The Times

I had a particularly bad migraine yesterday and I’m still feeling a bit nauseous, so just a bit of commentary about that article in The New York Times.

If you haven’t read it yet, I’d recommend it; it’s actually rather decent:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/26/style/horse-girls-breyerfest.html

I especially liked this paragraph – it makes BreyerFest sound so exotic and alluring:

If Breyerfest is the horse girl’s bacchanal, the nearby Clarion Hotel is its open bar, from which the ecstasy of material excess flows like wine. Throughout Breyerfest, the hotel transforms into a kind of Kowloon Walled City, in which dealers cram their rooms floor to ceiling with shelves of model horses and open their doors to the madding crowd.

If I wasn’t already a lifer, I’d be penciling BreyerFest into my 2019 itinerary right now!

Also, had I known The New York Times was milling about, I would have made the effort to get quoted! While it’s not necessarily something I’ve been looking to add to my “bucket list”, it would have made a nice bullet point on the Curriculum Vitae.

(I’ve been quoted in newspapers before, but nothing on that big of a stage.)

Although the hobby has gotten a lot of press over the years, most of it has been via regional newspapers and specialty periodicals (like Western Horseman); national press like this is a little out of the ordinary.

For the most part, this article was pretty respectful and with little in the way of the “Let’s ogle the oddballs!” framing that hobbies and other unique subcultures tend to get put into.

I do have a few other quibbles with the article, though.

The impression that the hobby itself is of more recent vintage, and generated by Breyer itself is frustrating. I know why they framed it this way – this is at its core a puff/promotional piece for Reeves – but no, not even.

This little hobby of ours has been around long enough that it’s become multigenerational. There were newsletters, live shows, and organizing bodies within the hobby proper over fifty years ago. It was hobbyists who were pestering Breyer to get more involved: that the industry exists as it does is largely in response to us!

BreyerFest is also essentially just an outgrowth of an earlier event – Model Horse Congress – that was originally organized by hobbyists for a couple of decades prior.

That Reeves gets to dictate how we get seen by the larger world is partly our fault; we’ve spent way too much time quibbling over incidental things and awarding each other prizes, rather than promoting the activity itself.

But I am in no mood to argue those points all over again. It’s time for this old “horse lady” to get herself to bed for the flea market tomorrow.

Missed Opportunities

I must confess I’m feeling a bit burnt out, Breyer-wise: the Chicago trip was a big emotional drain, and in the past few days all I’ve wanted to do is watch cartoons and make quilts.

The Internet chatter is not helping my mood: it sounds like a lot of people are about fifteen minutes away from declaring the Chicago event an “Epic Fail”.

It was flawed, yes, but I wouldn’t go that far. I wasn’t party to any of that discussion, but the event felt like it had some issues from the get go.

The Special Run situation is the one getting the most discussion, and it certainly could have been handled better. Issuing them in equal quantities (80 each?) would have tempered the obvious resale motives that were in evidence during the sale on Sunday.

I actually liked most of the Specials: this was meant as a hobbyist-centric event, so I was expecting a nerdier-than-average selection. I had suspected that we’d be seeing the Family Arabians again in some form, so I was very pleased to see the Mare and Foal set “Addison and Clark”.

Can’t get any nerdier than that! (Okay, I’ll spot you the Modernistic Buck and Doe. And Benji and Tiffany, too.)

We haven’t seen either of those two molds as a production item since 1997’s Galena and Julian. Is this a hint, perhaps, that we’ll be seeing more of these two in the near future? I hope so.

From the somewhat dismissive tone of the discussion on Friday night, assumed that I’d actually be able to get the ones I wanted, regardless of my position in line. My first choices were among the less popular: the Family Arabian set (of course!), and the Appaloosa Performance Horse “Ferris”.

What struck me most about the event, though, weren’t the models but the missed opportunities: first and foremost, the reasons why the location was so significant to the model horse hobby in the first place.

Chicago is the “birthplace” of the Breyer Molding Company. It was also the home of Model Horse Congress, the BreyerFest-before-BreyerFest held by Marney Walerius, the first among us to work in a semi-official capacity for the company. The modern hobby, essentially, was born there.

Outside of a single bus trivia question, there was no acknowledgment of Breyer’s connection to Chicago. Heck, we weren’t even anywhere in the vicinity of Chicago. The only connections the event seemingly had to Chicago were the names of the models themselves. That seemed very strange to me, especially as a history-oriented hobbyist.

The resources were available. There are still plenty of us from the “Chicago Factory” days around to assist, if needed be. We could have pointed out some of the sites of hobby-historical interest, provided a slideshow, wrangled some of local hobby celebrities out of their retirements, or even just serve as raconteurs or tour guides.

I could go on; I won’t. I don’t regret going: I made the most of the opportunity and had a good time, for the most part. Things went more right than wrong; the biggest sticking points with many attendees – the model selections, and the food – were not an issue with me at all. The Dancing Horses trip thing was cheesy, but we still had fun with it; I just imagined that it would have been exactly the kind of thing nine-year-old me would have eaten up with a spoon.

Whether I go to another one of these events will depend on the circumstances. A lot of things had to happen to make this happen, and I’m not sure if that can be replicated.

As far as getting the models I wanted…

Like about 25 percent of the attendees, I found myself consigned to the back of the line where our choice was limited to the Glossy Dapple Gray Desatado, or the Glossy Dapple Gray Desatado. When you price the highest piece run item (144 for the Desatado Four Stars) the same as the lowest piece run item (50 for the Make a Wish Burnham) that’s what’s going to happen.

We tried to make the best of the situation by spinning it as an opportunity to handpick: one of mine was a little darker than average, and is quite lovely in person. Nevertheless, he was my fifth choice of the five.

I still had the Mustang (Beautiful!) and the Stablemate (Blue Roan Appaloosa, yes!) and lots of wonderful memories to go with them. I figured it was just my special kind of luck again that would tease me with special runs seemingly designed to my quirky specifications, and put them just out of my reach.

Then a lovely thing happened. One of the many beautiful souls among us offered to trade her Addison and Clark for one of my Desatadoes. She couldn’t bear to see my sad face, she said.

I thanked her over and over then, and I thank her again here, in public: you are the kind of hobbyist I like to think we are all capable of being.

And one of the reasons I stick with the hobby, in spite of the grief it sometimes dishes out. Just little griefs, they are; as they say, you can’t have a rainbow without a little rain.

The First Trip to Chicago, Part Two

The next day, during a lull in the action and without a lot of fanfare, Marney strolled in with a couple boxes of Test Colors. Every hobbyist in the room, including those who I had thought incapable of moving without motorized transport, immediately leapt up and ran towards those boxes with arms outstretched.

I think the Traditionals were 40 dollars and the smaller scales and Foals were 20: I grabbed an Action Stock Horse Foal in Splash Spot Black Leopard Appaloosa, not just because he was more affordable than a standard Traditional, I had seen nothing else like him, ever. I had to have him!

We were allowed one Test Color, regardless of size and No Exceptions, so when the feeding frenzy was over, stray Tests remained, including some all-black Little Bits Unicorns and Shams in various states of Bay. Every time I see one of those Shams on eBay – I’ve seen several over the years, going for sometimes silly prices – I just laugh. Those were the leftovers.

I can’t recall if it was that day, or the next that Marney told us we could visit her house, and peruse the models she had stored in her garage, too.

Michelle and I hitched a ride with Cheryl Greene: we soon found ourselves sliding around on the bench seat of Cheryl’s pickup, as she dodged in and out of rush hour traffic like Steve McQueen. In addition to the lack of seatbelts, the suspension on her truck was shot, so we were bouncing, jiggling, and giggling (both in anticipation, and fear) the entire way to Marney’s house.

We were the first vehicle to pull into her driveway, which probably shouldn’t have surprised me.

The door opened, and Marney’s Miniature Schnauzer DeeDee ran out to inspect us, followed by who I assumed was Marney’s mom. DeeDee paid particular attention to me, giving me a stern look and short bark: we had just gotten our Miniature Schnauzer Spike earlier than year, so I assumed this extra greeting was to acknowledge that I smelled like a Schnauzer.

Whether that was acceptable or not to her, I was not sure.

Other cars quickly pulled in, including Marney’s. The door to the garage opened slowly, revealing – oh, just the dream of every model horse collector everywhere. It was an entire garage full of horses: bins, boxes, barrels and sheer piles of them. There were pieces of models, finished models, culls, things that she had touched up or altered in some way.

And at least one full drum of Stablemates, that I promptly plunged my arms in as far as I could reach, scratches be damned. Because why wouldn’t I?

After we had made our purchases, and found ourselves shooting the breeze outside (“You know what Breyer needs to make? A Missouri Fox Trotter!”) Marney offered us a very brief sneak peek into her collection.

All I remember clearly were two things: a transparent Belgian, sitting on one of her higher shelves, and a box about half the size of a refrigerator filled to the very top with models, some of which (all of which?) may have been Test Colors. I remember a resist-dappled Chestnut Foundation Stallion, sitting on top of the pile.

I often wonder where he ended up.

Sunday morning came, and it was time to leave. I made my goodbyes, paid my hotel bill, called the cab, and waited outside for it arrive.

And waited. And waited. I began to worry that I wouldn’t make it to the train station on time. In fact, for the first time during the whole trip I actually began to panic.

In frustration, I threw my wallet down, and it burst open. The money fanned out, and I momentarily stared at it in awe: I had sold enough extra models – and somehow managed my money well enough – that I was coming home with more money than I had started.

I did get to the station on time, but the stress was not over: before I could get the last box on the train, the doors closed and the train began pulling out of the station. The conductor made it a point to visit me after that last box was loaded and the train restarted, to see the girl who had momentarily stopped his train.

I was wearing my Wayne State University T-shirt that day; an older couple of fellow commuters noticed it, and struck up a conversation with me. Either one of them or a family member were alumni, and they were so pleased to see someone with a shirt from the school they recognized, so far from home.

When we got to Chicago, they helped me carry my bags and boxes to the Amtrak station, saving me the stress of another cab drive. I wish I could remember their names; I will always remember their kindness.

The rest of the trip was trouble-free. I may have slept most of the way home. I deserved it: I made it all the way to Chicago and back, and I even made a little money for my effort!

Anyway, that’s not all of it, but that’s most of it. Some details are undoubtedly misremembered, and the days blended together so some of the timing is also off. I ended up going to Model Horse Congress two subsequent years, and some of the memories of those may have drifted into this one. (Was it that year, or another, than a famous hobbyist got into an argument with a parrot in the Holidome?)

But now I hope, in this rambling and imperfect account, you can catch a glimpse somewhere in it of why the hobby was and is so important to me. Thirty years ago, and now.

Versta?

Versta.

It’s just another way to say I love you.

The First Trip to Chicago, Part One

It was a birthday present.

It was also the first time I had ever been on a vacation by myself, without the company of friends, family or schoolmates. I had fantasized about going to Model Horse Congress for years: prior to BreyerFest, Model Horse Congress was THE MODEL HORSE EVENT of the year.

But the most important part was that it was a vacation by myself: many of our previous family trips had me questioning the entire notion of vacations being “enjoyable”, and I wanted to see if it could be.

I had a driver’s license, but I lived at school at the time, and barely drove. I had too much stuff to fly, so I had to go by train.

We arrived 28 minutes before the scheduled departure time, at the Amtrak station in Dearborn. I remember this vividly, because apparently you had to arrive at least 30 minutes ahead of time to allow for the loading of your luggage. The person at the ticket counter was adamant that they weren’t going to let me check my bags and boxes – because I was two minutes “late”.

I was speechless. Dad was not: he made a fuss, in the polite but slightly snarky way that he could, and my bags and boxes were loaded.

The trip there was otherwise uneventful. I brought along a book to read – Mary Stewart’s The Last Enchantment – and when I wasn’t reading that, I watched the southern Michigan countryside roll by. For lunch I went to the food car, and bought a hot dog and a chocolate Danish. Two little boys across the aisle were playing with their Masters of the Universe figurines, including (I could smell him!) the notorious Stinkor.

There was a brief bit of panic when I entered Chicago, finally: how on Earth was I going to get to the hotel, which was a Holiday Inn in Rolling Meadows?

I had to find a way to get to the commuter train, obviously.

The people at the station in Chicago told me I that that station was a couple blocks away. I could hoof it, or take a cab. Since I had too many boxes to lug, a cab it was.

That was… probably not the world’s best first experience with a cab. I won’t elaborate, because I honestly can’t remember: at the end of it, the driver basically left me and all my stuff in the middle of the street. Somehow I managed to get myself and all my stuff situated on the train and on my way to Palatine, the closest station to the hotel.

The second experience by cab was a more pleasant one. While I don’t remember this cabdriver’s name, unlike Ahmad he was talkative and cheerful. When I told him what my plans were – a toy horse convention, and we showed them just like real horses! – he made a few affirmative noises, as if he actually understood what I was talking about. Marney had made sure that the hobby had gotten enough press in the Chicago area that it might have actually been the case.

He then motioned to our right. “You see that big black cloud over there?” It was indeed huge; it took up most of the sky. “That’s Arlington Park, burning to the ground.” I mentally crossed that off the list of non-Congress things I thought I might get a chance to do.

The Holiday Inn was a Holiday Inn, nothing terribly noteworthy about it. I walked into my room – on the third floor, of course – and before I had a chance to open or unload anything, the phone rang. It was Dad.

“Did you get there alright? Your mother is worried.”

“I’m fine. I just got here.” I wondered how he had managed to get the phone number of the hotel and time the call just so; I suspected he had called the hotel earlier and told them to call back when I checked in. You know, to check in on the daughter taking her first big trip out of town, by herself.

“You be careful, now. Versta?” Ever since I was very, very small, Dad had always punctuated our little talks with that word. I had assumed, back then, that it meant I love you.

It was only later that I learned what this word was, and what it really meant: it was a Flemish word he had probably picked up from his Belgian grandfather.

Do you understand/do you hear me? 

“Versta.”

I went out on the small balcony, and noticed an unopened can of Old Milwaukee beer sitting on the ledge, which I thought was an odd but not unwelcome gift. Looking down, I noticed two fellow Michigan hobbyists – Sue Maxwell and Linda Leach – unloading their car. Their room was just down the hall from mine.

After they had settled in, they invited me to go visit Marney Walerius – the showholder and the hobby legend! – with them. She had a room on the first floor, near the show hall. When we arrived, the room was full of other hobbyists as well, some of them I had only heard of in my newsletters, or Just About Horses.

They were swapping stories and pictures, and gossip. Even though I considered myself a relative unknown then, I never felt unwelcome; in fact, I finally felt as though I had finally found my home. I even managed to sell someone my spare Calico Kitten, which I had just recently upgraded via the local flea market.

I was showing Novice the next day, and my table was next to the Bentley Sales Company’s table. The biggest fuss was about the Congress Special Run, a beautiful light flaxen chestnut Proud Arabian Mare. There were plenty of her to go around, though (288 of them, in a giant cardboard bin, no less) so my attention turned to the mixed boxes of models, loosely wrapped in bags, fresh from the recent cleanout of the Chicago factory. I dove in, pulling out a couple of Test Colors, some oddities, and some unpainted things.

These were my first genuine Test Colors and oddities, and I have them still. No model in those bins cost me more than six dollars, but this was also back when Traditionals cost less than twenty. The Special Run Proud Arabian Mare was only 11.99, herself.

Later that day, Marney asked me if I could accommodate a roommate who was arriving that afternoon by bus, and of course I said yes. Aside from leaving me with more money to spend, why wouldn’t I want to help a fellow hobbyist?

We ended up spending the night talking comic books: Batman, Jonah Hex, the Legion of Super-heroes. It was strange and wonderful, and we got along perfectly. Michelle is the reason why, even today, I tend to believe that even hobbyists who are strangers to me can and will be good roommates. We share more in common than we do with a lot of our family members, so why shouldn’t we?

I did only modestly well at the show; contrary to some reports you might hear elsewhere, I was not raking in the awards. My Collector’s Class entry did garner some attention from Peter Stone himself, who chuckled and pointed at my Modernistic Gold Doe; apparently there had been a funny story about how Breyer acquired those molds, but I only caught a few fragments of that conversation, none of which made any sense until years later, when I finally did the follow up research.

It may have also been that day – I can’t remember which, specifically – that Peter had brought a box of the latest Just About Horses, fresh from the printer. We all excitedly leafed through them, and I nearly fell over when I noticed that it was the issue where they published my very first article: “The Ethics of Repainting”.

I was my first real experience with being model-horse-famous!

The show wrapped up early that day – very unusual, then as now – and at the end of the day there were just a handful of us in the now cavernous show hall. I was talking to Michelle and made a comment about how my penpal – and fellow hobbyist – Erica said she might be here, but I hadn’t gotten the latest letter from her before I left.

One girl behind us turned around and said “Are you talking about me?” It was her!

The IMHJ

Looks like the next several weeks are going to be a little crazy for me; what it means here is that you’ll be seeing a lot of short and sweet posts here in the interim. (Nothing traumatic or life-threatening, just work-related and time-sensitive.)

First up is this Bentley Sales Company ad from early 1978, scanned from the pages of the short-lived but influential hobby magazine The International Model Horse Journal.

As I’ve elaborated on before, the Black Angus Calf was one of the earliest of the direct-to-collectors Special Runs, debuting at the 1977 Model Horse Congress. The hobby was much smaller then, so even though the subscription base for the IMHJ was only around 200 people, that still represented a significant chunk of the hobby community.

It’s kind of mindblowing to think that a low piece run Special Run Calf could still be available nearly a half year after it was offered. Yep, things were definitely different back then! (Not always better...)

The International Model Horse Journal was an early attempt at creating an offset-printed (i.e. “professional-looking”) hobby periodical. Almost all hobby publications prior – and for several years after – were printed via ditto or mimeograph machine. The results weren’t always pretty, but those printing methods were cheap and accessible. They got the job done.

The IMHJ had already been cancelled before I made my formal entrée into the hobby in the latter half of 1978, so its influence on me was largely indirect. I think I have an almost complete archive of them now, but the numbering system was a little off, so it’s hard to tell.

Chicago

For the record, I will be trying my darndest to get to Breyer’s "Sweet Home Chicago" Exclusive Event this year. It’s within a reasonable driving distance, and I already potential traveling companions if need be. There was some business I wanted to conduct in Breyer’s "ancestral homeland" anyway, so the trip could turn into an extended weekend for me.

I sort of suspected that Chicago was going to be the location this time around, with Reeves celebrating Breyer’s 65th Anniversary this year. It’s also an anniversary for me, of sorts: it was 30 years ago that I attended Model Horse Congress, in the Chicago suburbs.

For those of you unfamiliar with the concept, it was like a combination of BreyerFest and NAN, organized almost completely by hobbyists, for hobbyists. It was my first vacation out-of-town, without my family.

It was wonderful, beautiful and terrifying. I’ll get around to writing about it here, someday.

While I’m sure they’ll try to incorporate a drive-by of the original factory for the Event, there probably won’t be much to see there. The building is nondescript, there hasn’t been a horse in the place in nearly 30 years, and it’s not like we’ll see the ghostly shadows of models past painted on the walls or fragments of Woodgrains embedded in the pavement.

It’d be nice if we could get a historical marker or plaque, but I think we have a better shot at either organizing a National Model Horse Day, or getting "Breyer Horses" inducted into the Toy Hall of Fame.

It’s about darn time that there was an Event in this part of the country, though. In the hobby’s earliest days, the Midwest was the hub of the hobby, with Model Horse Congress being The Event. Not having had an "Exclusive Event" there in more modern times was starting to feel weird. Sure, BreyerFest is in Kentucky, and not all that hard to get to for Midwesterners, but this is a different class of thing.

The rumor going around is that the tickets may be sold individually rather than in pairs. It’s based on some vague wording in the original announcement on the web site:

"The event will be limited to 200 Collectors Club members…"

I certainly hope this is the case. Another one of my sticking points with these Events is the "two-by-two" rule on ticket buying: it effectively shuts out all of us singletons who don’t have family members as reliable back ups.

In an Event that exclusive, I’d rather have a higher percentage of the attendees actually be hobbyists. This isn’t like BreyerFest or any other convention where capacity isn’t that big an issue. The guest list is limited, and The Event is The Event: being able to wander off and do your own thing is not a part of the package.

Whether I actually get a ticket (or tickets), though, is another issue entirely. Ironically, if they do open up the tickets to individual sales, they may sell out faster than the pairs. My work schedule changed recently, and after what happened with the last Event, I’m a little fearful that I might not be online when the announcement is made.

I’ll just have to worry about it when the time comes. I have enough to worry about now.

Black Calf

I didn’t get as much done as I wanted to over the weekend, but I did enough to keep me from losing my mind as I ramp up prep for BreyerFest. As usual, I am nowhere near ready. Just because I’m not doing the costume contest this year doesn’t mean I don’t have a million other things to do.

Now to finish up a post I wrote during my last epic road trip; it’s been stuck on a thumb drive in my work bag, the one that rarely leaves the car. (What else is on the drive? My resume, a couple NaNoWriMo novels, and the accumulated knowledge of the Krell. Duh.)

During my discussion of the Black Family Arabians, I called them "one of the earliest" Special Runs aimed directly at hobbyists. One of the earliest, yes, but not THE earliest. The first verifiable, probably-not-a-repurposed-Test-Color, sold-direct-to-hobbyists Special Run was…

The Black Angus Calf. I don’t have one, so just imagine a Holstein Calf, except all black, and sort of satiny, like the Family Arabians. They were sold at Model Horse Congress in 1977, several months before the "National Hobby Month" debut of the Family Arabians. Approximately 100-150 pieces were made.

(Were there Special Runs that were sold prior to the Black Angus Calf? Well obviously - I’ve discussed some of them here - but I speak of items specifically targeted and made for the hobby, and hobbyists. Whole ‘nother animal, so to speak.)

Why … that, of all things? Good question. I don’t know the answer. It could have been a situation similar to the Family Arabians: maybe they were repurposing Calves leftover from the early 1970s – ones that were also a victim of the 1973 Implosion. Maybe they were test, in a way, for the Family Arabians. Maybe Marney said something to Peter about hobbyists wanting more Calves for performance setups. Perhaps it was a promo piece for the soon-to-be-released #365 Black Angus Bull mold.

I have no idea. In the absence of other evidence, all these theories seem equally valid.

They were not a huge hit, at least initially. The Bentley Sales Company had them on their Discontinued sales lists for a while, even with the relatively low piece count. The Livestock molds were not that big a thing in the hobbyist set at the time – it wouldn’t be until the mid-1980s that the Nonhorse molds really started taking off with collectors.

The Black Angus Calf is a pretty tough little cookie to track down nowadays, if only for the passage of time. There was one on eBay a few years ago, went for a price I definitely couldn’t afford.

Sometimes, I Have No Clue

I was going to get so much done this weekend, then WHAM - hello, migraine. And not some crawl-in-the-basement-and-sleep-for-three-hours one, either. This sucker lingered.

On top of that, the Vita was sick, too, so at one point during my extended weekend I was outside, nauseous, shambling around in the rain, waiting for her to lose her lunch as well.

So, instead of getting caught up, I am now even further behind. No long, lovingly researched post for you!

Instead, here’s a picture of some oddity I picked up at Model Horse Congress back in 1985 or 1986:

I think he’s a cull, but I’m not entirely sure. (His condition is a little rougher than the photo lets on.) Breyer had stopped using the pinto mask on the Western Horse about 10 years earlier, and it would be a few more before they’d pull it out again for the Chestnut Pinto Just About Horses Special in 1990. So he might actually have been a test for … something else? I knew he wasn’t that old, because his color was not dissimilar to the acidic yellow palominos Breyer was cranking out at the time. 

The reins are obviously not original, but I can’t recall if the saddle was. I honestly can’t remember. That was when I was just starting to hit the flea markets pretty seriously, and Western Horses and Ponies were still fairly plentiful, if not in the best condition. Sometimes I’d buy something just to salvage the reins or saddle from it.

(People were a little less particular about the bodies they were willing to customize back then, too. Partly out of necessity, partly out of youthful exuberance.)

I’m also almost certain that the eyes and hooves were touched up later, too, but I never bothered to "fix" them because I couldn’t be 100 percent sure that they weren’t. Plus, I just couldn’t bear the thought of having an unfinished model standing on my shelves.

I’ve since gotten over that sentiment. This weird old boy's been grandfathered in, though. Sometimes it's best to leave some mysteries to be. 

Factory Tours

Even though there’s no snow on the ground, I can tell it’s still winter, because I’m way more cynical than I ought to be. I tried remedying it a bit by taking the dog for a walk, but an encounter with a spiritually unattractive neighbor wiped all my progress away.

As evil as she may be at heart, Vita is still a darn adorable dog on the outside - and with other people. She’s like a canine version of Gunther the Penguin, from Adventure Time:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k84GYej4_io

It is unfathomable to me that someone has determined her to be uncute.

I’ve already had a factory tour - a million-billion years ago, in New Jersey - and looking over my records of what I managed to score over the past year, I’m not hurting in the rarities department either. (I did darn fine, in fact. Better than I thought!)

But a lot of other hobbyists haven’t, and didn’t, so in my current frame of mind, it was only natural that my first reaction to reading about the Breyer Kids-Only tour/event (http://www.breyerhorses.com/kidstour) was: how are the "adults" going to goof up this up, too?

The model that comes with the tour package is "not exclusive" to the event, but no mention is made of what could be lurking in the warehouse - or serving as giveaways and prizes.

Regardless of the quality of the goodies, wherever goodies are made available, mayhem usually ensues.

There’s probably some sort of legal issue that rules the following concept out, but I’ve always wondered why they couldn’t have "factory tours" on a regular basis. You wouldn’t have to throw in all sorts of bells and whistles: a quick tour of the facilities, a walk-through of the archives/sample room, a painting demo, ending with a stop in the warehouse to pick up a little "souvenir" of your visit.

Kind of like what DC Comics used to do: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

Even though most production has moved overseas, I think a mighty large percentage of hobbyists over the age of 14 would love the opportunity to see the place where Breyers are (at least) conceived - whether there were any goodies involved, or not.

I almost got a chance to "do" the original Breyer Tour, back when it was in Chicago. Alas, it was canceled at the last minute; I think it was the same year that they were purchased by Reeves, so there might have been some conflicts there. The closest I ever got to the actual factory was the inside of Marney’s garage, a year later during Model Horse Congress.

The notion that you could "score" a test color or sample during the tour was sort of out there, but it wasn’t the primary motivation for going: all of us wanted to see where Breyers were born. Everything else was gravy.

Buckskin Lady Phases

The Seasonal Affective Disorder must be kicking in, because I’m feeling spectacularly unmotivated today. I haven’t even begun making one of Mom’s Christmas presents, and the other two aren’t looking so hot either.

I have lots of time on my hands for the next two weeks, so everything will be fine. It’s just the getting started part that’s hard, especially when you’re trying to finish at least a half dozen other projects, too.

Here’s one of those handful of things - besides Fall in Love - that I’ve added to my own herd recently:


It’s the 1980 Model Horse Congress Buckskin Lady Phase, the one with the pinked nose, B mold mark, and black eartips!

That means I now have examples of all three Buckskin Lady Phases special runs: the 1979 VaLes Solid Buckskin with charcoal/black nose, the 1980 MHC Special Run, and the 1983/84 J.C. Penney’s Buckskin with bald face.

(Yes, I know the JCP one comes in a solid-faced variation. Notice that I prefaced my statement with the phrase "examples of"? )

One of the most infuriating bits of misinformation that gets passed around on the Internet is that of the alleged rarity of the Buckskin Lady Phase. A case could be made for the 1979 or the 1980 ones being especially difficult to acquire, and I wouldn’t argue with that: there were only about 200 made of the 1979 SR, and about 240 made of the 1980.

On the other hand, however, the J.C. Penney version was probably one of the most popular Christmas special runs Breyer ever made: according to Nancy Young’s Breyer Molds & Models, around 8,000 sets were made over the course of its two year run.

Eight thousand pieces is not "rare," neither then nor now.

I can remember a time when Buckskin Lady Phases were so common that customizers resorted to using them as bodies. Lady Phases became unexpectedly hard to find right around the time she was discontinued in 1985. The story goes - as I heard it from Marney, anyway - was that the last batch of Lady Phases made before she was discontinued in 1985 were lost in a fire.

With no fresh bodies available in the store, no new regular runs on the horizon, and several hundred - if not thousands - of Buckskin ones cluttering up hobbyist shelves, what else are you going to do?

(FYI: I don’t believe enough Buckskin Lady Phases were lost to customizing to affect their overall rarity. Enough to skew the perception within the hobby, maybe, but not overall.)

In the intervening years, a lot of hobbyists conflated the 1979 and 1980 special runs with the later J.C. Penney run. You’d think with all the Buckskin Lady Phases floating around that hobbyists would do the math and realize that they weren’t quite as rare as they thought they were.

Alas, many of our fellow hobbyists just aren’t that good at math. And are all too often plagued by the ghosts of wishful thinking.

Even so, the 1979 and 1980 special runs are still genuinely hard to come by. On average, I see about one of the 1979 pieces up for sale or auction per year, if that; the 1980 examples aren’t a whole lot more numerous.

I was lucky enough to get my 1979 one in 1979, straight from the dealer (yeah, I’m THAT old.) I had been shopping around for a 1980 for some time now, but the few that had come up recently had been significantly out of my price range.

This little lady wasn’t because (obviously) she wasn’t mint. I’m not much of a shower, so I’m totally okay with that. I’m not exactly mint, myself.

The Day I Met Chris Hess

Fidelity to reality (or lack thereof) has never been a "deal breaker" for me in regards to the plastic horses: there’s so much more to a model’s appeal beyond how closely it matches the real thing. It’s not just a physical representation of a horse.

There’s a persistent strain of hobbyist that takes perverse delight in delineating every single fault in every new release. Take a look at any given thread on a new mold on any of the major discussion boards - it never takes more than five posts on the subject for the model to be declared either an abomination, physically impossible, or an affront to someone’s delicate sensibilities.

I try to keep my eyerolling and keyboard in check when the inevitable destruction of the newest Breyer releases comes up. (The original Auld Lang Syne thread on Model Horse Blab was particularly embarrassing. Upchuck smilies? Seriously?) But I get somewhat more defensive and chatty when the target of derision du jour is a Secretariat.

You want to know why? The first time I saw it was also the first - and only time - I ever met Chris Hess. You know, the guy who, more than any other person, made Breyer what it was - and what it is.

It was at Model Horse Congress (the BreyerFest before BreyerFest) in Chicago. Marney had casually mentioned something about the casting of the new Secretariat model being brought in, and in a spare moment I went over to see it.

I can’t remember what the indignation level was, if any. Other hobbyists examined it, made a few comments and minor critiques, though I can’t remember what they were. If any sentiment was expressed, it was the pleasure of actually being able to see a brand new Breyer mold, in the pre-production phase - in person!

This was in the mid-1980s, way before this sort of thing became commonplace. The coolness factor for me was pretty darn high. I was also pleased to see it because the Secretariat mold was something that was a very, very long time in coming - and here was proof, at last, that the promise was about to become reality.

The person who had brought the model in was, of course, Chris Hess. He sat next to the casting, in a rumpled windbreaker, looking a little out of his element. I didn’t realize who he was at that very moment - I guess I assumed he was someone’s father or grandfather. It wasn’t until after he left that it dawned on me.

I probably would have been too intimidated to ask him any question, even if I had been formally introduced. Although I was not the history diva then that I am now, I was well on my way; I had already had the audacity to rewrite the Master List Breyer had been sending out to collectors back then - and send it back to them!

The questions I would ask now are probably quite different from the questions I would have asked then. Not because I know more about Breyer history, but because I didn’t know that the Secretariat mold was going to be Chris Hess’s last gift to us: he "retired" from mold making with his completion. And that he would pass away not much longer after that.

In fact, I’m not so sure I would ask any questions at all. If I could have a time machine do-over moment, I think I’d just use it as an opportunity to thank him for giving us Secretariat (the horse that, in a roundabout way, brought me to the hobby) and for making my childhood a little less lonely.

Not so much history in that one, but an interesting post for some of you, I hope.