Coping Strategies

Yesterday, my brother heard me yelling in my office, and promptly told me to walk away from the computer. The WEG Specials? Yeah, it was the WEG Specials.

I couldn’t, of course. Last week’s work schedule really messed me up (gone from home for two days, slept through most of a third) and while the limited Internet access was probably as good a coping strategy as any for dealing with the WEG specials, it’s not something I could avoid forever.

And boy howdy, did it hurt like heck. The exclusive SRs are nice - I wouldn’t mind the Gold Raven, or that Palomino Roxy - but it’s the premium reissues that are really killing me, especially the matte POA Toby and the (cry-sob-whimper) Traditional Man o’ War.

Stab me in the heart, why don’t you Reeves?

Yeah, and real smart move, not limiting the low quantity SRs to one per person, or so many per day. Were they really expecting all those SRs to last for the bulk of 16 days, without any purchase limits? If most of the advertised - and unadvertised - exclusives are gone by now, there’s gonna be a lot of unhappy campers over the next two weeks. (Unless they pull more "surprises" out later in the week.)

My current coping strategy for the rest of the duration of WEG? I’m treating it like every other recent acronymic event (LSE, VRE): ignore, then mope. It’s too far away for a day trip, and I don’t have the money anyway. Might as well be another LSE or VRE, without the formality of a ticket raffle.

At this point I really can’t say any more about the event that wouldn’t involve the heavy, repeated use of expletives. So I won’t.

The flea market was adequate today. The weather was clear, if a tad cold. There seemed to be fewer crazy/creepy people milling about, but more outright tourists - you know, the kind that buy ornamental corn, painted pumpkins, and trivets made out of bottlecaps.

Lots models, but not much worth buying - everything was either body quality, or slightly overpriced. I found that odd, since prices usually start going down near the end of the season. I did find an okay Horned Hereford Bull that’s now sunning in the window, and a few neat old books (nothing horsey.) I also found the Swinging Girl part of a Mastercrafters Swinger Clock - not the clock, just the girl on the swing. It's just my luck, though, that I’m still missing a part to install it in the one clock incomplete clock that I have.

I do have a couple of research-intensive posts in the pipeline, including a little something about the Davy Crockett that I’m hoping to have ready by tomorrow. My schedule is a little less strenuous this week, or at least it appears to be so from first glance.

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?)

Grab Bag

I’m still not operating at 100%, but I’m getting there. And along the way I have discovered my new favorite sickbed indulgence: Del Monte Fruit Chillers. (Single-serving sorbets! Brilliant!)

I’ll be doing a bit of a "grab bag" style posting today, wrapping up a few loose ends that don’t merit a single post individually. I’m still feeling a bit scattered from the flu, so I might as well work with it, rather than against.

Speaking of the Grab Bags, I managed to successfully resist their temptations. Part of me feared I would have ended up with a porcelain, and I have a nasty habit of breaking those kinds of things. Especially when I’m slightly disoriented from OTC cold and flu remedies.

Interesting how most of the Medalist Ponies that were sent out in the Grab Bags were the Bronzes - were they going through them by color, or did the bulk of the leftover Ponies just happen to be Bronze? (I can’t recall the ratios of the different colors leftover in the Tent.) Or did they just happen to pick that color because it was the most autumnal of the three colors, and therefore the most appropriate thing to include in a "Fall" Grab Bag?

The second "wave" seem to be including Gold one, so I’m just going with the "by color" theory. And if that’s the case, I still have a shot at getting a Silver one, which is the only one I really want. (It’s one of my stable colors, and the chemical symbol for silver is Ag, which just so happen to be my initials. Hence the want.)

Me and my pedestrian tastes: I think of all the LSE models, I like the Shining N Sassy best. They really put a lot of effort into her: birdcatcher spots, rabicano roaning and mapping on the blaze? Excellent! Not that I have any remote chance of getting her at a reasonable price, even though she’s considered unforgivably "common." I do wonder what’ll happen to the handful of Frankensteeds leftover in the second grabby hands pass through: will there be any controversy when they finally show up somewhere else?

I find it very surprising, still, that there are hobbyists out there that are unaware of the amount of Reeves’s lurking about in the online model horse world. They avoid posting mostly in the interest of not playing favorites (and to avoid the inevitable stream of unsolicited PMs, too.) They will be specifically lurking about on Blab, however, in a thread asking for suggestions for future BreyerFest themes and guest horses. It’s in one of the open, no-pay forums, so if you think you have the next great idea, go for it.

I’ll be doing more follow-up on the Boehm biography in the future; it led me on a couple of interesting and surprising productive research paths, quite literally ranging from the sublime to the ridiculous. (Two words: Miniature Golf. No, really!)

The outdoor flea market is closed for the season. We have plenty of antique malls, thrift shops, indoor markets and Salvation Army outlets to keep me sufficiently busy, but I do miss the cheap, unpredictable thrills the outdoor market offers. Like everyone else, though, I’m having a hard time selling anything right now, so less inventory is probably a good thing.

I have a few things I’m giving away (for the cost of postage): back issues of my BreyerFest MGR Samplers. I always end up with a few extra cobbled together from the leftover pages created during the printing process. They’re all complete issues: I just reprinted whatever pages I’m missing from my original computer files. Here’s what I have left, by year:

2009: 7 issues
2008: 7 issues
2007: 3 issues
2006: 2 issues
2005: 1 issue

PM me or drop me an e-mail for availability and a postage estimate, if you’re interested.
I don’t plan on reprinting any more on an individual basis: I might print an omnibus/collected edition sometime in the future, no guarantee though.

Breyer and the Fidelity Swap

In case you haven’t caught the clues, I haven’t exactly been on board with these BreyerFest-by-invitation only events. I haven’t even entered for any of them - the original in 2002, the VRE, or the LSE. I can only afford one big even a year, and I have to go with the one that gives me the biggest all-around payoff, emotionally and financially. And that’s BreyerFest.

I have been trying my best to avoid the LSE discussions; I have better things to do than moon over models I'll never hope to own. Unlike the very vocal minorities trolling the boards, I actually like most of the specials that have been announced. Chestnut is very flattering on the Roxy mold, the Halloween Horse is very clever, and I try not to think about the Smart Chic Olena too much, because I had been hoping that a(n affordable) leopard appaloosa release would be in his future someday.

I like the Peruvian, too, but he is a bit too close to the Cobrizo and the possible future Collector’s Choice Roan, but that could just be Reeves’s photography getting in the way again. The possibility of him being even more awesome in person is also something I’d rather not contemplate.

What I’m finding yucky is the sight of hobbyists falling over each other to step to the mike and proudly, defiantly proclaim how much they dislike all of the releases so far. Just a few years ago, most hobbyists would have been rolling around on the floor in paroxysms of joy over a model like Mudflap. Now they can barely contain their glee over their disdain.

Some of it is just a self-defense mechanism: better to rationalize a reason not to want something, than mope about it being unaffordable or inaccessible. (You know, it’s perfectly okay to mope every once and a while, too. Being happy all the time isn’t any better than being a perpetual mopey-dope.)

But I think an interesting new theory called the "Fidelity Swap" might explain what’s going on here.

As theorized by business writer Kevin Maney in the recently published Trade-Off: Why Some Things Catch On, and Others Don’t, businesses have to decide if their product or service will focus on Fidelity or Convenience. Fidelity is about quality, exclusivity, snob appeal, and bragging rights. Convenience is about affordability, availability, and ease. The tension between these two competing idea is the "Fidelity Swap."

The most successful products and services are either high in Fidelity or high in Convenience, but not both. Companies that try to achieve both are less likely to succeed: it confuses and frustrates the consumer. Consumers who prefer Convenience will be disappointed when the company produces products they find unaffordable and/or unavailable, and the consumers who prefer Fidelity will be disappointed by the lack of exclusivity or higher quality.

Sound familiar?

It’s pretty obvious I’m in the Convenience camp: of course I want my horses to be of better-than-average quality, and I am not immune to the snob appeal a rarer or prettier-than-average model brings to the herd. But I am very frustrated when models become so limited in distribution, or so expensive in price, that any hope of achieving those models approaches zero.

And there’s been a lot of those kinds of models lately. A lot.

Part of the appeal of the hobby to me was in its affordability: I could have the ginormous herd of my dreams with minimal expense, little acreage, and no vet bills. (My teenage fantasy ranch, by the way, was located in Wyoming. I’m not sure why: it just was. Oh, the elaborate facilities I drew up!) So when I see people forking over enormous sums of money for these models - and complaining that a 100 piece SR isn’t exclusive enough for them - well, it runs counter to what my notions of the hobby are.

There really aren't that many hobbyists out there that can afford the high fidelity models, and that's part of the problem: having a special class of folks who end up with the majority of the rarities is a recipe for resentment.

The second thing that might happen - that is actually happening with the Connoisseur models at this point - is model fatigue, or boredom. Connoisseurs aren't perceived as being rare or exclusive enough anymore. Any SR that breaks three digits isn't rare or exclusive enough anymore.

Honestly, I can’t see anything that would make them happy, short of giving them all test colors and made-to-order factory customs. And here I thought we had at least all agreed to make fun of the Peter Stone business model, not admire it, right?