Blankets

When I was first finding my way around the hobby, it became pretty clear to me that I was not a tack and accessories person. Whenever a choice between a new saddle or a new horse had to be made, “new horse” always won.

There were some exceptions. I was fascinated by wagons, carts and sleighs (especially sleighs!), and I made a few fair-to-middling attempts at Hollywood-style Arabian Costumes. 

I have bought a few bits of Breyer Tack over the years, mostly because they came in sets and I am loathe to break apart sets on principle. And if I have been given promotional pieces, like the various blankets and things given out at BreyerFest on occasion, I never turned down those items down, either. 

One thing that’s just killing me, though, is this new Gift Set on the Breyer web site: the Le Mer with a sequined blanket. I bought this model all the way back in April because I though it was pretty – put that color on almost anything, and I’ll either buy it, or at least consider it – but you’re telling me if I had waited six months I could have gotten one with a super cool blanket with reversible sequins, too? 

Argh!

Sure, I could just go ahead and buy the set anyway – money is definitely not an issue for me right here, right now – but then I’d have to add another item to my already-too-big sales list. (I am hoping to get some stuff online by Thanksgiving week, but no promises!)

To throw a little history into the topic...

Saddle blankets have been a part of Breyer History since the literal beginning of Breyer History: the blankets for the Western Horse and Pony saddles have been molded into all their various permutations since the early 1950s. Fleece blankets were a component of the early Indian Horse and Rider Sets, too, and the Fury Prancers sold with English Saddles also came with separately-molded hard plastic saddle blankets. 

But the first official production release that came with fabric stable blankets was the #8384 Clydesdale Mare and Foal Set in 1971. Technically, some of the Groomers came with vinyl accessories that could have kinda-sorta passed for stable blankets in the 1950s. Not too many collectors are familiar with the latter: while Grooming Kits are not too hard to come by generally, the stable-blanket style ones are pretty tough. 

I have not lucked into one yet, but I live in hope!

Trailblazer

So this is why I’ve been a little cagey about my “Holiday Horse” customizing plans for the Western Horse:

In addition to all of the other decorative motifs I was going to incorporate, I was also going to stitch up a fabric facsimile of the original vinyl saddlebags (in something wintry/Christmassy) and pack it with an assortment of either old-fashioned (Chuckles, Tootsie Rolls) or thematically-appropriate (Candy Canes, Chocolate Santa) candies. You know, make it sort of a cross between the original Grooming Kits and the nearly-forgotten Candy Packers. You remember the “Candy Packers”, right?

But I didn’t want to mention any of that because I didn’t want to telegraph anything, even unintentionally; Lord knows I do it enough of that with stuff I genuinely have no foreknowledge of…

(Which I guess means this was a good thing that the 2019 VC Stablemates dropped when they did, because this was the post I was writing when that happened. So awkward!)

Incidentally, the prevalence and popularity of the Groomers is one of the reasons why the Palomino and White Western Ponies are so commonly found without saddles: it’s not that they were lost, but that they never came with saddles in the first place.

But it should go without saying that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Whenever I find one sans saddle, I just assume it’s been lost, unless I have some other evidence to the contrary. 

The Western Horse, however, was issued as a Groomer – aka the “Giant Groomer” – only briefly, so the possibility/likelihood of a saddle-free Western Horse being a Groomer is pretty small.

I wouldn’t say a vintage Giant Groomer is a grail of mine, but I certainly would be very pleased with myself if I happened to acquire one at a reasonable cost.

I know that the Western Horse has been one of the most asked for/about potential Vintage Club releases – frankly, pretty much since the introduction of the Vintage Club program – so it doesn’t come as too much of a surprise that they were basically holding him back for the next significant Breyer anniversary: the brand’s 70th!

Among other things, I’m sure. (Crossing fingers for something crazy, like a Translucent Running Mare, a Woodgrain Lamp, or the triumphant return of the #36 Racehorse.)

I have some issues with some of the initial merchandise they are already hawking, but I will discuss this next time, once my eyes have rolled forward again.

Candy Packers

It’s a mostly-pictures kind of day: too tired to string a lot of words together.

Montgomery Wards, 1956:


Aldens, 1956:


Montgomery Wards, 1958:


Mmm, candy! These fellows are part of a smaller subset of the value-added models that populated holiday mail order catalogs in the 1950s and 1960s. Hobbyists are more familiar with the other sets - the Grooming Kits, Sewing Kits, School Kits, and so on - because their "added value" was not meant to be eaten.

The "Candy Packers" most commonly appeared in the Montgomery Wards catalog, and is from where I derived the name. No specific name or brand is attached to the half-pound of hard candy that came with them; it was probably some generic store-brand mix.

It’s not likely that an "intact" Candy Packer is going to be found because - well, it’s candy! I’m also pretty sure the first thought of anyone finding a horse with a fifty-year-old bag of hard candy is going to be more like "Ew, ew, throw it out, throw it out!" rather than "Hey, let’s put this on eBay!"

(I know, I know, that’s not the case with vintage PEZ. But I think that stuff has a shelf life measured in centuries.)

If Reeves wants to get some slower movers off the shelves, throwing in a free bag of candy wouldn’t hurt (unless it’s Spearmint Leaves or Circus Peanuts. I’ve been known to indulge in some questionable eats to satisfy my sugar cravings, but that’s where I draw the line.) M&Ms in a custom blue and gold mix? Suckers in the shape of the Breyer logo? I’d go for that.

One thing I wouldn’t go for? This:

Christmas Decorators, Part II

Someone on Blab recently referred to Christmas Decorators as Breyer’s version of Bigfoot. The description is apt: just like Bigfoot, all of the evidence we have for the existence of Christmas Decorators is either circumstantial, or secondhand.

As of today, there are still no confirmed vintage Christmas Decorators in anyone’s possession. There are a few Christmas Decorators in Reeves’s sample room, but these are relatively recent test colors, and definitely NOT vintage. If Reeves has any vintage, pre-1985 models in their possession, they were purchased secondhand. As far as I know, any test colors or samples that did exist in the Breyer factory in Chicago prior to Reeves’s purchase were sold off, in bulk, to either Marney or to the Bentley Sales Company, and I can’t recall anyone finding anything particularly Christmassy back then, either.

(I haven’t been in the factory since 1992, so I have no idea what’s actually there right now.)

As of today, there is also no known paper evidence for the existence of Christmas Decorators. Since then, we’ve filled in most - but not all - of the gaps in our knowledge of the early 1960s Holiday catalog releases, and so far no Green or Red Breyers of any kind have revealed themselves.

Yet, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence: all it takes is one photograph, one document, or one model to move something from the realm of the imaginary. Documentary evidence for many early Breyers is exceedingly sparse; we only have one piece of evidence acknowledging the Buckskin Running Mare and Foal as Regular Runs. The only concrete evidence we have of the existence of the Copenhagen Belgian is a single photograph.

Even though there’s no physical evidence, there’s just too much independent, circumstantial evidence floating around. If all we had was a single witness or account, it’d be much easier to dismiss them as the product of wishful thinking. But my account was independent of Gale’s account, and Gale found another collector with a report independent of her own.

But that’s not the sum of all of the circumstantial evidence, either. There’s a lot more evidence that seems to point to a Christmas Decorator-shaped hole in the Breyer Universe.

First, let’s examine the Christmas part of the story.

Contrary to what many collectors believe, Breyer was making and marketing Special Run Christmas items for mail-order catalogs as early as 1954: that’s when the Palomino Western Pony Grooming Kits debuted in the Sear Wishbook. The Musicbox Prancers arrived a year later; a couple of years after that, so did the French Poodle Sewing Kit.

Sometime in late 1960 or early 1961, Breyer added the Modernistic Buck and Doe to their product line. The story behind the Modernistic Buck and Doe and how Breyer came into their possession is a long and complicated one, and not entirely relevant to the discussion at hand; that’s another post, for another time. What’s important here is that the promotional documentation of the Buck and Doe - the ca. 1961 insert sheet, and the 1963 Dealer Catalog - touts their suitability as decorative items for "Christmas and other special occasions." And they can be found in a few Christmas catalogs, the earliest being the 1961 Alden’s.

So it’s clear that Breyer was at least thinking about expanding into Christmas-themed or Christmas-specific items in that time period. (The time period that, coincidentally, we have very little Breyer-issued ephemera from.) Painting some of their regular run items in decorative, non-horse colors would have been the next logical step.

In my next (and I hope, final) post on the subject, we’ll discuss the Decorator part of the equation.