onto the "look into it later" pile, I guess.

After a Night of Writing, Furiously

So there, ta-dah!

Actually, I’m not that excited about it; basically the story got a little too big to handle too quickly, and like the last time, I ended up dispensing with a lot of plot offstage, this time in some flashbacks and an extended epilogue. And the original beginning I had planned became the end. For now.

I thought it started well, and it’s certainly salvageable. Just…yeah, it's over and done with. I can move on to other projects for a month or two, without the word count guilt.

In celebration, I ate a bunch of curly fries and opened up a couple packages, including my fancy new Prancer:

Nifty! I do find the black reins are a little distracting, the mock overspray a bit silly and overdone, and most Fury/Prancers didn’t come with painted eyewhites (only some of the Black Beauties did).

But unlike the upcoming Retro Release on the Western Pony, this one kinda-sorta looks like something that could have been made back then. Sort of like what a Connoisseur would have looked like if the program existed fifty years ago.

(A Connoisseur Racehorse does make me giggle. I’d probably buy it, too.)

Looking at the snap saddle makes me wish (again) Reeves would institute a spare parts program as a perk of the Collector’s Club or Vintage Club. I think a lot of people would appreciate being able to get replacement hats for their Old Timers, and replacement saddles for their Western Horses/Ponies/Prancers. (And the hats would make excellent keychains. Just saying!)

That’s all you’re getting today: my brain is still totally fried from yesterday’s massive write-a-thon.

I think I’ll go make cookies; I’m thinking something in the shortbread family, but I have a gluten-free chocolate walnut meringue-type thingie that I’ve been itching to try. (Not because I have to, but because I want to. They sound absolutely decadent. I could use a little decadence right now.)  

Coincidence, not Intent

Like a lot of hobbyists, I was sort of expecting that since it was intended as a "gift" that there would be few (if any) of the Glossy War Horse SRs up for pre-sale. Then one person gets a $500 offer, and bingo, at least two others turn up on MH$P with similar starting prices.

Oh well. At least none of them have shown up on eBay. Yet.

(Nothing wrong with them reselling it, but I always thought the number one rule on regifting was being discreet about it. I suppose "not listing it on eBay" counts as discretion, nowadays.)

I wouldn’t read too much into Reeves having an account on eBay themselves, now (breyeranimalcreations); according to their profile, they’ve had it since February of 2009, and are only now starting to use it, presumably as part of their increased online presence.

I don’t foresee them using the account to actively compete against other hobbyists/vendors; I could see them using it to make things like Test Colors, Artist’s Proofs, and charity models (like Hermes?) available to people who couldn’t attend or participate in the events they are usually exclusive to. That would be a good thing, I think. (Online auctions ending simultaneous to the BreyerFest ones would create some interesting theatre, don’t you think?)

As I mentioned in the last post, the only 2012 release I’ll be actively looking for in the coming year will be the new Fury/Prancer, partly because he was so completely unexpected. He’s right up there on the list of "models least likely to get a rerelease," at least as a free-standing piece.

I wouldn’t call myself the Fury/Prancer mold’s number one fan, but I like him enough to put him in my masthead. A Black Pinto Prancer was one of my first "official" hobby purchases; I bought it, sight unseen, excited at the possibility of owning a model that was born before I was.

The color they selected for the new release is interesting; when I first saw it, it made me think of the small SR or Test Color batch Bay Pinto Western Prancing Horses Breyer made sometime in the late 1960s. Here’s a picture of one from Marney’s album, which I presume was hers:


I’m going to assume the selection of the color is a coincidence, and not an intentional homage to this known Breyer obscurity. They wanted to go with a suitably vintage-looking paint job, and the Fury/Prancer came in just about every color they made back then, except some variation of the Bay. Reeves could have gone with something solid, like a Charcoal, or with another pattern, like Gray Appaloosa, but I get the sense they were fairly committed to a pinto paint job.

If the mold’s currently in production, there’s always the possibility of one of those other vintage-flavored releases this year, right? I’d especially be interested in a Gray Appaloosa one, myself.

Rinty and The War Horse

I should probably go buy a lottery ticket: not only did I win one of those auctions I didn’t think I had a shot on, I got picked for the Glossy War Horse giveaway, too.

I had completely forgotten about it most of Christmas Day, until my brother asked me about it. I had a good excuse: dinner included Barbecue Ribs, Mashed Potatoes with cheese and bacon, Roasted Cauliflower with Garlic Breadcrumbs, and Rhubarb Pie. I think cookies may been involved, but I might have passed out before then.

The office was already looking a wee bit crowded, but now it looks like my plans to lay off any serious selling until Spring might have to be modified.

I might still put it off. Other than the Vintage Club stuff, and the "Limited Edition Retro Release" of the Fury/Prancer next year, I don’t foresee myself adding too many more herd members between now and then. I like the Roan Bouncer, too, but as hot as that mold is right now, I’m more than happy to let other folks buy up the first few batches. There's always the possibility that Reeves might pull another semi-random gloss/matte thing too, like they did with the Valentine and Heartbreaker set.

(With the Lady Phase set most likely, if they do. Because the possibility of random gloss Bouncers is a little too terrifying to contemplate.)


Among my more conventional holiday gifts was the book about Rin Tin Tin I had mentioned earlier. Just as I suspected, the "figurine" that inspired the author Susan Orlean to write the book - and to which she devotes the entire prologue to - was a Breyer Rin Tin Tin: there’s a picture of one right on page two.

I haven’t had a chance to read the book yet, but from my brief skimming of the text, it's not only central to the narrative, it's actually called out as a Breyer. So what we’ve got here is a book by a bestselling author that really was inspired by a Breyer model.

Sweet. I mean, I would have bought the book anyway, since I'm also a little obsessed with silent movies in general, but goodness, silent movies and Breyer models, all in one book? Put the cookie dough back in the freezer, ladies, I am out for the count.

In light of their promotion surrounding The War Horse (another story about an animal, set during the First World War), of the launching of the Vintage Club, and (what I presume will be a series of) Limited Edition Retro Releases, re-releasing the Rin Tin Tin seems like the most logical and obvious thing to do, n’est-ce pas?

Regardless, it’s still a book worth adding to your Breyer reference library, if you’re into that sort of thing as much as I am. (As I assume a significant portion of you do.)

Finishing the Tack Discussion

There’s nothing like a dental appointment to mess with your head. Everything was more or less okay, and my dentist is a peach, but a family history of really bad teeth makes even routine cleanings more stressful than commuting in a blizzard.

I haven’t been paying much attention to the news and rumors concerning the fate of Just About Horses. (See above.) I’m not crazy about the notion of another model horse magazine going away. While a significant chunk of the model horse world is online, the bigger portion of it isn’t, and cutting off another line of communication with the offline world is not a good thing for the long-term health of the hobby.

I’ve already filled my quota of unhappy and unpleasant thoughts for the week, so it’s not something I want to dwell on today. Let’s finally finish up that molded-on tack discussion I started a few centuries ago, instead.

There is at least one Breyer mold with molded-on tack that was not directly derived from another manufacturer’s mold: the Western Prancing Horse. It is derivative, but of another Breyer mold - the Fury/Prancer. (I’m pretty sure the Fury/Prancer wasn’t derived from another manufacturer’s mold, though like most of Breyer history, one can never be 100 percent sure.)


The pose is reversed, and the breastcollar is missing from the WPH, but everything else - saddle, chain reins, attitude, scale and (some) colors - seems to indicate that Breyer intended the WPH to be an upgrade of the Fury/Prancer mold. The timing seems right, too: the individual, non-Fury Prancers were discontinued in either 1961 or 1962, and the WPH probably debuted in 1962.

Another interesting difference is his saddle: it’s a slip-on. As far as I know, the Western Prancing Horse never came with a snap-on saddle, like the Western Horse and Pony did until 1966/7. It was a slip-on from day one.

That’s not to say there haven’t been rumors of other Prancing Horse saddles. I’ve heard a few - and saw a photo of an alleged one. I wouldn’t be surprised if was real. I could see Breyer using a temporary replacement saddle while they were working out some last-minute kinks in the mold, maybe. Or making a last minute change, and a few samples of the prototypes just happened to sneak out.

Or… almost anything, really. This speculative saddle could simply be the creation of some accessories mixed up at a yard sale, and my own wishful thinking. (A Chalky Smoke Western Prancing Horse was my second model after the Traditional Man o’ War, so I my love for the mold runs a little deeper than most.)

Until something more concrete surfaces (a MIB example, vintage photographs, company ephemera, etc.) it’s going to stay in the rumor file.

Tracking Tack

Busy, busy, busy: shipping packages, making holiday ornaments, chasing down the dog. I spent a good half an hour today chasing her through the more wooded areas of our subdivision today - and another half pulling all the burrs out of my coat. No sweaters for Vita this Christmas - the little monster loves it cold!

In between the random moments of chaos, I’ve decided undertake another research topic: tack and accessories. (I have the week off, I might as well take advantage of it, right?)

I’ve pretty much ignored the subject of tack altogether: whenever I had a choice between buying more horses, or more tack, I almost always bought the horse. After a few half-hearted attempts at making my own, I came to the realization that I didn’t have that special kind of crazy in me to be a performance shower.

This lack of engagement also extended to Breyer-made tack and accessories, unless it came in a set with a particularly interesting horse (i.e. ill-fated Palomino Adios) or was being modeled by one (the never-released Slate Gray Smart Chic Olena.)

Although Breyers came with molded-on tack and accessories from the very beginning, it wasn’t until the early 1970s that they started selling tack and accessories independent from the models themselves. I’ll only have about 40 years worth of research to do, instead of 60+, and I’m not going to bother trying to track down every color or design change. I don’t think most people are interested in Breyer tack and accessories to that level of detail, yet.

I’m only doing it for my own peace of mind: if it’s a Breyer product, I have to keep track of it. Heck, I keep track of dealer assortment numbers, store assortment numbers, and mold numbers, so why not obsess over tack a while? Someone’s gotta do it, right?

Since I don’t have any great insights into the world of Breyer tack right now, I’ll just share a photograph of a model whose rarity is solely defined by its tack:


It’s the #P45 White Fury/Prancer, with the incredibly scarce English Saddle option: the Racehorse’s saddle, with the Canadian Mountie’s saddle blanket in red.


When the Fury/Prancer was originally released in 1956, it could be ordered with either a Western or an English saddle. The fine print on the original dealer sheet explains why more dealers didn’t go with the English Saddle option: they had to ask for it!


All mention of the English Saddle option is gone by 1958; considering its rarity, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was discontinued by 1957. If you’re lucky, you’ll see maybe one of these turn up in any given year, where they’re sometimes mistaken as a variation of the Canadian Mountie’s horse.

That’s what I assumed when I found mine at the local flea market, until I showed a picture of mine to Marney, and she set me straight. That 1956 dealer sheet - something I didn't have access to, then - is the only paper evidence we have of what it really was.

Furious

Such an aggravating day! Not a single darn thing went right. I just had to throw out a sewing project that absolutely refused to cooperate. It was one of those easy, "one day" projects, according to the magazine I took it from - ha!

I hate wasting all that time and fabric, but sometimes you’ve just got to cut your losses and move on, y’know?

Speaking of vexations, let’s get back to Fury. Here’s a not very good photograph of a variation you don’t see too often: no socks!


There are lots and lots of variations on the original Fury, but that's not today's topic. Today's topic is much more fundamental: when was he released?

Breyer was pretty good about developing and marketing products of the licenses they did acquire in the 1950s. Lassie, Rin Tin Tin and Circus Boy all came out in a timely manner, not long after the shows debuted. But not Fury: even thought the show debuted in October 1955, I haven’t been able to find any documentation for the Fury model prior to 1958.

The Prancer mold was up and running for the Davy Crockett set by mid-1955, so the Fury model could have been good-to-go for the Christmas 1955 season, but no mail order catalogs from that year have shown one. He’s nowhere to be found in the multitude of 1956 articles and press releases, either. I wouldn’t rule out 1957 - there’s still plenty of digging to do there - but I don’t see him any of the 1957 materials I have at the moment.

It seems odd that Breyer wouldn’t have release a Fury until 1958 - nearly two and a half years after the show went on the air. Did someone else have the license for a model, and fail to make good on it? Was there a legal issue that had to be hammered out? Or was the licensing program for the show just a little slow on the draw?

The research I’ve done on non-Breyer Fury merchandise so far seems to hint that licensing for the show didn’t get fully underway until about … 1958. There were a few bits and pieces before then, but 1958 seems to have been the year they decided to go all out with books, comics, puzzles and the like - all the usual dime store novelties boomer kids dropped their cash on.

So that last possibility might be closest to the truth. 1958 might be the Fury’s true release date - unless further evidence proves otherwise.

Even though the merchandising might have gotten off to a late start, it wasn’t short-lived. Fury merchandise continued to be produced well after the show stopped production in 1960, in part because NBC kept the show on - renamed Brave Stallion - as a part of their Saturday Morning children’s programming until 1966. The same year - not coincidentally - that Breyer finally discontinued the Fury for good.

A Little More About Kit

Reeves released photos of the Sneak Peeks for 2011, and the biggest nonsurprise there is a Giselle and Gilen set. They look quite lovely in Bay - continuing in the whole Running Mare and Foal theme, maybe? (I was secretly hoping for a Black/Dark Gray mare and light/white foal combo, myself.)

I hope their imminent arrival spares a few of the SRs - especially the beautiful Melanges - from the chopping block. (A matching foal for her would be a fine and lovely thing, I think. Aren’t we about due for another Web Special? Hmm.)

I had a serious case of writer’s block yesterday, so I spent the day going through my pile of unprocessed research notes. Not the new stuff I picked up at the main branch of the DPL back in September: most of this pile is old research, some of it dating back to the 1980s. I never had a framework to put it into before, but now that I do - along with the time to do it - I figured I might as well tackle it.

Most of it is secondary or supplemental research, the kind of data I’d find while researching something else for work or school. I’d get bored, or squirrely, or nauseous from the fumes of musty old issues of Gazette des Beaux-Arts, and off I’d go in search of something more interesting (or at least, less aromatic) to read.

One of those more interesting reads was Hal Erickson’s Syndicated Television: The First Forty Years 1947-1987. After looking up all my old favorites - Superman, Star Trek, Mr. Ed - I then proceeded to look up some of the shows I knew Breyers were based on: Lassie, Rin Tin Tin, Fury, and … Kit Carson.

While doing my original blog post on Kit Carson, I was rather curious about the reasons why the show had, despite its popularity, so quickly disappeared from public consciousness. Lots of shows from that era continued on in syndication for decades, accruing new generations of fans. But not Kit Carson: the show seems to have just gradually faded away.

I had initially chalked the lack of enthusiasm about the show to its lack of originality. Erickson goes into a little detail about this:

Filmed at Republic Studios, the 104-episode Kit Carson was for a time syndicated television’s top-rated Western. Today it is largely forgotten. Perhaps this is because Carson was so derivative of most of the other Westerns of its era that one wonders why the producers were never sued.

Ouch!

Actually, the biggest reason why Kit Carson vanished was because its star, Bill Williams, didn’t want anything to do with it anymore. Erickson, again:

Former RKO leading man Bill Williams played Kit Carson; he approached the role as a job of work, with minimal exertion of personality or enthusiasm, and when the series ended, Williams declared publicly that he never wanted anything to do with Kit Carson ever again. Such words were the "kiss of death" to a syndicated western, where continuous personal appearances were ever so important.

As I mentioned before, pursuing a license from might not have been that big of a concern for Breyer. That the show was no longer being promoted nationally may have made it even less of a priority. They had already made their pile of cash from the Davy Crockett mold, and any profit they made from the Kit Carsons, however small it may have been, was theirs free and clear.

Next time we’ll talk about a TV license that worked out well - very well - for Breyer: Fury.

The Original Black Beauty

I have a small confession to make: I don’t like Anna Sewell’s Black Beauty. Most of my attempts to read it ended with me throwing my copy against the nearest wall. It’s not something I normally do with any book that displeases me, so I’ll just chalk it up to my low tolerance for Victorian sentimentality.

When you grow up in an environment encrusted with Victoriana, you either learn to love that particular aesthetic, or ignore it … and I don’t love it. I’m more of a gee-whiz, streamlined, hope-for-a-better-future Art Deco gal. (A bit of a contradiction for someone who researches history, I know.)

On the other hand, I do like Breyer’s early Black Beauties: not the seemingly endless reissues and reinterpretations of the horse from the book, but the color itself.

The color "Black Beauty" first appeared in the ca. 1953 catalog sheets, in reference to the Western Horse and Pony: the Western Horse is #58, and the Western Pony is #44. By 1958, the number on the Western Pony changes to #40, the Western Horse disappears completely, and the Fury/Prancer is now listed as being available in this color. From the 1958 price list:


The term is not used as a color descriptor, but as a proper name. Here’s another part of that 1958 price list that clarifies this point: the model doesn’t come in "Black Beauty," it is Black Beauty:


The Black Beauty terminology is dropped in the 1960 Dealer’s Catalog, and the color simply becomes "Black." The Western Horse reappears in this color, too, as #50. A Mission Supply House mailer from ca. 1961 still refers to all three as "Black Beauty," but Red Bird Sales pages from roughly the same time period call them "Black."

Confused yet? It gets worse: there are at least three different variations of this color!

The earliest "Black Beauties" - the #44 Pony, and the #58 Horse - were solid, glossy black plastic, with metallic gold hooves and trim. The Prancer never came in this variation, as far as I know. It may have been discontinued by 1955, but it’s difficult to tell precisely due to the lack of paper evidence.


The second version of "Black Beauty" was the version I discussed in my last post, with four white stockings, gray hooves, and a masked star or blaze. Only the Western Pony and the Fury/Prancer came in this color. Since the #27 Fury has nearly the same paint job as the #P40 Black Beauty Prancer, it can be hard to distinguish between the two. Black Fury/Prancers are usually only identified as #P40 Prancers if they still have their original chain reins and western saddles.

Both the Western Pony and the Fury/Prancer were used in Horse and Rider sets in this color, adding to the confusion. Some of the Horse and Rider set Fury/Prancers had the wider, Davy Crockett Horse blazes, but not all. This variation appears in the 1958 Dealer’s Catalog.

Dating this color variation is very difficult, especially since they share the same issue number - and markings - as the Plum Browns. The Plum Browns predate the Blacks, and probably "evolved" into the Black Beauties once they ran out of the colored acetate: all they had to do was change the name on the pricelist, and carry on.

All three models came in the third and final version of "Black Beauty." This color is quite distinctive, and in my opinion is the most attractive of the three: bald face, 4 stockings, a white tail tip, and silver trim on the saddle and molded on tack:


This color also varies the most of the three: the markings can be white plastic, or overpainted, or some combination of the two; handpainted eyewhites are also sometimes seen.

A Western Horse in this variation appears in the 1960 Montgomery Wards catalog; it’s possible that they may have started manufacturing it up to a year earlier, but until more evidence shows up, we can never really know for sure.

The same can be said for their discontinuation dates: all we have are rough boundaries here. They all appear in the ca. 1960 Dealer’s Catalog, and are all gone from the 1963 Dealer’s Catalog. I’m pretty sure the Fury/Prancer mold, with the exception of Fury himself, was discontinued in 1961. But according to the Red Bird Sales pages, the Western Horse was still available in 1962.

All three variations are fairly rare; I’ve been told that the solid blacks are the rarest of the three, but it’s hard for me to judge. I purchased a primo pair back in 1980 (one of my earliest "hobby" purchases) and consequently haven’t paid too much attention to their market prices.

I’ve had the most trouble finding the silver-tipped third version, but I think that’s mostly an issue of condition, not availability. Since most third version models were molded in white plastic, and not black, rubs are just more prevalent - or noticeable.

Plum Brown

I’m still suffering from a motivational deficit. I tried to brush it off with a marathon of paper shredding yesterday, but the enthusiam didn’t stick. I think it’s the weather: not the lack of sun, but the lack of heat. I don’t get a lot of projects done in the wintertime, because it’s incredibly difficult to get anything done when your swaddled in a half dozen blankets and quilts (unless what you're working on is actually a quilt!)

Laugh if you must, but I was secretly hoping I’d get a zebra-print Snuggie from Santa this year. Nope, just a peachy keen new laptop and some fancy chocolates. And speaking of chocolate…

Here are two different pre-1960 Western Ponies. Notice anything different between the two?


It's a little hard to tell, but the one with darker hooves is dark brown. It’s a color hobbyists call "Plum Brown" because it often comes with purplish undertones, though mine is more dark chocolate-colored. The base color is colored plastic that, as we’ve discussed before, was not an uncommon Breyer painting shortcut in the 1950s.

There are only two models known that came in this brown color: Davy Crockett’s Fury/Prancer horse from the Horse and Rider set, and the Western Pony. Both are painted with masked facial markings, 4 stockings and dark gray hooves.

For the longest time, we didn’t know anything at all about these Plum Brown models, and just assumed that they were a color variation of the Black. We didn’t learn that they were separate and distinct releases until copies of an undated catalog page/flier started circulating among collectors. From the reverse:


It was widely presumed that Breyer also made a Brown Western Horse. It was a logical presumption to make: they did make a brown Fury/Prancer and Western Pony, and our fragmentary documentation from the 1950s didn't rule out the possibility. Why not a Western Horse? Some collectors even claimed that they had one in their herds.

Then I saw one of those alleged Western Horses in person and realized it was just a copy, and not a very good one at that. The plastic was wrong, the color was wrong, the hooves were poorly sculpted - even the reins were wrong! They also have metallic gold shading that’s not seen on either the Plum Brown Fury/Prancer or Western Pony. It’s as if they were actually trying to imitate a bronze finish; I believe the manufacturer of these odd and early knock-offs was probably taking its design cues more from pot metal carnival horses than the plastic Breyer versions.

The Fury/Prancer is far more common than the Western Pony in this color, possibly because the Plum Brown Fury/Prancer was not only used with another Horse and Rider set - the Canadian Mountie - it was also sold separately. The Western Pony mold was used on a few Horse and Rider sets, such as the Indian, the Cowboy, and Kit Carson, but I can’t recall ever seeing an original set with the Plum Brown Pony.

Not much is known about the Plum Brown Western Pony, other than its appearance on that single, undated (ca. 1956) catalog page and his hasty retreat: he was gone from the 1958 catalog and price list. Maybe, as I hypothesized with the Pink and Blue Elephants, he was designed to use up the colored acetate they had lying around the factory.

It may be that the Plum Brown Western Pony’s rarity isn’t as profound as we perceive it: in low light, and at first glance, they can be indistinguishable from the somewhat more common Black Beauty version. None of the Black Beauties are really "common" either, but I’ll discuss that in my next post.

Idocus and the Replacement Theory

Wow. I won a Valiant - third Connoisseur in the last six tries, and with just one subscription, too! Wish that kind of luck would rub off on the rest of my life.

I wasn’t all that impressed with the Idocus resin I saw at BreyerFest last year - he was pleasant enough, but seemed a little stiff looking. I finally got a look at a plastic one in person a few months ago, and changed my mind: being molded in plastic actually improved him. (Though I know some sculptors will never, ever admit that’s the case.)

He’s like the Trakehner mold’s sexier brother with a better haircut. Mon-el to Superboy, in comic book geek-speak. (With Smallville renewed for two seasons, there better darn well be at least one Mon-el episode in the works. But I digress…)

With the Idocus, though, I am reminded of something I call my "Replacement Theory": every so often, Breyer either consciously or unconsciously "upgrades" a model with an entirely new, but strikingly similar one.

The first "replacement" mold was the Western Prancing Horse: he "replaced" the Fury-Prancer. The Fury-Prancers were discontinued in 1961, and the WPH came out in 1962. They’re similarly posed, have molded on tack and removable saddles - and even their names are similar!

The second "replacement" mold was Man o’ War: he "replaced" the Race Horse. The Race Horse was discontinued in 1966, and the Man o’ War debuted in 1967. They’re both standing chestnut Thoroughbreds with molded on halters, neatly groomed manes and long tails. And the Man o’ War’s original name: Race Horse ("Man o’ War"). Here's a scan from the 1968 Collector's Manual:


Cue the spooky music!

See where I’m going with this? Is Idocus the "replacement" mold for the Trakehner?

Probably not, only because I don’t think the original Trakehner mold is going to disappear down the memory hole like the Fury and Race Horse mold did when they were replaced. (The Fury mold did continue on its own for a few years after - but only as the Fury, and that may have been a contractual thing.)

The original Trakehner mold, as far as I know, is just fine - physically, and aesthetically. What’s going on here is that Reeves is just adding another standing Warmblood to their repertoire - something in a sleeker, more modern style, much like the Rejoice was sort of an updated and more modern looking Saddlebred-like horse to complement the Five-Gaiter, who certainly hasn’t disappeared. (Hello, Gala!)

(No nattering about how neither one is a good representative of a Saddlebred - work with me here, people! We’re talking a matter of type, not quality!)

This isn’t my only silly Breyer theory. Most aren’t worth talking about, though, or even have much relevance to discussions of history. Though I might get around to discussing the "15 Year Rule" eventually, since the flea market season is in full swing…