Checking Off The Boxes

I’m not sure how I feel about the long-awaited Premier Club Draft Mare and Foal Rhiannon and Rhemi: I don’t dislike them, but they weren’t quite what I was expecting, either. I suspect some of it is that I find the names a bit too twee and pretentious for my tastes. 

And they are Vanners. I get that they’re popular, but like most hobbyists, I dig the slightly more obscure and/or rarer breeds, especially ones on the chunkier side like Jutlands, Suffolk Punches and Dutch Drafts. Georg deserves a family! 

I’m not in that club anyway, so until they come out in a more widely available release, the whole argument is academic. I think I may like them more once I see them in a solid color. (Next year, probably.)

I will also not be buying the Collectors Club Special Jota. This is odd, because everything about him says he should be totally my thing: he’s a Gloss Black (check) Splash Pinto (check) Smart Chic Olena (and check). 

But he’s not doing it for me for some reason. I know a lot of collectors are turned off by the weirdness of his pattern, but it’s definitely not that: I was just researching Splash Pintos for my Standing Stock Horse Foal custom the other day, and I now have a disturbingly large reference file full of peculiar looking foals. They don’t look possible, yet they are. 

I once heard the word “cute” described as “ugly, but interesting”. That about sums it up: I find them cute.

But I think it’s the Gloss that’s the turn-off here. 

I’m definitely not one of those Finish Fanatics: I think some models look better in Gloss, some in Matte, and some look good regardless of their finish. Jota would have been more tempting to me in Matte, especially that soft, satiny Matte Black finish the Stretched Morgan came in in the 1960s. 

I know it’s possible: the Black Sabino version of Araba is pretty darn close!

Needless to say, I am very much looking forward to the Vintage Club Black Troubadour Tuxedo; I’m trying not to be mad that I couldn’t wait that extra day to order my Virkie. 

I am currently debating whether or this means I need to order a little something extra from the website, just because. I know I shouldn’t, but…

The Revenge of Lisa Frank

Just took a look at my work schedule this coming week: yikes! If you think I’m hard to get a hold of now…

By request, I’ll hold off on the Mystery Regular Run Reissues and focus on that beautiful boy from the group shot:

Like a good portion of those goodies, he’s a Sample: there is no VIN number that I can see. As I haven’t seen enough of the Gypsy Vanners live and in person, I cannot tell if he is in any other way different from the standard ones you’ll find on the shelf, other than his slightly better than average painting and masking.

When I found him in the sample boxes, I figured he was a fairly safe bet: even if I didn’t like him, he’d be an easy sell, judging from the reaction I’ve been seeing to him online. Like selling an Othello or Silver easy.

If you know me, I’m not particularly girly. I drive a station wagon, own a Wire Fox Terrier, and have feet the size of small oven roasters. I do have a decent sized shoe closet and can clean up admirably when the need arises, but most of the time I’m a jeans + comic-book-themed t-shirt kind of girl.

But this Vanner. Jeez.

This has to be the most gosh-darned-girly-in-a-Lisa-Frank-kind-of-way model horse ever. He needs to have a base made out of clouds, rainbows and glitter, and be ridden by a shirtless Legolas holding a bucket of pastel-colored puppies and kittens. And silhouetted against a diecut, holographic sky full of rhinestones-encrusted butterflies.

I am smitten.

His doppelganger, the BreyerFest Laredo, did not inspire the same reaction when I finally saw him in the round. His color was beautiful, and I liked his braided/plaited/beribboned mane, but I had a hard time getting past his strange legs. His proportions reminded me of those oversized toy horses sold as accessories to Barbie and all her frenemies.

Maybe he’ll grown on me a little more as time goes by. I’ll have that time: there were some leftovers on Sunday at BreyerFest. Not as many as you might think - although he did sell fairly well, it was difficult to judge just how well, because they made way more of him than any other BreyerFest SR other than the CC Shuffles: 1500 pieces. By comparison, the Sucesion & Le Fire set Naomi and Wynonna had a 1200 piece run.

They could have sold as many or more of Laredo as the Naomi and Wynonna set, and still have a couple hundred pieces left over. (NOTE: For speculation purposes only. I have no idea exactly how many Laredos did sell.)

Just like the Black Appaloosa Hackney Special a few years back, that was adjudged a failure. The story’s a little more complicated than that.

Oh great, now I’m imagining the Vanner in a Silver Dapple Pintaloosa paintjob. Glossy, of course. Or maybe a Glow-in-the-Dark Overo with masking in the shape of fairies, flowers and hummingbirds.

Gag. I think I need to go watch some movies with car crashes, explosions and killer robots now. 

Monsters, Monsters from the Id!

(Caution: This post was composed while being very light-headed from an epic nosebleed. Which is nothing serious, BTW, just a consequence of a childhood’s worth of bad allergies. It’s not my blood pressure. No, really, my blood pressure is actually low.)

(Oh. Reader discretion is advised.) 

My first reaction to the newest Premier Club release, Brishen, was "Wow, that’s a lot of hair. It’s like Othello and Ethereal had a freaky love child."

(Yes, I know they’re both stallion molds, dearies. That’s what the "freaky" is for.)

I don’t dislike it, not at all, but like a lot of folks I am a bit bummed that it’s yet another Big Hairy Stallion. Nothing wrong with Big Hairy Stallions, per se, but sometimes it feels like the gender diversity of Breyer molds is about equal to that of your average Smurf village.

At one point during the latest epic "future of the hobby" thread on Blab a few weeks ago, the observation that our Sire/Dam lists back in the old days were pretty heavy on the Sires, not so much on the Dams.

Horse-obsessed teen and pre-teen girls bragging about the breeding prowess of the multitude of stallions under their stable’s banner? Boy, mental health professionals could have mined those old newletters for a half-dozen research papers, at least.

Thus giving context to my second reaction to Brishen: "About the only think missing from this package is a unicorn’s horn and a pack of cigarettes".

I mean, really. Brishen is like the hobby’s id, made manifest. You know, just like in the movie Forbidden Planet. And not as scary. But the Monster from the Id in the movie was animated by someone from Disney, and Kathleen Moody did work for Disney at one point. So, draw from that whatever you will.

(Okay, that was weird. Even for me.)

Judging from the commentary I’ve seen on the Breyer web site, he seems to be going over fairly well with the same kinds of kids that populated the pages of The Model Horse Shower’s Journal back in the day. Except that most of those kids today like their Big Hairy Stallions with unicorn horns.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that either, but, you know…

(Now going upstairs for a glass of orange juice and a good night’s sleep.)