The Entropy of the Season

Not dead, but a rough week nonetheless.

Whatever was in my eye is no longer in it, but the eye doctor diagnosed me with something else that may require a second opinion.

(I’d rather not talk about it right now, except to say that I ended up having a panic attack in the examination room.)

But dealing with that potential problem will have to wait at least a week, as I have literally DONE NOTHING FOR NEXT WEEK’S LIVE SHOW YET. So my weekend will largely consist of me slapdashing my showstring together.

For funsies I might do some quilt prep too, because it’s that time of the year and I derive some small pleasure basting things together. (My small, valiant effort to battle the entropy inherent in the season, I guess.)

I did buy a Maelstrom from the Halloween Sale, because after the week I had, I deserved a Metallic Green Desatado that Glows in the Dark. I threw in a couple of Spooky Surprise Blind Bag Stablemates, even though I know there’s a high likelihood of me getting two identical ones and I’m in no mood to negotiate trades. I’ll just throw the inevitable duplicate in the sales pile and call it a day.

(Bleh.)

On a more cheerful note, I am oddly more optimistic about Breyer’s chances at the Toy Hall of Fame this year. It was pretty weird to have nonhobby people asking me if I had heard the news about Breyer being nominated!

I went online and saw that Breyer was actually called out by name – and even featured in the title! – of several stories about the nominees this week. We didn’t quite get the same treatment last year, which leads me to think that the news people and/or museum publicists think that we’re a stronger contender?

It’s interesting that the announcement of this year’s winners will occur on November 10th, the day before the Ponies & Palm Trees Exclusive Event in Florida. It’ll make for an interesting (and possibly more drunken?) weekend if it does happen…

(FYI: Stay away from the Absinthe, guys!)

Girl Things

Exhausted. 

The Samplers are done, the packing is about 90 percent done, and I just have to finalize a few details on the history displays and other nonsense. And also pack my lunch, charge my phone, go to the bank, get gas…

Anyway, here we go again with the Toy Hall of Fame talk:

https://www.breyerhorses.com/blogs/news/help-get-breyer-into-the-toy-hall-of-fame

I am on board with this, and my offer to donate my archives to them in the future (whenever I am done with them) if Breyer finally gets in still stands, but I am still not overly optimistic. 

I think the biggest impediment now is not that the brand doesn’t have a big enough public footprint (though that would help), it’s that it’s perceived as being more specifically girl-oriented, and “girly” things in general have a harder time being recognized as something culturally or historically significant. 

Horses being a “girl thing” is a relatively new development, actually. Before the mid-1960s, horses were mostly a “boy thing”: sure, books about girls and their horses did exist (National Velvet, for example), but one of the most popular series of horse books in the mid-20th century was Walter Farley’s Black Stallion, which was about a horse… and his boy.

One of Breyer’s earliest licensing agreements was with the TV show Fury, which also involved a horse… and his boy.

And let’s not forget The Chronicles of Narnia: just about every horse girl’s favorite in that series was: The Horse and His Boy. 

(I actually preferred The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, but I digress.)

Reeves has been working hard to change that perception, but I still think it’s going to continue playing a factor in the voting for a while.  

Turkey Day

So this long-lost package greeted me today when I got home:

This is not a frozen turkey: there were four horses in there and fortunately/miraculously none of them appear to have been damaged in any significant way. 

But still, yikes. This is not a good way to start out the week.

In other news that was not news because last week was last week, the 2020 inductees to the Toy Hall of Fame were Baby Nancy, Jenga, and Sidewalk Chalk.

I understand Baby Nancy: the original write up was a little too detailed and well-written for me to not think it was a foregone conclusion. History, and all that.

As far as games go, I thought Yahtzee or Risk had a better chance than Jenga, but Jenga does have an appealing (yet deceptive) simplicity to it. It takes two minutes to explain, if that, and there are no notepads to tally or rulebooks to follow. 

But Sidewalk Chalk? We got beat by craft supplies? Sigh.

Okay, I’ll admit that I kind of got my hopes up just slightly, based solely only the fact that one of the hosts of the morning radio show I usually listen to very briefly mentioned the hobby in passing when discussing the Toy Hall of Fame story a few weeks back, during the voting phase of it. 

Then again, that guy is/was a toy train nerd, has a daughter that is the right age, and the two primary independent toy stores in this area both have extensive selections of both Breyers and Trains.

In other words, it was probably just an exceptional circumstance. 

But still, it’s an optimistic sign that we’re not as peripheral to the public consciousness as some hobbyists believe, and that this campaign was not as quixotic as it originally seemed. Heck, Lisa was outed as a model horse collector on The Simpsons last year: 

https://www.laughingplace.com/w/articles/2020/05/10/tv-recap-the-simpsons-season-31-episode-21-the-hateful-eight-year-olds/

There was a shot of an extensive (20+) model horse collection in her room, and she gave one of horsey friends “a toy horse, with a hat” for her birthday! (Any model horse hobbyist who watched that episode immediately whispered Old Timer.)

I’m kind of curious just how far Reeves is willing to go to continue pursuing it, though, since they obviously saw it as part of their 70th Anniversary marketing strategy. 

Off to bed now; I have a sinus headache that’s not going to get any better staring at a computer screen.