Fiero, Rockford, and Defining Vintage

Whew, another week that felt like a month here – this insane weather, the new car shopping, my ongoing horse inventory, the strange patch of creativity that’s now motivating me to braid twelve(!) yards of rick-rack to finish another old quilt project….

And, uh, I think I’m going to my first live show in over a decade. (More details about that exciting and terrifying situation another time.)

Fiero, the first release in this year’s Stablemates Club was also released this week:

He’ll be a 50-50 Gloss/Matte Split release; while I do not personally care which version finish variation I get, most of the rest of the online hobby community will apparently be treating their potential Matte Fieros like body-quality Family Arabian Mares.

(For the record, I love the Family Arabian Mare. But she’s definitely not among the most beloved of Vintage Breyer molds – even among Family Arabian collectors!)

Someday the All Glossy, All The Time Fad will fade. I hope. Not because I don’t like Glossies, but I am never keen on anything – good or bad – becoming a fad, generally. Following fads doesn’t always lead to the best decisions being made.

I have nothing much else to talk about today, other than my pleasure in finding out how lovely the Vintage Club Rockfords have turned out. (Mine’s not here yet – aside from the week being the week it was, I was also waiting/hoping for Fiero to drop.)

I know there’s been some discussion of whether Rockford – or the Charcoal Shannondell release Claude – actually qualify as “Vintage” releases.

The obvious (and somewhat cynical) answer to that is they do if Reeves says they do. So it’s not just older molds in older colors, it’s also older molds in newer colors and newer molds in older colors. Or radical (or not so radical) reinterpretations of older releases or colors, which is how I would classify the first Vintage Club release Dandy, on the Clydesdale Stallion mold.

Vintage Gloss Brown/Palomino Pintos didn’t look much like Dandy did.

On a more philosophical note, limiting themselves to just Vintage molds, colors and techniques prior to an arbitrary date would have led to creative stagnation. After a relatively short while, you’d simply run out of color and mold combos to explore.

And truth be told, the market for premium Vintage-style releases – the current Gloss fad aside – is not that large. It’s in their financial interests to be more expansive with their definition of Vintage.

And so far, so good this year. I wouldn’t be surprised if Rockford turned out to be my favorite VC release ever, but I already loved the Pacer mold, so it wouldn’t have taken much to get it there anyway.

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....

Stablemates, Old and New

Interesting lineup for the 2019 Stablemates Club:

Two new molds, and the Mirado, who has only had one previous release – as the final release in 2017’s Stablemates Club. And then there’s the G1 Love Morgan Mare, who we haven’t seen since she was replaced as Rain by the Paso Fino in the #5312 Spirit Family Play Set at the end of 2005.

But alas, no mini Dundee/Lipizzan yet; still hoping he turns up somewhere and somewhat affordable next year, like in a Regular Run boxed assortment or play set. (No Mystery Assortments, please!)

I am fine with all of these selections, since I have been a Stablemates loyalist since almost literally day one. My very plebeian hobby fantasy after winning the lottery wouldn’t be to start buying Decorators or Test Colors or Micro Runs, it would be to complete my Stablemates collection.

Except the super rare or expensive ones because frankly, collecting Test Colors or vintage Decorators would be way cheaper. Of all the reasons why I collect Stablemates, the fact that they are mostly affordable is also a huge part of the allure. Having the luxury of being able to buy what I want wouldn’t change that.

Besides, I could keep my occupied for a good while tracking down all the commons and variations I don’t have!

It’s a lot: I fell off the Stablemates wagon sometime early in the G2 era. It wasn’t any one thing, other than life getting in the way, and then realizing how far behind I was when it wasn’t. Now I get what I can get, and if a release shoots out of my budget range, I just move on to something cheaper.

So when the colors and finishes are finally revealed, the most you’ll get from me are minor quibbles about details – certain molds being annoyingly tippy, color selections I wouldn’t have made personally, aesthetic issues I have with the smanes and tails on later molds, that sort of thing.

I will say that I like what I see in the silhouette of the obvious Thoroughbred in the upper righthand corner. I think he and I will be fast friends, in whatever colors he comes in.

Mirado, et al

Since I’m still feeling a little out of sorts today over last week’s matters, I’ve been trying to work off some of the frustration by starting my Spring Cleaning a couple months early.

I packed away some sales items, sorted out my shipping boxes, and now I’m attempting to get caught up on my more recent Stablemates arrivals, like the Mirado I only just recently unwrapped…

Generally I like him – his carved out ears and raised hoof are adorbs – though he has just a tad bit too much mane for my tastes. (I have the same issue with the Tushar.) Some people are a bit put off by his blue eye, but it doesn’t bother me.

Incidentally, I have so far managed to avoid the Stablemates (and the Squishy Mare) I saw at Tuesday Morning, and since I won’t be on that side of town again for another week, I think I have managed to successfully avoid the temptation.

While I wouldn’t mind picking up some of new Regular Run Blind Bag Mystery Stablemates, I’m getting the impression that my search for them – at least, for the next few weeks or months – will probably be as fruitless as my recent Walmart quests.

At first I thought that making the “chase piece” the same mold as another item in the assortment was a great idea – until I realized that meant it would make the more common example hard to come by as well.

Especially when you use a newer and more desirable mold like Django, and use a brand new Decorator color like Copper Florentine for the “rare” one.

I understand the marketing strategy behind it, but I do miss the old days of Stablemates collecting, when you had multiple simultaneous releases that were produced in roughly the same quantities. Any variances were because of desirability (some colors being more popular than others) or production issues.

On the other hand, that was largely because we only had a handful of molds to work with for over 20 years – 16, technically – until the Kathleen Moody “G2” molds came out in 1998 and blew up the world of Stablemates collectors.

At one point, I had an almost complete collection of Stablemates. I was just missing the Silver Saddlebred, the Poop Paperweight, and a complete Stablemates Stable Set. I’ve since improved upon that original collection – I’ve since found a factory sealed Stablemates Stable Set, and the Wooden Stable, an item so rare I didn’t even think it made it out of the prototype stage.

But the newer stuff? I am so far behind. I lost my Stablemates mojo sometime in the early 2000s: all those new molds and colors tapped me out, then wore me out.

My purchases have been a bit spotty since then, but I’ve made up a bit of ground recently with the web site special offers and such. When I do finally get back into the swing of buying again, I might just stick with Stablemates for a while.

But just the slightly older stuff. Part of the appeal of Stablemates collecting for me is the affordability thing: $100 Copper Florentine Djangos are definitely not in my budget.