Opinions on the Matter

The Spooky Stablemates are here:

Two different, yay! And the closest I’ll ever get to owning a real Cornelius. The box looked like an accordion, but as you can see, no harm, no foul…

I am not sure if I’m going to pursue the third member of the set, since I am not actively looking to buy anything right now, other than bodies and sales stock. 

And back to the topic of BreyerFest shopping, I prefer shopping for my common items and collection fillers at BreyerFest, because – I had assumed up until this year – that I’d have a large selection of models to choose from and have the luxury of handpicking. 

Silly me – lesson learned! 

I only vaguely understand the economic dynamics that creates that strange, strange market; it always fascinates me how different it is every time. Last year I sold a ton of Vintage items, but this year it was all higher-end stuff and Web Specials, with a fair smattering of Classics and Stablemates. And the only bodies that remained unsold at the end were the exact same half-dozen bodies that didn’t sell the year before.

(And are therefore probably mine forever, by default.)

In other news, my hunch about the book sale was correct: on my way to work on Monday I stopped at a Salvation Army Store and scored a nice bundle vintage horse and dog books from the 1960s and 1970s. 

I can’t really think of anything else to say today; I’m physically hurting all over (another story) and my mind is a little obsessed on my current custom project that I can’t believe I almost threw in my free bin. I wanted to wait until he was a little further along before I showed you what he looked like, but now is as good a time as ever, I suppose:

I wanted to do an Extreme Custom that still kept the essence of the original sculpture intact, but discard as little of the original as possible. Other than the grinding and carving down, all I’ve tossed so far are the front of the neck, part of the chest, and a bit of the tail; the tail will be reattached once I’ve finished recarving it. The neck’s been shortened slightly and his head’s been narrowed, too.    

The leg was cut off fairly early in the process and I just haven’t gotten around to reattaching it, partly because it was getting in the way of the tail resculpt but also because he stands up just find without it anyway. It can wait. 

I’m pretty pleased with him so far. Another goal of this project – other than the crash course in anatomy and conformation that only a Mesteno Series model can provide – is to put my money where my mouth is. Just because I am primarily an Original Finish collector and advocate doesn’t mean I don’t know what I am talking about when it comes to customizing.

More Ephemeral Things

The second Spooky Stablemate has arrived:

Yay, something different! I like the Stablemate version of Samhain better than the Traditional, but that’s because while I like Wixom just fine, I still pine for a pumpkin-themed original Hess Belgian instead. And the Stablemates Belgian mold reminds me a lot of him...

Even though I said I didn’t have any preferences when it came to the current crop of Halloween Stablemates, I was a little bummed that I didn’t get the Mischief Night: that’s the only one of the three that I have in its original, larger form. Alas, no twinsies for me!

I was a little more excited, actually, that I got this year’s Holiday Catalog:

Last year’s arrived mangled, and the year before I didn’t even get one at all, so getting a completely intact one was a happy surprise.

As a dedicated ephemera collector, I figure I’ll snag the 2020 (and a better copy of 2021) in somebody’s free box at BreyerFest one of these days. As much as I’d like to be an ephemera completist, they are not a thing I consider absolutely essential for research purposes.

I didn’t find a lot of paper freebies in Kentucky this year, mostly because I didn’t get in as much Clarion shopping as I wanted to. And when I did, the freebie boxes were pretty cleaned out. 

One thing I did pick up was this very amusing misprinted early Classic Racehorse box. It’s not in the best shape, but c’mon, how could I pass this up? 

“Quality Control was so much better in the old days.” Not really guys, not really!

The weather is going to be cooperative for the next couple of days, so I need to get hopping on all the photography I’ve been putting off. 

I’m aiming on reducing my inventory to half of what it currently over the next several months. Partly to accommodate the totes for a potential entry to BreyerFest Live next year, and also because of the big sewing project I have planned. 

I need to be ruthless with my overgrown fabric stash, and once I settle on some patterns, I intend on converting a lot of it into pony bags. Some to use (obviously) and the rest to sell at BreyerFest. Maybe even some to give away, depending on how productive I am. 

(Lately, not so much!)

Expensive Week

The words just haven’t been coming easy this week. Part of it is the season: this is the time of the year where my Seasonal Affective Disorder kicks in hard, and some days (like today!) it’s hard to even get out of bed. 

But a lot of it has to do with all the petty – and not so petty – personal and professional grievances cluttering up my mind. On the personal side? My Spooky Stablemates order arrived, one Stablemate short:

That’s… aggravating. Man, I’ve got so much on my plate now, and dealing with a missing Stablemate is NOT helping. 

A phone call has already been placed, and the second one will be on his way soon, but I’ll believe it when I see it. (Pretty sure if it does arrive, it will be a duplicate. But, whatever...)

This week has been so expensive, both literally and figuratively. I think I might take a pass on buying any non-obligatory horse purchases through the end of the year, including that Display Box of Stablemates I had been thinking about buying for myself. 

Looking around my office it’s quite obvious that I’ve bought enough for myself this year already!

(Suddenly remembers Chadwick, sighs deeply.)

I did manage to get a little bit of cleaning up in the office done yesterday, and made a few hard (and not so hard) decisions about some of that stuff.

For one, I’ve decided to sell off my Peregrine. Even though he did NAN in his class at the live show I didn’t do all that great at, I have not grown as attached to him as I thought I would. Maybe because I didn’t even get a chance to open him until the day before the show? 

Or maybe I’m feeling overwhelmed by the sheer amount of stuff cluttering up my life, and I know he’ll be an easy sell I won’t lose money on? And that money will come in handy for other expenses coming up?

I always feel a little guilty with selling horsey things for a bigger-than-average profit, but I am at a point in my life where I am valuing experiences over things, and did I forget to mention that I’ve been pricing plane tickets and rental cars for my Grand Wyoming Adventure next year? 

I’ve gotten so used to BreyerFest that I had forgotten how expensive actual vacationing is. If losing Peregrine, and a few other choice pieces, gets me where I want to go, so be it. 

(And if you are wondering about those Red Roan Running Mares in the background, you’ll see them next post.)

Seconds

It’s going to take me a few more days to unpack everything I want to say about this new funky Five-Gaiter in my life. That, and the studio/office/workspace is still a wreck so I couldn’t take a “glamour shot” of it if I wanted to anyway. 

Speaking of recent purchases, my Second Chance Sales experience went disturbingly smooth. I haven’t had the best luck getting leftovers on Sunday at the live, in-person BreyerFest because I’m usually booked solid with other activities throughout the event. By the time the sale rolls around, I just don’t want to stand in any more lines at that point, especially when the pickings are slim. 

So going online, loading up my cart with… pretty much everything I wanted, and checking out within five minutes felt weird. Like there should have been a catch to it all. 

I bought one of everything I didn’t buy before except the Plush and the Crystal; my Special Run selection this time around was a Gran Cavallo. It just seemed like a safer bet to go for something I don’t already have, instead of trying for a variation of something I already do. And I already like it, as-is, so I am not going to be disappointed in getting something that was exactly as advertised.

Which is a super-strange problem to have. I still maintain that this is one of the few times where this kind of promotion can work, in the sense that collectors will get – at minimum – the model they asked for. 

When they’ve done this at BreyerFest before, a lot of people ended up buying extra models in hopes of getting one of the extra-special ones, which sometimes led to people not being able to get the as-advertised models they wanted in the first place. 

If we had known about the variations ahead of time – or seen them first hand Friday morning – then there would have been significantly fewer leftovers to choose from. 

All I’m saying is that if my Gran Cavallo turns out to be a variation, it’s a bonus! I don’t think it will, but I’ve been wrong before, and recently. 

Oh hey, part of my Halloween order just arrived! Let’s see what Stablemates I got:

Two different ones, yes! The Drafter is way more sparkly than I expected, and honestly I kind of love it. This is kind of surprising, since the Foal he was inspired from – Jack, from the Casper and Jack set back in 2015 – wasn’t something I was sad missing out on. Their designs felt out of proportion on them. And shrinking things almost always makes them cuter!

I am very slightly disappointed that I didn’t get the Fighting Stallion, but that’s only because a lot of collectors are absolutely losing their marbles over it. This means getting a complete set at a reasonable price looks unlikely any time soon. Bummer.

Spiders, Spiders Everywhere

Welcome to the Post-BreyerFest Sales Season, where you tell yourself you’re going to cut back on your purchases, but you just can’t help yourself:

I was only expecting to purchase a pair of the Spooky Stablemates from the Halloween Store this year, because I think all three are awesome and reselling or swapping a duplicate won’t be much of an issue this time around – but I ended up buying pretty much everything but Hermie and the hoodie. 

I didn’t get the Hermie because I didn’t see the freebie code until after I checked out, and I didn’t get the hoodie because I’m either going to Motor City Comic Con or DC Fandome on October 16th and I want to get myself an appropriately-themed shirt or hoodie for the occasion instead, especially since I found out that the shirt I was going to wear is now (yikes!) a collectible. 

The Classic Eek! Is still available, which is both surprising and unsurprising: surprising in that everything else sold out fairly quickly, and unsurprising because he’s a Classics-scale model covered in spiders, two things a lot of collectors get a little squicky about.

As I’ve explained before, I’ve never had any antipathy towards Classics in the slightest. While I am still not a huge fan of spiders, I have made my peace with them and – in fact! – even attempted to write a children’s book about them at one point.

(FYI: It’s another one of my many, many stalled creative projects.)

Some have speculated that another factor may be that the piece run was larger than average, but I don’t think they’ve ever formally released piece counts for the Halloween Classics, so I have no idea if that is the case. My enjoyment of a particular release is not tied to how popular it is or how quickly it sells out, so that’s a moot point for me anyway.

But I got Eek! primarily because he’s an obvious callback to the second Breyer Halloween Horse, the Marabella Merry Widow, who was the first Traditional-scale Glow-in-the-Dark model in 2003. She’s one of my all-time favorite Halloween Horses: I think the way they incorporated all of the spider imagery into her overo pinto pattern was clever, beautiful and inspired. 

The first official Glow-in-the-Dark release happened a few months before: an unpainted G2 Andalusian Keychain that was first given to attendees of an “after dark” movie screening at the KHP at the 2003 BreyerFest, and subsequently distributed to hobbyists at various Breyer events for (many!) years to follow. 

Aside from various Club-related releases (including the VC Decorator Brighty Nugget), the Tractor Supply Special Runs, the Brick and Mortar Special (a pretty pinto Wyatt!) and the Rainbow Decorator Equidae, two other big sales will be following shortly: the hotly anticipated BreyerFest Leftovers Sale, and possibly the Customer Appreciation Event. 

I suppose I should be grateful that I’m racking up lots of overtime at work and I can afford most of these beautiful frivolities, but actual time to enjoy them would also be wonderful. I’ve been getting assurances that this will be soon, so we will see. 

Sometimes a Cigar

Video done. Thank goodness.

As far as horse stuff goes, I got nothing today. I kind of feel like I do the week after BreyerFest: I am all horsed out. I just want to eat pudding and shop for guitars. (This is not a metaphor for anything. That’s actually what I’ve been doing.)

Honestly, I’m not quite sure what to do with myself now. I mean, I have plenty to do, but I guess I just want to spend some time savoring the momentary absence of a deadline. 

Anyway, here’s a picture that didn’t get used in the video: my Sample of the Halloween Horse Nosferatu, on the Cigar:

I know lots of people were disappointed with Nosferatu, expecting him to look… more like this than the “fuzzy bats” we actually got. That’s part of the reason why I didn’t buy him – but didn’t take a pass on the Sample when he was offered to me in the NPOD some time later. 

He was issued fairly early in the “new masking” era, and I suspect he was intended to be much more cleanly masked like the first Halloween Horse Skullduggery, and then plans went sideways. 

That happens a lot more than you might imagine in product development, and not just with model horses.

His shading is really remarkable in person, but the two times I’ve taken him out to show he’s barely been acknowledged, much less placed. I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that Cigar’s status as one of the cool or popular molds has long since passed. 

That’s fine – more for me!

I do need to pick up a few more of the Halloween Horse Series, eventually. When prices are less insane and the house is a little more decluttered. 

Disappearing Acts

We had all manner of pets as kids – cats, dogs, fish, birds and even a snake, at one point – but Mom drew the line at anything rodent or rodent-like. (Not quite sure how Dad persuaded her to let us have the garter snake, but ooh boy, that’s a story!) 

So you know, if you had told me even five years ago that Reeves would make a rat-covered horse for Halloween and that I would love it, I would have been skeptical. But here we are:

And in a Primitive Bay, too! If I ever get around to finishing that Mesteno custom I’ve tinkered with for the better part of a year, that’s precisely the color I will attempt on it. 

(Not likely, but a girl can dream.)

I ordered only one of the Spooky Stablemates because I didn’t want to deal with the possibility of getting two of the same model like I did last time. I have enough stuff to sell as it is, no need to potentially add another to the pile.

They also came with that new 8-piece Deluxe Stablemates Set that’s already discontinued, because the sets I found at local hobby shops were not to my liking. I took a chance on getting a better set off the web site, and it appears to have actually worked out for me this time. 

This is a relief, because I fear it’s going to be a scarce item in a couple of years. Originally I was going to save it for the Customer Appreciation Sale, but I didn’t want to take the chance that it may/will be out of stock by then.

Speaking of things disappearing quickly, I know some people are surprised that the Sable Island Horse release on the Croi/Connemara mold is also already on the Retired/Discontinued List. 

The fact of the matter is, no matter how beautifully rendered it may be, Matte Solid Bays are not that exciting to most people, whether they are hobbyists, general consumers, or live-horse people.

Hobbyists may complain about the lack of solidly-colored releases, but unless they’re portrait models or otherwise tied-in with a special promotion like a Gambler’s Choice, they just don’t sell as well as Glossies, Pintos, Appaloosas and (most) Decorators. 

So if you love it and want it, go out and get one now, before everyone else realizes they need it too. I’ve already bought way too much stuff this year and I’ll probably regret on passing on it, myself. 

But I seriously need to make about 50-100 or so more models disappear here before that can happen.

Apparition

Except for some photos, formatting, and about an hour or two worth of nitpicking/editing – all stuff I can finish the weekend before – the Sampler is done. Now on to the “taking pictures for the photo show” thing.

(This week: Stablemates and Foals!)

Pictures of the Mid-Years are up on the Breyer web site, though nothing is officially for sale yet. Aside from the 70th Anniversary Stablemates – which are already sold out everywhere they went on pre-sale – the one new release that has me the most excited is Apparition:

My first reaction to seeing the 2020 Halloween Horse was “It’s a Scooby-Doo Horse!” 

The second was “I want it!” 

Honestly, this is just about the perfect marriage of mold with an idea: a mold based on a cartoon with a Deco paint job based on another cartoon. Love it!

The “glowing in the dark” part is just a bonus.

Well, technically I was never a huge fan of Scooby-Doo (aside from those goofy “Scooby-Doo Movies” in the 1970s with celebrity guest stars, like Batman and Sonny and Cher.) But still, as an animation fan I adore it, and I’m glad that they’re “leaning in” to the Spirit mold’s aesthetic rather than trying to deny or downplay it.

Though it wouldn’t take that much to get the Spirit mold up to snuff conformationally, I’d rather they just leave the mold as is and find creative ways of utilizing it as is, like they did here with Apparition.

Just like I would have preferred they keep the original #54 Trakehner’s tail the same, the Stock Horse Stallion’s too, and the “bulldog” physique of the Quarter Horse Gelding.

The main problem I have with mold alterations isn’t the negation of history or the adulteration of the artist’s original vision (more the latter than the former with me, but let’s not go there today) but the fact that they are rarely done well.

In short, the alterations look like obvious alterations, and don’t blend seamlessly into the overall sculpt.

That’s my primary beef, for instance, with the Sherman Morgan. While I was perfectly fine with the necessity of changing his original tail – let’s get real people, the original was basically shaped like a turd – the style of the new tail doesn’t match the rest of Jeanne Mellin Herrick’s sculpture, either. I like it better, but it doesn’t quite… fit.

And just like the tail it replaced, it’s the first thing that draws my eye whenever I see a Sherman Morgan. That is exactly the opposite of what these kinds of alterations should be shooting for.

September Shopping

I know I got lucky with the Fruitcake Fillies last year so I kinda-sorta had it coming, but I seriously do not have time to deal with twinsies right now:

The Salem is just as awesome as advertised, though: I don’t know what process they are using to achieve this, but he glows so intensely you could use him as a nightlight.

This is also my first in-hand experience with the Mason mold in person, and I have to say that… I really like him! I wasn’t overly impressed with the mold when he debuted as the 2018 Horse of the Year, but I think I was letting the original release’s sedate gray color get in the way. It’s amazing what a difference a nicely designed paint job makes!

(I think the same situation is going to occur with the new “Mighty Muscle” Draft Horse.)

Speaking of… since I happened to be in that part of town, I swung by one of my local toy stores on Friday, ostensibly to check out some of the Fall releases. I was impressed by the sparkly Cupcake (who, despite what some people say, does look like chocolate in person), found myself still on the fence about the “Black Opal” Desatado Lightning Ridge (a concept that would have definitely benefited from translucency), and unexpectedly fell in love with the Brick and Mortar Marwari release Khalid.

I didn’t buy any of those three, though if I can carve out any time in the next several days to do it I just might go back for the Khalid. He was a release I hadn’t really given him much thought to prior to seeing him in person, and now that I have I realize that he’s the exact shade of Dun Sabino that I’ve been chasing for years.

I’ve tried painting one myself, and got others to try and paint one for me, but here Reeves goes and just nails it in a Production Run. I was not prepared for that.

It took me a couple of Tractor Supply Stores, but I did manage to secure a Stella that met my specifications yesterday. The same store had a drop-dead gorgeous and extremely Chalky Sampson too, but since things are kind of chaos here at the moment (and the Khalid is messing with my head) I decided to stick to my original plan. Though I did thrown in a few of the Series 2 Spirit Stablemates I hadn’t acquired yet, including the Chase Running Mustang Spirit. Because there’s always room for Stablemates!

And finally, here’s last week’s flea market acquisitions: while the weather was fine, I just wasn’t feeling up to the task today (busy, allergies, not sleeping well, etc.)

The larger Fox Terrier is actually hard plastic – I’m assuming Diamond P, but I don’t see a mold mark anywhere so don’t quote me on that. As I’ve pointed out before, in Breyer’s earliest days they briefly billed themselves as a “Horse and Dog” figurine manufacturer. And it makes sense: by 1958 they already had the Boxer, the Poodle, Rin Tin Tin and Lassie molds in their lineup – all before the Old Mold Arabians and the Clydesdale Stallion even debuted!

That parity would be short lived, with only four more Traditional Dog molds introduced in the following twenty years.

Would a Fox Terrier have been a part of the mix eventually, if the Dog molds had been just a bit more popular? (Or the horses, a little less so?) Sometimes I wonder.

Halloween Surprises

As I expected, Breyer was not on the list of finalists for the Toy Hall of Fame. I have some thoughts and feelings about this, but rather than have it turn into a rant about Care Bears, I’ll give myself a few more days for a more nuanced post.

In the meantime, we can talk about the Halloween stuff they released to Collector’s Club members today:

We’ve already knew about the Spooky Stablemates and the Samhain; however, the plush Boo (above) and the Classic* Mason Salem were new.

I’m trying to avoid even considering any Traditional-scale Halloween items right now – there is no space here at the moment – and Plushes are not an option as long as Vita roams the house.

The Stablemates were a no-brainer the moment I saw them at BreyerFest, of course. I love all three, but I do hope at least one of the two I’m getting is the Mini Ichabod Rivet, because you know how much I love glow-in-the-dark stuff.

And that’s why I ended up buying the Salem, too. At first I thought that he was cute and well-executed – a Decorator Pinto pattern with cat silhouettes and paw prints and purple interference! – but not necessarily a must-have.

Then I saw that it was glow-in-the-dark, too, and I was well, so much for setting aside some funds for a new sewing machine this week….

I do want to object to how this program was marketed, though. It was on Instagram, on Twitter, on Facebook… everywhere except the one place I actually check on a (somewhat) daily basis: my e-mail.

I am glad that these items were basically open stock items and of a sufficiently large enough quantity that they were still available when I actually had the opportunity to peruse the Internet – eight hours later.

Please do not let this be a trend: people do not need any more encouragement to stare at their phones as it is. I’ve never been more lonely than when I’ve found myself sitting at a table eating lunch with friends or coworkers, and every single one of them is staring into their phones like the rest of the world (or me!) does not exist.

Not all of us are attached to our cellphones 24/7 – in fact, I barely use it at all, and usually only for emergencies. And yes, I am also appalled that “Smartphones” made the Hall of Fame shortlist. But more about that next time…

(*Look, I still call “Paddock Pals” Little Bits. But at least it kinda-sorta makes sense. Renaming the Classics Series the Freedom Series just borders on the random and nonsensical.) 

Horse Dreams

From the pictures that are appearing online, Bogeyman does look slimy – in the good way, I mean.

Which is what I figured. While Breyer’s pictures have gotten better lately, it’s still a safe bet that most items will look better in person than they do online.

So if it is still available the next time I need to place an order, one just might end up in my cart.

I think it is indicative of the lack of time I’ve had for horses that my dreams are starting to compensate: I had a “found horse” dream last night! You know, the kind of dream where you find the models of your dreams, for free or cheap?

I don’t get them very often, presumably because in the environment I reside in, model horses aren’t all that uncommon: I find them all the time, even when I am not looking. I go shopping for shoes and work pants, and end up coming home with a box of horses!

In this dream I found a loose box of one-dollar toys in a thrift store, and it was full of equine randomness: everything from Stablemates to Traditionals, from New in Box to Body quality, and even a couple of Test Colors!

The two Test Colors, incidentally, were an airbrushed Black Pinto Traditional Ruffian – similar to the Vintage Club Tanner release – and a Splash Spot Red Chestnut Semi-Leopard Appaloosa Balking Mule.

Neither of these molds, colors, or mold-color combos are high on my list of wants or desires, so it’s interesting that those were the models that my subconscious conjured up for me. Not a Wedgewood Blue Polled Hereford Bull? Not a Matte Neon Yellow Palomino Traditional Man o’ War?

My first reaction within the dream was – and this should come as no surprise at all – that I couldn’t wait to get home and do some research on them!

And then clean them up, because they were a bit dinged up, having resided in a mixed box of jumbled toys and all.

Horses in my horse dreams are rarely mint condition, but I think that’s because I take a lot of pleasure in fixing up foundlings – especially rarities! So that part definitely rang true, as something I would dream about.

It will be super-duper weird if either one of those ideas turns into something real in the next several months. If it does, and it’s something affordable (IOW: not an actual Test Color or Auction Model) then I might be obligated to buy it.

Interesting Failures vs. Boring Successes

I like Bogeyman, but I don’t know if I love him yet:

It doesn’t help that I took my car in for a little deferred maintenance and found out that the repairs are going to be a little more expensive than I anticipated. (A part that normally never breaks, broke. Michigan roads!) So there is no fun-money in the budget for little things like Bogeyman.

Heck, I had to walk away from a stack of Nevermores earlier this week, and I just about had a panic attack over that one, because that one really does tickle my fancy. (Sigh.)

If you did a personality test to determine my likes, dislikes and preferences and designed a Halloween Horse to meet all the criteria, the end result just might be Nevermore. I think the only thing that’s missing is that it doesn’t Glow in the Dark!

But back to Bogeyman.

I think he’ll be neater in person than the photograph lets on – the ad copy hints at a “pearly base” to her color. If they apply it liberally to the drippy parts, I can see it reasonably reproducing the look of slime.

If that is the case, I might just pinch a few pennies and get one after all.

If not, hey, I’ll still give them points for trying something different. I’d rather buy an interesting failure than a boring success.

The Tractor Supply Special Run Traditionals – a Red Dun Pinto Cody named Boone and a Shaded Bay Desatado named Jasper – will also be a pass for me this year, too.

Of the two, I find the Jasper the more intriguing.

Some models are just harder to love than others. For a lot of hobbyists, it’s a structural or anatomical issue that puts a model on their hard-to-love list, but for me it tends to be aesthetic ones.

I’m just not a big fan of the Desatado as a sculpture, so much so that I still haven’t found one to join my herd. All the ones that I have managed to acquire I’ve ended up selling a few weeks or months later.

The only one I’ve really loved? It had to be last year’s Saturday Raffle Model Rana. Of course. Not winning most raffle horses ranges from annoying to mildly or moderately disappointing: not winning Rana actually hurt.

(After the raffle I went back to the Clarion and walked into three successive rooms with occupants who had won Ranas. If there had seen one more Rana, something else would have ended up as hurt or broken as my soul.)

But I have been an absolute sucker for a well-done Bay paint job, something you probably could have guessed from the number of them I brought home with me from BreyerFest this year.

Hmm. Maybe I’ll put it on my Christmas Wish List and let Santa make the call.

Calavera and Decals

It was too darn cold to go to the flea market Sunday morning, so I channeled that early morning energy into cleaning the office and reorganizing the storage boxes I ravaged my way through just before BreyerFest, searching for various pieces for assorted purposes.

And paperwork. There’s always paperwork to do!

While I didn’t get to see a Markus today, I did see a Calavera – the new Dia de los Muertos horse on the Ethereal mold. I was somewhat indifferent to the release initially – in terms of Decorator Ethereals, I don’t think much can top the BreyerFest Special Run Times Square – but the sample I saw at BreyerFest made me reconsider.

http://www.breyerhorses.com/calavera

I had heard some horror stories about decal issues with the Calavera, but I didn’t see anything significantly wrong with the example I saw. There were the usual bits of overspray and rough edges you’d see on any of the more complex paint jobs, but the decaled areas looked clean and smooth to me.

I left him behind, for a couple of reasons. Aside from wanting to stick to my budget, future condition issues were weighing on my mind. Extensive decals are a relatively new decorating technique, Breyer-wise, and how well these models will age is unknown.

The earliest decaled Breyer, incidentally, was in the 1950s: some Breyer Canadian Mountie sets sport tiny Drewrys Beer decals on their saddle blankets. Whether it was a formal Special Run that was produced at the Breyer factory, or something that Drewrys cobbled together for their own promotional needs, I don’t know.

If Breyer did manufacture it, Drewrys would be one of a small handful of companies/licenses that have done/did business with both Breyer and Hartland. (Hartland did a lot of promotional beer signage, including Drewrys.) Another topic to add to the research list!

I don’t have the Drewrys Mountie, but I’d love to get one eventually: my step-grandfather was a delivery driver for Drewrys, way back when. You’d think our proximity to Canada would make finding Canadian Mountie memorabilia a little bit easier to find, but alas, this isn’t so.

Treasures

I did not take advantage of the Collectors Club Gold Valegro offer; aside from the budgeting issue (tight right now) I’m lucky enough to live in an area where access is not going to be an issue, should the money and space arise come December.

This offer was clearly for people who don’t have that same level of access.

I’d dearly love to buy the new Halloween Special Crane – basically a Mini-Me of last year’s Halloween Horse Ichabod on the Rearing Stallion mold – but again, I gotta watch that budget. I do like that they’re limiting orders to one per account, which was not the case last year. Wasn’t the quantity limit some absurd amount, like 12? Yeah, that was not cool, especially with Foal molds.

Tuesday Mornings, for those of you near them, just got a fresh Breyer shipment in, too – lots of Classics, Accessories, and the pinto Cantering Welsh Pony Smokin’ Doubledutch. If I happen to find a particularly nice CWP there during my work travels, she might be coming home with me. Maybe some of those Pony Pouches too, since I am a bit obsessed with the fabric they are made out of.

(Reeves, if you’re reading, I’d totally make you a quilt for next year’s silent auction if you’d give me a bolt of either fabric, or both. Seriously not kidding.)

The flea market has been really interesting over the past few weeks; I’ve bought a couple of small collections, lots of vintage craft supplies, and some ephemera – specifically, a photo album full of horse pictures, and a batch of photos from someone who (I think) performed and/or participated in rodeos just before WWII.

First, a few of the “rodeo” pictures; I have enough pictures of the pinto to probably have a portrait model done – and possible even the tack, too! Documentation on these photos is pretty light, alas, so I don’t know this blue-eyed boy’s name:

The Photo Album is from roughly the same time period – 1939 through 1946 – but features a greater variety of pictures. There are photos from a trip “out West”, including a visit to the Cheyenne Frontier Days in 1946; several horseback riding photos, primarily of Saddlebreds; and a batch of photos from a day trip to the races – specifically, Lincoln Fields, that later became Balmoral Park:

The documentation on these photos is much better – in my rare bits of free time I’ve been able to do a little bit of research on them and the family. There was also a letter in the album discussing a horse the family purchased during his 1946 trip, with some mention of an article being published about him in the magazine The Bit and The Spur.

What was funny about this album was that, when I picked it up to look at it, the vendor touted the fact that it had a lot of World War II pictures in it – and it does! And one of those photos is interesting enough that I might have to send a scan to a baseball historian. (I’m generally pretty terrible at recognizing human faces, but maybe I might have picture of Yogi Berra during his time in the Navy?)

But it was the horse racing pictures that sealed the deal for me, of course. You just don’t find pictures of someone’s “day at the races” every day – especially in the northernmost Detroit suburbs. I do find harness racing memorabilia on occasion – there used to be a number of Standardbred farms active in the area in the 1950s and 1960s, and racing at the Imlay City Fairgrounds just up the road – but flat track stuff is a little scarcer to come by here.

I have no idea why I decided to pick up that album and go through it; there was no other horsey memorabilia on the table, and no indication that there would have been those kinds of pictures inside. I just opened it up, and there they were, and I knew I had to take that treasure home with me.

Tacked Up

It may have been a holiday weekend, but model horse business kept me occupied for most of it. I purchased items for the costume, tinkered with the diorama, rewrote several articles, reworked the sales list, did a bit of design work on the BreyerFest paperwork, and I just finished archiving about a year’s worth of hobby e-mails, because that’s ephemera, too: it just happens to be of the electronic sort.

FYI: as far as the Midyears go, many online dealers already have them listed on their respective web sites. It’s not my policy to recommend one online dealer over another, because I am fortunate enough to have several local toy stores from which to handpick, and my experiences ordering online (beyond the Breyer web site) have been rather limited.

If you need any other assistance, the Halloween Horse’s name is Ichabod and he’s a Fighting Stallion covered in skulls. And he glows. So awesome.

Some of the other Midyears include the Best of British releases, and a Pacer. Others, too, but I noticed the Pacer because it is a Pacer - with a yellow halter! I love it when they use more unusual or flamboyant colors on halters like that. My favorite, in that regard, would be the beautiful "Payne’s Gray" halter on the Matte Bay Quarter Horse Gelding in the 2001 Riding Academy Gift Set release for JC Penney. The funky colors used on the 2009 Surprise Quarter Horse Geldings are also cool, though maybe a shade less so because of the unattainability of the Silver Filigree, Smoke and Charcoal ones.

Molded-on tack is definitely not a thing with collectors nowadays: they want their horses clean and unadorned. All of my first three horses - the Man o’ War, the Pacer, and the Western Prancing Horse - came with molded-on tack, so I have not had much of an issue with it personally.

It’s been years since any new Breyer injection mold has come with molded-on tack or accessories (excluding ribbons and braids); the Balking Mule was the last "new" mold with any, in 1968. It wasn’t until 1995, with the release of the Fine Porcelain Premier Arabian Mare, that we started seeing new molds with molded-on tack again. Just about all of the newer molds with molded-on tack have been Nonplastic releases designed to appeal more toward the "home decorating" crowd than the collecting-playing-showing ones.

Two factors put an end to mold-on tack on plastics. The first was the moving away from the questionable practice of adapting and appropriating of molds from other companies for their own use; as I explained before, most of those early tacked-up molds were based on preexisting molds from other companies.

The second was hobbyist influence: by the late 1960s, Breyer was taking the hobbyist movement, and the advice of the individual hobbyists, more seriously. We didn’t want molded-on tack interfering with our own tack, for play or for show. 

Gone Goofy for Goffert

First, I noticed that a custom I’ve been tinkering with for over a year had started oozing. Then I broke one of my more recently acquired Hagen-Renaker miniatures. Then I get the e-mail from Reeves about Yet Another Special Run - this time, "Kashmir" from the Big Cat Series.

The little cartoon sign above my head that reads TILT finally went off. I spent the rest of the evening working on an abandoned beaded flower project I found in the basement. Horses? What horses?

Anyway, I find the Kashmir most curious. The initial piece in the Big Cat series, the Smarty Jones Kimbia, received a rather cool response. I don’t think many of us would have been shocked if the series had been scrapped or drastically scaled back; there was enough of a delay between the Kimbia and Kashmir to make it seem likely.

What I find even more curious about the Kashmir is the fact that it is the third Special Run on the Goffert mold this year. While it is not at all unusual for a mold to have multiple releases in a given year, they are usually either part of a set or series. In the 1950s through most of the 1970s, many Regular Runs were offered in multiple colorways. (Family Arabians, anyone?) In the 1980s and early 1990s, a lot of Special Runs came in sets of multiple colors, either simultaneously or in sequence. In more recent years, we’ve had the Treasure Hunt, Gambler’s Choice and Surprise models.

In the Goffert’s case, the SRs are from three completely unrelated series: a BreyerFest Celebration Horse, a Brick-and-Mortar Halloween Horse, and a Web Special. This is not unheard of, but definitely a little odd. That must have been some crazy kind of Product Development meeting they had early this year. ("It’s almost time for lunch - let’s just make all the remaining releases on the list Gofferts and call it a day. Who’s up for Chinese?")

Speaking of Product Development, I ran across some interesting commentary online about the Night Mare and the Flagship Store Special Sahran, on the Ashquar mold that deserves some clarification.

First, yes, it is true that Reeves lurks on sites looking for ideas and suggestions. Sometimes they even ask for them, in private or by proxy. However, these ideas and suggestions are very rarely translated into immediate action. You don’t go from zero to Production Run in a week or two, unless it’s a really small piece run and it’s made in the U.S. (The Vault Sale Bull "Colton" comes to mind here.)

Typically it takes months - and in the case of an event like BreyerFest, up to a year - for a model to go from concept to reality. Sometimes little tweaks are made during the production process - let’s make half the run glossy! - but big changes are rare.

When we talk about wanting a certain model in a certain color, and it becomes a reality a week or a month later, it’s certainly not a coincidence. But it’s more a matter that both hobbyists and Reeves are operating in the same environment online, simmering in the same cauldron of ideas and inspirations. We think our ideas are uniquely our own, but chances are, someone else is thinking along the same lines. (For me, it’s a numbers game: I make a lot of suggestions. The more you make, the more likely one of them is going to become reality.)

Anyway, back to the Gofferts. The Kashmir is interesting - I like him more than the Kimbia, but I am tapped out financially. I can wait on him if I have to.

If I happen to run across the Halloween Goffert, named Night Mare, she’ll definitely be coming home with me somehow. You already know I love glow-in-the-dark things, and as a "night person" of Hungarian ancestry, I am totally down with the vampire imagery.

The Stuff of Nightmares

Well, I don’t think I could have had a worse experience in getting a reservation at the CHIN yesterday. Over two and a half hours of redialing, only to just barely end up with a room on the second floor. (The first time since - 2004?) I thought the hoi polloi had all decided that the CHIN was no longer worthy of their patronage?

(There I go again, believing what people write on public web sites. Completely forgot about the whole righteous "I’m gonna give NAMHSA a piece of my mind" meeting a few years back that wasn’t. All talk, no action - same as it ever was.)

I suppose I should be grateful to get a room at all, but I almost - and I am not exaggerating here - had a nervous breakdown in the process. Everyone who knows me well knows I don’t do phones. I wish I had some other less-obscure phobia to deal with, like heights, or clowns, or speaking in public, but somehow I got stuck with telephones. It’s better than it was (thank therapy for that) but unsolicited "’Sup?" phone calls from me aren’t in anyone’s future.

(If you do somehow score a phone call from me, your first thought should always and ever be "Oh no, what’s wrong?")

I’ve managed to pass the reservation duty on to other family members the past few years, but there was no one available to do the job this time around. I was literally sick the rest of the day, and I wasn’t feeling much better today. I looked pale and morose enough at work this morning that even the coworker going through chemo seemed concerned about me. (Which, in turn, made me feel even worse. Irrational Fear < Cancer.)

I was planning on taking less stuff to sell next year anyway, but less generally means (at best) one less tote. Lord, I hope the rumors about publicly accessible elevators next year are true. Or that a significant number of people change their minds and trot themselves over to the Embassy Suites anyway. ($40-70 more a night, and minimal room sales? Sorry, no can do.)

Enough kvetching. To make up for my drama queen rantings, here’s a picture of another Pit find, a "Master Design Sample" for the Halloween Horse Nosferatu:


(What, you thought that once I did a post on the Pecos, that that would be the end of BreyerFest stuff? Shoot, I have at least another week’s worth of stuff to go here.)

"Master Design Sample" is what it said on the bag he came in, which I am assuming is either a fancy-schmantzy in-house term for Test Color, or some permutation thereof. You’ll notice that his bats, unlike the production version, are sharp and crisp, and that this sunset shading is pretty darn amazing, too. He does have a little wear and tear, which is consistent with him being a True Test, and not something they just did purely for auctioning or raffling.

All the flaws are easily repairable though, should I ever get the notion of showing him. (I already have the perfect name for him: Dormammu!)

I don’t have any promo materials for his original release back in 2002, to check if he’s the actual photography sample. Would be mind-blowing if he was, but irrelevant, since he’s not going anywhere anyway.

Like a lot of hobbyists back when, I was a little bummed by the quality of the production Nosferatus. Not enough to get the screaming-meemies over it, but enough to make me shrug and hope for a cheap one on the secondary market. I suppose this Nosferatu qualifies as both cheap (for a Test Color) and secondhand (via the NPOD.) Funny how that works out.

Now, if I could only snag one of those leftovers Frankensteeds. (There were some rumors floating around that they might drop them in the Pit this year, but as far as I know, that didn't happen.)

Bats

The flea market was cold and quiet today. I found a few good deals, including a quilt hoop (for a buck!) and a 1968 copy of The Care & Training of the Trotter & Pacer (with dustjacket!) There were a few models, but nothing worth the effort. I need to move more models out of the house, not into it. Gotta get cracking on the sales listings again…

If one of my pending deals goes through this week I just might buy myself a Bats in the Belfry as a reward. I love the mold, and the paint jobs on the ones I have seen so far have been exquisite.

To be honest, I never had a problem with, or really understood, the hate-on over the fuzzy bats on the original Nosferatu. The reason I never got around to buying one was because the Cigar mold doesn’t fit on my shelves. I love my Wanderlust, my QVC Seabiscuit, and my Glossy Affirmed (swoon!) but darn it, those suckers eat up a lot shelfy real estate. The Nokota Horse isn’t exactly petite either, but he’s got that multiple posability thing going on, and I can work with that.

I was making a few minor corrections and additions to my Nokota Horse file yesterday, in my ongoing effort to get my pile of research notes under control. Sigh: out of its 12 releases so far, 6 of them have piece runs of 100 or less. Here I thought the whole Esprit thing was bad. Fully half of the runs of the Nokota Horse are completely inaccessible to me, and likely always will be.

The Newsworthy mold isn’t a lot better: out of the eight releases so far, only the original release would qualify as a regular run, and even that only ran for about a year and a half. I'm not sure what to call the Enchanted Forest - a midyear release already on the Discontinue list? I guess that’s what he gets for the sin of merely being Bay.

All of these super-brief runs and micro-runs on new molds got me thinking about that question I posed earlier this year: is Reeves really heading towards a "Test Colors For Everyone!" business mode, a la Stone?

I hope not. It’d completely wreak havoc in the hobbyist sphere, where there’s already a huge issue being made over the effect that a handful of "big spenders" have been making on the hobby as a whole. What happens when they can - for a price - pretty much order whatever the heck they want?

I take a little comfort in the fact that most of the models I’ve seen come out of all of these "Make Your Own Test Color" programs haven’t been all that appealing to me. I guess it’s a side effect of being able to get whatever you want: most hobbyists are going to go for something completely, utterly idiosyncratic. It’s so completely tailored to their likes and dislikes that it won’t "fit" anyone else.

That’s also why I’m one of the lone voices out there arguing that models coming out of those programs aren’t really Original Finish. They meet all of the technical requirements - painted in the factory, with factory techniques - but in every other regard, they’re customs. They’re made to order, with a single defined customer in mind.

At best, I could concede them being another category: the Factory Custom.

Most shows are starting to break the RR and SR categories into further subdivisions - separating earlier Regular Runs from later ones, and low-piece count Specials from the more plentiful ones. I suppose, in the not so distant future, they’ll have to have a Factory Custom/OOAK subdivision, too.

Shiny, Glowy Horses

A few other things came up, so my forensic analysis of the Swap Meet will have to wait until later in the week. I also became rather distracted by that box of quilt scraps I bought on Sunday; all of my spare "thinking" time has gone towards puzzling those pieces together. (I guess my brain enjoyed the challenge of reassembling that Double Wedding Ring more than I realized!)

I forgot to mention that the guy who sold me the wicked white platform go-go boots also had a stash of vintage Black Light posters. If I had had more money, or more space in the car, I would have definitely brought a couple of them home. I love Glow-in-the-Dark stuff: I even keep a small collection of early Glowy Hartland religious figurines in my bedroom window as a makeshift, retro nightlight.

Hartland was using phosphorescent plastics in the early 1950s, but it wasn’t until 2003 that Breyer had cause to, in their Halloween program. Phosphorescent plastic kinda-sorta makes sense for religious figurines, but not for horses so much, especially if you’re big into recycling the scrap plastic as regrind. The inevitability of accidentally mixing the Glowy plastic with the standard white stuff was probably also another factor in their hesitation.

I liked the concept of Reeves’ Halloween program, but I wasn’t completely into it when it began. Halloween was never a big holiday at our house: I liked the candy, and watching other people dress up, but mostly I thought of it as my Uncle Fred’s birthday. He didn’t just revel in the coincidence, he lived it: slicked black hair, a goatee, and a mostly black wardrobe were part and parcel of his identity. (Such a sweetheart, too - of all my departed relatives, I think he’s one of the ones I miss the most.)

It wasn’t until they came out with Merry Widow that I became a believer. A Traditional-scale Breyer horse - that glows in the dark? Sold!

I was a little upset about the Glowy G2 Andalusian keychains they used as giveaways at BreyerFest that year, naturally. Combining two of my favorite things - Stablemates, and phosphorescent plastic - in one neat little package? Argh! I took some comforting in believing that I’d get one eventually; the event that they gave them away at was not well-attended, and they had to have had a lot left over. Right, right?

Yes, they did. But no, I don’t.

The Glowy Keychain is one of the few recent SRs that hasn’t made it into the Ninja Pit of Death, or Grab Bags, or Shopatron. It’s one of Reeves’ few pure "promo" horses, outside of the BreyerFest Volunteer Gift Horses (but even those you still have to work for, technically.) Either Reeves gifts you one, or you buy it from someone who was gifted.

Enough of them are circulating around now that the prices for them have dropped out of the stratosphere, but I still can’t cross that line and actually pay for something I know someone got for free. It just feels weird to me. I also don’t buy other people’s Volunteer Horses, for pretty much the same reason. (Additionally, they tend to be too expensive, even the so-called "homely" ones.)

The reason given for the end of the Halloween program was that they "ran out of ideas," but the Halloween-themed SRs for the invitation-only events since then (VRE and LSE) argues against that. I suspect the sales were probably lagging just enough to no longer make the program economically viable, but I don’t have access to the sales records to know for sure.

It’s also true that the Missouri Fox Trotter "Frankensteed" wasn’t all that popular among the LSE attendees last year, but I believe that was more a function of the relatively high piece count compared to other available SRs, and attendees’ unreasonably high expectations. (Nothing less than "Test Colors for Everyone" would have satisfied the critics, in the end.)

I think there’s still enough support for the idea to continue making Halloween Horses on a limited basis. There’s already a modestly successful, existing program that it could be incorporated into: the Shopatron Web Specials.

(If you're looking for idea, people at Reeves, may I suggest a metallic orange Belgian with a painted, glow-in-the-dark Jack O’Lantern face on it?)