Reinterpretations

A little over a month to BreyerFest, and I don’t even have my sales list done yet. (About the only thing going remotely well is my diorama entry, for some strange reason.)

Sigh.

I am guessing that there is not going to be much sleep for me between now and then?

One of the pieces I have managed to pull is my 1995 QVC Gem Twist. I have a lot of Jumping Horses as it is – including one Test and a Sample Kiowa – and I’d like to make room for a State Line Tack Jumpin’ Jupiter, because I think it’s just flat out the prettiest Jumping Horse release ever.

The QVC Gem Twist wasn’t technically a rerelease or reissue of the original Gem Twist – the former USET team member and Olympic medalist was still available in his original color and mold #495 – but a reinterpretation, I guess?

I found it very strange.

In 2002, they did another QVC “reinterpretation” – this time of the #718 General Lee’s Traveller. Instead of using the original Traditional Man o’ War mold, they used the San Domingo:

In this case, it made some sense to use a different mold, since he had been discontinued for a while (since 1999) and they also reissued the Traditional Man o’ War for QVC that year, too – as Man o’ War. Two releases on the same mold in the same year probably wouldn’t have flown with QVC.

Normally I’m not a fan of San Domingo in solid colors, and I had been having a hard time finding an acceptable Man o’ War Traveler to add to the herd – most of them either had weird trimming flaws or paint goobers – but I went ahead and bought this Traveler anyway.

And it turns out, I not only really liked him, he’s probably one of my favorite San Domingo releases ever, of the ones I can afford.

(The ones I love that I can’t afford? The 1997 Volunteer Model Moccasin, the BreyerFest 1999 Raffle Ransom. Or those Dealer Catalog Tests for the Stock Horse Stallion that EVERYBODY wants….)

Desi, The Rare Gem Twist

I really like the Open Show Reserve Prize this year, the Gem Twist Desi in Dark Bay Appaloosa:

While there are some scarcer-than-average Gem Twist releases – the Dark Dapple Gray 2002 QVC release, and the 2006 USET Special Run Exclusive Authentic come to mind – there aren’t a lot of rarities. Until the addition of Desi, the mold was a relatively easy one to collect.

It’s a moderately popular mold that I thought might have been a good candidate for the BreyerFest Surprise model this year, since there is hardly anything “colorful” in this model’s production past. Lots of room to experiment!

There has been only one other production run in Appaloosa (the #726 Gray Appaloosa Sport Horse in 1998-1999), and one in Pinto (the flashy #1705 Pinto Sport Horse 2013 Mid-Year release). The closest thing we’ve gotten to a Decorator was the very pearly Petsmart Special Run of Snowman, from 2005.

(My personal favorite!)

There has been a fair smattering of Test Colors, though.

The only other thing worth noting today – aside from the mold’s obvious USET connections, as a portrait of the legendary show jumper Gem Twist – is that when it debuted in 1993 it was the first Kathleen Moody mold designed for injection molded plastic. Kathleen’s earlier molds for Breyer included pieces in the Porcelain Evolution of the Horse Series, starting with the Icelandic Pony in 1992.

It’s hard to believe that Kathleen’s been doing molds for Breyer for 25 years now! And me so old I can remember when she was a mere mortal, like the rest of us.

Oh No, Not Again - Again!

I had heard rumors about as-yet-unreleased Reissues being spotted at the Factory Tours during the latest Exclusive Event, but I hadn’t given them much thought. I assumed that they’d spring them on us the way they did last year. You know, just setting them out in the Sales Tent, no announcements or nothing.

Nope. Say hello to the latest Warehouse Finds.

I swear I did not know they were being released on the web site this week, just a few days after I mentioned my hunch. I had a hunch something was coming because we had the White Moose Ghost in March of last year, and the Buried Treasure Lusitano in April the year before.

Logic and recent history.

Sometimes, though, I feel like Reeves is punking me. (Decorator Khemos? Let’s do it! Another web site surprise? Let's move it up to this week!)

So anyway, I bought a Pacer and an Old Timer. because those are molds on my "Approved to Buy" List. I picked up a Sucesion and LeFire too because I’ve been wanting to upgrade my set for a long time, and the prices for them on eBay have been out of my league.

430006 Quarter Horse - Blue Roan (AQHA Horse)
430007 Standardbred - Chestnut (Pacer)
430010 Thoroughbred - Chestnut (Halla/Bolya)
430011 Arabian Mare and Foal (Sucesion and LeFire)
430012 Redmond - Bay (Midnight Sun)
430019 Paint Horse - Bay (Cody/Ranch Horse)
430020 Old Timer - Appaloosa

The Old Timer is sans blinkers and hat, like the Palomino, but it’s too soon to tell just how much the other Reissues vary from the originals, outside of the VIN numbers and better executed paint jobs.

I have a feeling that the Midnight Sun will be the Huck Bey of this group - different enough from the original it was inspired from to qualify as a distinct release on its own. It even has a "real" name as opposed to a generic descriptive one, which I find interesting.

Plus, it’s been 25 years since the original #704 was discontinued, back when Reeves was still having some significant quality control issues. He’ll be different just by virtue of that. (I remember liking the release back then, and having a very hard time finding one that did not have major issues.)

It might be worth noting that this may represent the last official production release of the Midnight Sun mold. Due to the ongoing issues within the real world of Tennessee Walking Horses, there hasn’t been an official production release of the Midnight Sun mold since the last Special Run was made for WCHE in 2002.

The only other Midnight Suns we’ve seen in the meantime have been either auction pieces, or the Unpainted ones Reeves has periodically tried to sell us at BreyerFest.

Those "Whiteware" collections might be the key to figuring out what Reissues may be coming down the pipeline in the future. (There are gaps in the Reissue numbering system that still haven’t been accounted for yet. Seems inevitable to me.) The last boxed Whiteware sets included the following molds:

• Sucesion and LeFire
• Gem Twist
• Belgian
• Cody/Ranch Horse
• Midnight Sun
• Clock Saddlebred
• Clydesdale Mare
• Family Arabian Stallion
• Stock Horse Stallion (original tail)
• Shetland Pony
• Western Prancing Horse

Six of the twelve have turned up as Reissues! So I wouldn’t be surprised to see some of the other six show up soon. Gem Twist seems the most likely choice, but I would be most excited about the Western Prancing Horse. (Another one on my Buy List!)

Reeves has disabled the parts of the inventory system that allowed us to figure out the rough counts, but (no surprise) the Sucesion and LeFire sets are already gone. Everything else still seems to be available, though.

White Jumping Horses

For your viewing pleasure, pictures of the White Jumping Horses mentioned in the previous post. First, the QVC SR Gem Twist, in a semi-chalky finish:


He’s not super common; one of the many QVC Special Runs that flew under the radar, due to a lack of promotional support. He was one of those weird reissues - like the San Domingo "Traveler" - where they put the paint job distinctive of the original release on a completely different mold.

It’s an interesting, and a not unappealing idea. Five-Gaiter Sorrel on a Clock Saddlebred? Yellow Mount on the modified Stock Horse Stallion? The old Leopard pattern from the POA, on a Bouncer? I would buy most of these.

I suspect others would, too. Especially the Sorrel on the Clock Saddlebred; I think he’d look great in that color. (Semi-gloss - with eyewhites, of course!)

Here’s the Jumping Horse that I found in the Bentley Sales dump bins at Model Horse Congress, back in the Dark Ages. He originally came with a factory unpainted jump, which I still have; when I do display him, I usually put him on one of my spare painted jumps, for a dressier look.


I’d actually classify him as a borderline Test Color/Cull, since he doesn’t have a lot detail on him, outside of his head, and there’s a little roughness to his body texture that suggests he may have spent some time in a cull bin. I still think he’s pretty darn cool, regardless. He was one of my earliest Tests/Culls, so I have a lot of sentimental attachment to him.

Most of my Jumping Horses are not out for display right now, because like a few other molds that shall remain nameless, he takes up way too much shelf space. I used to have a substantial number of variations of the Bay - whose sock variations verge on the countless - until I realized that I’d never be able to display them in a way that would do them justice.

I still have more than an average collector should have, though. Just not as many as I used to.

I’m taking it as a very, very bad sign that I have already given the Best of British Contest Prize Horse a name, in the exceedingly rare possibility that I might win one. It’s based on one of the ideas I’m thinking about for my entry, so of course I can’t tell you what this cool name is.

This idea I’m mulling over at the moment will likely go over the heads of the judges, again; I have a bad habit of being a little too clever for my own good. I sure wish I could figure out what the judging criteria for that contest is, because some people seem to have figured it out.

And regarding the Costume Contests, I think I need to remind some of newer or more casual readers that I was Princess Beatrice last year. I could potentially use it - with a little modification - for either contest, but using it for both might be tacky. I do have another idea for the Poppycock Parade that might be worth pursuing (funny + only slightly inappropriate) but I might not be able to fit the components in the vehicle, on top of all the other things I usually bring along.

Argh! It’s way too early for me to be spending this much brainpower on anything for BreyerFest!

Minding the Gaps

The flea market was uncharacteristically depressing. The weather was nice, if a bit cold, but a big chunk of the dealers didn’t bother to show up. Many of those that did were very territorial about their preferred spaces, so that led to a lot of unnecessarily large gaps between them. The whole place looked and felt like a ghost town.

There were a few horses there, but nothing worth buying. All I picked up were some groceries and a couple of inexpensive sterling silver rings. (I’m wearing one right now. I generally go through life fairly unadorned, but it slipped on my finger like it had always been there. Pretty little thing, too - looks like a hobby casting.)

There was a fairly big antique show the week before, which explained that week’s low turnout, but this week? Yeah, it’s October - big yuck - but even so, the turnout is usually better than that.

The restoration projects from the week before went okay. The Gem Twist cleaned up real nice; I wouldn’t call him "live show quality," but he’s definitely not going to shame anybody’s shelf. I was a little concerned about his yellowing, since I hadn’t seen - or dealt with - a yellowed Gem Twist before.


The original release of Gem Twist came in an odd, semi-chalky finish that Reeves experimented with for a few years; they used a very flat, matte white paint as a basecoat, and applied some light shading over top of it. The original release of the Pluto mold came with a similar paint job, and a sprinkling of other Regular Runs and Special Runs have since then. Unlike earlier - and later - white basecoats, the paint isn’t used as a base to apply another color over top of it: it clearly being used as the primary component of the intended color.

I hadn’t seen - and never expected - a model that’s been painted white to turn yellow. Whatever the cause, a light and quick bleach bath got rid of most of the dinginess. The ease of his cleanup leads me to believe that it was just a very fine layer of grime (Air pollution? Ciggie smoke?), and not something inherent in the paint or plastic.

The speckled Fighting Stallion is still a work in progress. Most of the stains are gone, but some of the more persistent ones remain. On top of that, his extended time in the "dunk tank" has led to an unfortunate side effect: he now has a significant amount of water trapped inside him.

Many hobbyists become a little overly concerned about the lack of an obvious vent hole in their models. They needn’t be, especially with their more vintage pieces. Small splits and separations often occur along the seam lines - usually along the mane, between the ears, or under the tail - and they serve the same function as an intentional vent hole, which is to minimize the possibility of bloating and deformation.

In many cases, these seam splits are so slight, they’re basically invisible to the naked eye - until the model gets submerged in water, and a telltale trail of bubbles appears.

I left the Fighter to soak in the bleach bath overnight, so I didn’t notice where the bubbles were coming from - and I still don't know. The split is apparently small enough to allow water to seep in, but not seep out. So now he has a good 3 or 4 ounces of water sloshing around his insides. Amusing, but also annoying: I never thought he’d rise above being body box fodder, but now that he’s got a half cup or so of bleach water trapped inside, even that’s unlikely.

Just swell. Sigh.

An Interesting Twist

FYI: I wasn’t even aware of the high-priced resin on Auction Barn while composing my last post on money and value. I had seen that the discussion thread on Blab was insanely long, but hadn’t bothered to take a look because (a) I don’t have that kind of money to spend, (b) I don’t do resins, and (c) Auction Barn is just barely on my radar. (No slight on the site itself, it’s just that there’s generally nothing there of interest to me.) Me being totally crunched for time had a little to do with it, too.

It’s a shame that some thoughtless commenters have made the usual thoughtless comments, and have completely derailed what could have (actually, should have) been a meaningful discussion about the impact a sale like that has on the hobby. Instead, all we get are endless posts about how awesome capitalism is and how good this is for everybody involved - opinions that area about as controversial as the cuteness of kittens and puppies, and about as relevant.

I’m still a little discombobulated from the oral surgery yesterday, so that’s about as far as I’ll venture on that topic, for now. I’m hoping to incorporate most of what I need to say about it in an upcoming post about perspective (the philosophical kind. I’m decidedly less intrigued about the artistic variety.)

I finally found a little time yesterday to clean up the office a bit, so here’s a photo of a few of the weekend’s findings:


The Fighting Stallion is going to be a restoration experiment, the Bucking Bronco is a keeper (near mint, and just super!) and since I already own that particular variation of the Gem Twist, he'll be heading to the sales list after a bit more work.

The Gem Twist is from the first year of production (1993) and though you can’t see them in the photos, he sports the long, fully painted braids. The second version had the same braids, but with "ribbon dots" instead, and the third version had remodeled ribbons with similar dots. I don’t own the second version, but that’s more a matter of a lack of will than a reflection of its rarity: I have no idea which one is the rarest, to be honest. Haven’t bothered to do the research, though I probably should.

Aside from the ribbon remodeling, there was another significant, but invisible, change made to the mold: it was made less tippy. The earlier examples of the Gem Twist mold are extremely unstable; that glorious Moody tail made him exceptionally bottom heavy. You’ll find some that are "weighted" correctly, but it’s very hit or miss, and the guy I picked up Sunday is definitely a miss.

(He’s in otherwise pretty nice shape, other than a light scuffing and yellowing, so whoever owned him previously didn’t play with or display him much.)

Later models made with the Gem Twist mold tend to be less tippy, so Reeves was evidently aware of the problem, and took steps to correct it. I suspect some work was done on the interior surfaces of the mold (some areas shaved, others built up?) to even out the weight distribution. He’s still not the most trustworthy model on the shelf - none of mine are currently on display, mostly because of "Hurricane" Vita - but it does take a little bit more than a sneeze to knock the later examples over.