Cheap Horses

Crankiness warning activated: this week has been messy, complicated and exhausting. I no longer have the patience or energy to engage with people who have the luxury of being angry all the time about everything – whether it’s about work, life or horses. 

I finally made it to a Tractor Supply this week and saw the Indian Pony Sayan. She is very pretty, but I am still not motivated to get her. I wouldn’t mind getting the Stablemates, but the store I visited didn’t have them, and I have a suspicion that I’m not going to see any of them any time soon.

My work schedule might be changing, again, so I literally have no idea when I’ll get back.

I did make it to a few Five Below stores this week to investigate the latest Breyer Mystery: these new Classics-scale “Paddock Pal” Horses and Unicorns. I haven’t found the horses yet, but I did buy the four Unicorns. My favorite is “Cherry”:

When I first saw them on eBay earlier in the week, I made the erroneous assumption that they were possibly Reeves’s entrée into the 1:6 Scale market: they looked a lot like the vintage Marx Horses preferred by military miniaturists, both in terms of style and materials. The box was also very similar to the “Touchability”boxes used on the Breyer-branded Plush Aurora releases, some of which can now be found in the toy departments of some Meijer superstores. 

(Meijer is a slightly more upscale, Midwestern equivalent to Walmart that very occasionally carries Breyers. But none currently: the plushes are distributed by Aurora.)

Some of the initial speculation about the origins of these models was… interesting, to put it politely. When it was discovered that they appeared to be a Five Below exclusive, my first thought was: Oh, so this is how Reeves is trying to break into the “Discount Store” market.

One of the few bright spots in the retail market has been the rise of Discount Stores like Dollar Tree, Dollar General, and my personal local favorite, Debby’s Dollar. 

A lot of name brands have been tailoring products for the Discount Store market, and I was just wondering when – or if! – Reeves was going to tap into that market. Reeves had dumped some of the Walmart Stablemates at Five Below before – and some of the more recent Blind Bags are also showing up there again. 

As for the criticisms about the materials, the quality, or the fact that they’re even in discount stores at all, I find most of them moot. These are intended as an inexpensive, entry-level product. For most non-hobbyist consumers – we’re talking parents, grandparents and younger children – a plastic horse is a plastic horse. 

They’re a significant step up from the usual equines available at this price point, and are therefore more attractive product for a child who may potentially outgrow their horse phase. And for those that do not, the brand recognition is built-in. 

I find them interesting. There are several Five Belows in my area, but I do not know if I will go out of my way to find the horses: as I mentioned before, my time is currently at a premium. 

(FYI: I still think they need to do 1:6 Scale horses.)

The Daft Days

The Zebra arrived today, but I’ll probably wait until the weekend to open him up – partly to forestall any potential disappointments, and because I am already elbow deep in horse inventory stuff. The Stablemates alone will be the death of me…

And speaking of, Reeves pushed out one last enticement to join the Stablemates Club: an optional seventh release, a Mini Me of the Dapple Gray Clydesdale Stallion by the name of Duke.

A moot point for me (I signed up a while ago) but there is the answer to the not-really-a-question of whether or not they’re shrinky-dinking other Vintage molds. Of course they are.

But let’s get back to the question of Ambrose. Some of you won’t like my answer, but you know I am not afraid of being a contrarian.

I find that Reeves’ marketing of Ambrose – one that emphasizes its “painted in the USA” status – as both a little cynical and troubling.

For one, it devalues some of the genuinely beautiful models that are now being made in China. Are they all “Live Show Quality”? No. But the possibility of acquiring something excellent at a not unreasonable price does exist.

And not only that, this exclusivity is simply not true: there are a lot of models still painted in the USA: some of the Web Specials (Wailua, Bramble), Volunteer Specials, Prize and Raffle models, models for Exclusive Events. To name a few.

Sure, they may not available to everyone equally, but a $300 model hyped as being “extraordinary” and sold on a First-Come, First-Served basis at the end of an already overcrowded December selling season is also… not available to everyone equally.

It’s just another flavor of exclusivity, albeit an economic one. For those of us who choose not to (or simply cannot) spend ourselves into oblivion during the holidays, we’re now faced with a glut of promotions with ever escalating stakes. Do we risk getting a Gloss Regular Run, or should we wait for the Winter Web Specials? Will the Christmas Day model be to our liking, or will Reeves throw down something else in the “Daft Days” that follow? Is a New Year’s Day Special not far behind?

The hobby’s original appeal of opening the often-too-expensive world of horses to everyone is something now reflected even Breyer’s own marketing strategy: “A Horse of Your Own”. This is an approach I’ve been touting for years, and I am glad that Reeves is taking it. 

Targeting to your higher-end customers is not wrong, but when it appears that you are catering to the higher-end customers to the exclusion of everyone else, that’s a problem. Especially when those customers not only expect it, but demand it.

This issue ties to another troubling point in Ambrose’s sale pitch: quality escalation. While I have no doubt that the Ambroses will be uniformly excellent, they will not be uniformly perfect. Looking at the way many hobbyists nitpick models at half – or even one-tenth – the price, I can only imagine how intense the scrutiny will be for models like Ambrose, and his successors.

It can’t end well.

If they continue this “series” – based on the response, I am assuming that it’s going to be added to the end-of-year sales blitz – I won’t rule out the possibility of buying one in the future. But it’ll have to be on a mold I really love in a color I can’t pass up: I prefer to buy things for keeps, not to speculate.

Brand Awareness

And now some thoughts on the Toy Hall of Fame situation.

As I explained before, it doesn’t surprise me that Breyer didn’t make the Hall of Fame finalist list, again. That didn’t annoy me so much, but the fact that Care Bears – the very definition of a manufacturer-created fad – did, did.

My Little Pony or He-Man have similar origins, but they don’t bother me as much: aside from cultural relevancy, their fandoms exist somewhat independent of the companies that created them. They are also played with in ways not dreamed of by their manufacturers: for me, this is a key component in determining whether or not a toy truly fosters imaginative play.

One thing that these three properties do have that Breyers do not – and is probably the key factor in Breyer Horses continuing failure to make the ballot – is brand awareness. Just how many people know of the product, directly or indirectly?

Ask an average random person in the United States what My Little Pony, He-Man, or Care Bears are, and virtually everyone will know what you are talking about.

Breyers… don’t quite have that same level of recognition. But that will take a bit of explanation.

There are basically three levels when it comes to awareness of something – be it a thing or an idea.

First: there are people who are very familiar with the thing or idea.

Second: there are people who know nothing of the thing or idea.

Third: there are people who are vaguely familiar with the thing or idea – basically they know that it exists out there, but they don't know many particulars about it.

When it comes to Breyers in particular, and model horses in general, about 20% of people I know/meet in a day fall into the first category, those who immediately know what I am talking about. That's about one in five. (At the flea market, it's more like 80-90%)

About 20% of people know nothing about model horses, and will look at me like I am a crazy person when I go on about the topic. If they acknowledge the existence of toy horses, they immediately think either “My Little Pony” or “Barbie's Horse Dallas”.

Everybody else falls into the gray zone; conversations with these people usually start with something along the lines of “My sister/cousin/aunt/crazy Uncle Ned collected horses....” and end with “...and they threw them out/gave them to the neighbor's kids/sold them at a yard sale.”

Think about the Toy Story movies: Breyers were clearly implied in the second film when Jessie sings about her former life, but they were not mentioned by name:

I think that sums up the level of awareness that most people have about model horses in general, and Breyers in particular. Oh yeah, I remember those. What were they called, again?

But how do you go about fixing this problem?

I don’t think the availability of the product – or the lack thereof – is necessarily a big factor in the recognition issue. The horse-crazy kids know what Breyers are, even if they don’t necessarily have access to them financially or logistically.

The concept of “toy horses” is not difficult to sell to a larger public, either: that many (if not most) young girls go through a “horse phase” is practically a cliché.

I like to use the “dollar store” analogy: of you can get a knock-off of it at a dollar store, it’s something that has a fairly broad appeal. And you can get model horses – not very good ones, but “horses” nonetheless – at most dollar stores.

As far as the availability issue goes, Breyers as a brand can be tough to market, but that’s also because the retail market is a lot tougher these days: the stores that do have the shelf space would rather dedicate it to products that have a higher brand awareness – like My Little Pony.

My Little Pony managed to achieve this awareness – in part – by going small, creating a self-contained fantasy universe/playground much the way Star Wars did. 

Breyer has that to some degree, but the difference here is twofold. First, Breyer’s “playground” – the model horse hobby – is largely unknown outside of dedicated hobbyists: even among people who know or collect, many are either unfamiliar with it or intimidated by it.

Second, our “playground” is not a self-contained fantasy universe in the same way MLP, He-Man or Star Wars is: it’s basically Live-Action Role Playing (LARPing) of real horses – except where it isn’t (or can’t be). 

So how you go about fixing Breyer’s brand awareness problem?

Aside from encouraging horse-crazy kids to “buy Breyer”, you have to tell the people who were former horse-crazy kids that Breyers are here for them, too. After all, it’s right there in their mission statement:

Delivering the promise of a horse to everyone who dreams of one.

Everyone.

The new management at Reeves has been working on that mission statement, most visibly with last year’s New York Times article, the Imagine Entertainment deal announced a couple month back.

But these efforts so far have been targeted towards kids. That’s great (and necessary, obviously!) but ultimately a brand awareness solution needs to include a plan to engage those who were horse-crazy kids “once upon a time”, but may still harbor deep-seated fantasies of horse ownership.

Letting them know that they can have the horse of their dreams and “play” with them like the real thing? That could be huge. If think the horse-crazy kids who attend BreyerFest for the first time are a joy to behold, seeing the ones who discover (or rediscover) it as adults is downright revelatory.

In short: while “brand awareness” alone should never be enough for inclusion in the Toy Hall of Fame, I think it is one of the primary things holding Breyer Horses back from even being nominated. I think that can be overcome by not just marketing to current horse-crazy kids, but also former (now vintage?) horse-crazy kids.

Anecdote Vs. Data

I somehow managed to escape all the Black Friday sales unscathed; we’ll see what Cyber Monday brings. (Nothing, I hope. Other than the snow, and that is completely out of my control.)

I know nothing about the situation with the Brick and Mortar Gloss Kodis now turning up. I am assuming that Reeves, knowing that many of us completely lose our heads over anything Gloss, is just randomly glossing the last bits of the Kodi stock in an effort to make space in the warehouse for the 2019 models.

As such, I don’t think they’ll be excessively rare, and nothing to get hot and bothered over. And if they are, they still aren’t worth getting worked up about.

I have also pretty much given up trying to figure out Reeves is doing, in regards to their marketing. After being obtuse about the Benasque’s color, being almost completely opaque about the Vintage Club models, revealing two of the releases and silhouettes of the other four molds for Stablemates Club ones, the straight-up weirdness of the Bay Bristol reveal, I’m ready to tap out and use my brain power on more rewarding things, like lottery number algorithms.

Some of this is undoubtedly because of the new blood that’s come in recently, some of whom are from well outside the model horse community. That in itself is not a bad thing, but you’d hope they would have already evaluated the approaches that have – and have not – worked in the past.

Or maybe they have. A point in their favor is that we’re working from anecdotal data, while they have hard sales data.

When I have had access to some of that sales data, it often bore little correlation to what hobbyists (working from anecdotal data points) assumed to be true.

But getting back to the Stablemates Club reveals, the first (?) release for the 2019 Stablemates Club is  a Gloss Dappled Chestnut on the Mirado mold:

Since I belong to the “I’ll buy what I like” school of horse-buying, and I liked him just fine, I hadn’t noticed the level of antagonism and vitriol that had grown up around the Mirado mold. Yes, the original paint job didn’t do him any favors, and the extra-long flappy mane does distort his proportions a bit, but… it’s a Stablemate.

The beauty of the Stablemates scale is that both the buyer and the manufacturer can get experimental or weird or quirky, for a rather modest initial outlay.

What’s also interesting about this release is that Reeves took a mold that received a rather cool reception, and changed the one thing that they could: the paintjob.

To the one thing that they know a lot of collectors can’t resist: Glossy!

A point in your favor, Reeves. Now about the lack of Vintage Club reveals....

The Web Site Remodel

I haven’t been online enough to judge the Breyer Horses web site redesign (too much offline nonsense to deal with at the moment. Life, man.) I pretty much just reactivated my account per their e-mail instructions, and did a little bit of poking around to make sure they didn’t hide any Super-Secret-Special-Runs anywhere.

I do like it visually – it’s a much cleaner, cohesive and professional-looking design, to say the least. The previous site design gave off a “generic toy company” vibe, while this design is more “slightly upscale aspirational equestrian lifestyle brand”.

Which makes sense, since they recently changed their company slogan from the almost meaningless “Let Your Imagination Play” to “A Horse Of My Very Own”. Their mission statement, under the Discover Breyer tab on the index page:

Ever since our first model horse was created in 1950, Breyer has been committed to making the World’s Finest Model Horses. Fans believe that when they hold a Breyer horse in their hands, it’s like entering the world of real horses.   

Our goal is build on the historical legacy of the brand, and bring the inspiration of horses to as many people as possible. As we do this, every expression of the brand, across our products, content, and experiences, is a touchpoint that connects us to that inspiration. 

That’s what I’ve been saying for years; I think I’ve expressed some variations of these sentiments on previous BreyerFest Volunteer Applications, because (duh) that’s what I sincerely believe.

(Though I prefer to think that the new-ish people in charge did their homework and came up with the concept independently, and that I was but one voice of many.)

I don’t have a place for the living-breathing kind of horses in my life – and likely never will – and Breyer Horses are the closest equivalent. Better in some ways, since I don’t have to worry about additional expenses (vet bills, boarding) and, if need be, I can walk away from them for a while and not have to worry about their physical or emotional upkeep.

(Leaving Vita alone for half the day is terrifying enough!)

Whether the site is easier to use or navigate I haven’t really had a chance to determine yet. I suspect there are some bugs that still need to be worked out; there always are.