Another Oddball

Here’s a little something to tide you over while I go off on another ill-advised weekend excursion. (I’m telling myself that it’s a dry run for next year’s Upper Wyoming Grand Adventure, but it’s really more of a “I need to get away from my life for a couple of days, please and thank you” thing.)

Apparently I have moved on from weirdo Shams to weirdo Proud Arabian Stallions! As you might have noticed – at least, I hope you did! – this beautiful fellow has no black points on his front legs. This is an unusual variation of the Bay that Breyer employed on some of releases in the mid-1970s, most notably on early examples of the G1 Stablemates Citation and Arabian Stallion.

While I have occasionally spotted this variation on other releases – l have a matching Bay Grazing Mare and Foal set, for instance – this is the first time I’ve seen in on the Proud Arabian Stallion. When I eyed him on eBay, I found him so striking that I realized he had to come home with me. 

Even though I already have a couple of pretty nice Mahogany Bay Proud Arabian Stallions, and didn’t think I needed more. (The *Witez II that you’ve seen here a few times before because he’s unbelievably gorgeous, and a Chalky who I keep forgetting that I own, for some strange reason, who is also extremely nice. But I digress.)

The Mahogany Bay Proud Arabian Stallion went through several different markings variations – beginning with two neatly airbrushed short hind socks on the earliest *Witez II models, and ending with four stockings that were sometimes rather… undefined. 

That was nothing unique to the Proud Arabian Stallion, though. Most leg markings in the 1970s were pretty darn fuzzy. And variable. Oh, so variable.

I’m assuming the new guy is from the ca. 1974/1975 era, because he still has the neatly airbrushed hind socks typical of the *Witez II. Some Mahogany Bay Proud Arabian Stallions still rocked those socks even after they started adding front stockings to the paint job later on in the 1970s. 

I am assuming that all they did at the factory was instruct the painters to add some front stockings to the original paint job. Since it is likely they didn’t specify what they had to look like, they just went with the standard fuzzy markings of the era. 

He is in excellent shape, but he does need a little bit of cleanup before I decide what to do with him. (Have I mentioned before that I own too much stuff?)

FAMs as PAMs?

Several years ago I acquired a Matte Dapple Gray Family Arabian Mare in a Body Box lot. She was missing a leg and half an ear, but I didn’t care:

I knew there was at least one other Dapple Gray Family Arabian Mare like her out there, and where there are two, there are usually more. I assumed that she was either a Salesman’s Sample or very early production piece of the Proud Arabian Mare, produced before the Proud Arabian Mare mold was ready for full production.

I also assumed that meant there had to be at least a few Mahogany Bay Family Arabian Mares out there too, either sitting unnoticed in someone’s collection, or passed off as a simple variation of the Bay.

(Any Matte Alabasters that would have/could have been produced would have been virtually identical/indistinguishable from the original Matte Alabaster FAMs, save for a little extra body shading, perhaps.)

So it wasn’t a complete surprise when a Mahogany Bay Family Arabian Mare showed up – on eBay, of course. What was odd about it was that it came with the original White Cardboard Picture box, and a not-quite-matching Bay Proud Arabian Foal.

Oddballs and obvious Samples have turned up in retail boxes before, especially the enclosed cardboard ones of the 1970s and early 1980s. It might have been done to round out the production quota for the day, or (according to a rumor I heard from Marney herself) to give the hobby community a few little surprises to go hunting for.

But if these Oddball Mares were Samples or simply very early production items, you’d expect to find them with Corrugated Shipper Boxes: the Proud Arabian Mare debuted in 1972, but the retail-friendly White Cardboard Picture Boxes didn’t appear until 1973.

A random thought occurred to me a while back, now bolstered by this Mahogany Bay Mare and her box: what if these Mares were straight-up goofs? What if – like so many hobbyists – one of the factory painters simply confused the PAM mold with the FAM mold?

If so, it was obviously a mistake that was caught early. This is a darn shame, since I have grown rather fond of Mahogany Bay as a color.

I had the strange misfortune of actually finding the Mahogany Bay FAM auction very shortly after it was listed, and fumbled around the page for a few anxious seconds desperately looking for the “Buy It Now” button that was not there.

So I will simply have to be content with my three-legged mare…

The Mahogany Bay PAS Of My Dreams

Now here, my dears, is one of the most beautiful Mahogany Bay Proud Arabian Stallions in the world:

He’s one of the early ones – the “*Witez II” version, ca. 1971-4, or thereabouts – with the neatly airbrushed hind socks. Everything about him in fact, is neatly and lovingly done, right down to the wisps of his mane.

Later Mahogany Bay Proud Arabian Stallions – particularly in the late 1970s – were not so carefully painted, and were especially prone to having fuzzy gray oversprayed socks. Among other things: the late 1970s were really and truly not the best of times for Breyer’s quality control.

It was a constant source of frustration to me my younger days, when I wanted to add a Mahogany Bay PAS to my herd. Then I started going to live shows and found that neatly painted, two-stocking versions did exist, and were just as awesome I had imagined, giving me hope that I’d finally get the Bay Proud Arabian Stallion of my dreams.

It wasn’t until recently that I finally – finally! – managed to acquire one that was all the things that I had hoped for: Beautifully shaded. Neatly painted. In near-perfect condition. And (relatively) cheap.

The hardest part wasn’t finding one – he was a fairly popular mold back then, as Breyer’s first Arabian Stallion who really looked like an Arabian Stallion, or at least the way we imagined them. On any given day on almost any part of the Internet, you’re going to find multiple Bay Proud Arabian Stallion for sale somewhere, and some of them are the early two-sock version.

The biggest issue is condition: these models weren’t just popular and played with, they were also dearly loved: held, cuddled, taken to bed and taken to school. The lightly textured finish that was another hallmark of these earliest pieces was very prone to rubbing, so many Proud Arabian Stallions bear the wounds of that well-meaning devotion.

So I went through a lot of these guys – until I found this guy.

The only problem now is that the hobby’s standards of Arabian beauty have changed. While he would have crushed the competition in the late 1980s, he’d only be competitive in Vintage and Collectibility classes today.

No matter. I love him anyway. And his buddy, too, who is next up in the queue...