Live Show Stuff

My showstring is apparently half Morgan, half Warmblood, with a smattering of Mustangs and Arabians. At least this show has separate classes for Morgans – the last one I attended in person did not, which made things complicated. 

But Tests are also being handled completely differently this time around, which means I had to reconsider some of my choices there. I had to cut a few anyway…

If there was a class for damaged or homely Tests, on the other hand, I’d totally clean up! I love you, my Fragment, the Splatter Dapple Gray Family Arabian Mare with a missing leg and ear that I found in a body box lot on eBay:

And let’s not forget my delightful trio of “gently used” Classic Quarter Horses – two Mares, and a Foal – that cost me less than ten dollars, combined:

The Mares I found in the Bentley Sales “clearance” boxes of miscellaneous models they were selling at the 1985 Model Horse Congress. The boxes consisted largely of loose (or casually bagged) things they found as they were cleaning out the Chicago factory, post-Reeves purchase. 

I found the Foal in those same boxes at MHC a year later; I was hoping to find the father of the family eventually, but that never happened. And likely never will: if he were to turn up now, he’d probably be unaffordable anyway. 

It looks like I partially got my wish with the BreyerFest shows: Breakables is online, as well as a Boot Camp-style show for Adult Novices. 

The Boot Camp is obviously out for me – I’m definitely not a Novice! – but I am seriously considering Breakables. I only have a few dozen show-worthy models to curate, compared to the few thousand (!) of the plastic kind. And I’ve always wanted to show this little fellow somehow, somewhere, without the anxiety of actually taking him out on the road: 

(Any clues what he is? What’s left of the sticker is not helpful!)

With less than 50 pieces worth showing, the indecision and waffling that goes with winnowing 2000+ down to a manageable 50 is… simply nonexistent. Conceivably, I could get everything done for that show in the space of a weekend. 

It’s something to consider, if the BreyerFest Open Show ceases to be a possibility (I am still thinking about it.)

Anyhoo, I’m heading offline again. Only about half of my show documentation is done, which is – believe it or not – better than I was anticipating at this point. And I am still undecided about bringing sales items; it will all depend on what the situation looks like on Thursday. (I took Friday off of work for last minute prep and stuff.) Toodles!

Meet the New Guys, Same as the Old Guys

Silly me tried to upgrade something I really didn’t need to upgrade, with the usual consequences:

As experience should have taught me by now, this older Classic Quarter Horse Family was in about the same condition and about the same quality as my current set. The only significant differences were that this set has larger stars, and still has its original box.

The difference in the size of the stars is really quite striking, though:

There were no actual templates or masks for the stars on the early Classic Quarter Horses that I know of. Details that small were probably too difficult to create via the intricate metal masks of the era anyway, so they might have either tape-masked or resist-dappled them.

In some cases, even, they may have been created by paint removal – with a little dab of acetone on a paint brush or cotton swab, quickly blotted away.

In the case of the new set, I think they used the resist dapple technique – dabbing a bit of the resist-dappling goo on the forehead prior to painting, and peeling it off after painting was done. The plastic looks too raw and too clean for it to be anything else, really.

It is not really a surprise that such a minor and labor-intensive detail on non-portrait (non-Adios) releases like the Classic Quarter Horse Family disappeared so quickly. That’s a bit too much work for not quite enough reward.

My original, smaller-starred set’s better provenance (it’s the one mentioned in Nancy Young’s book!) outweighs the bigger stars + original box of the newest set, so the new guys will likely be heading to my sales list soon. Or whenever I can actually find the time to update it.

On the Periphery

Not much in the way of goodies again, this week, other than another unfinished quilt project, a giant bag of vintage gumball charms, and a few Josef Originals miniatures. Oh, and one other little thing:

A customized Classic Quarter Horse Mare. What’s interesting about her is that this isn’t the typical kind of custom I find in the field. Most of those are either pro/am hobbyist creations (not all that rare around here, actually), or nonhobbyist pieces that were either repair jobs, or someone with a creative itch to scratch.

The nonhobbyist pieces are usually a bit cruder – like this gal – and don’t feature any significant customizing beyond hairing. The person who worked on her roached her mane, docked her tail, tweaked her ears, removed her logo and even tried to square her hind legs.

That’s a lot of work, and definitely not something I expected to see with this kind of paint job. She kind of fascinates me!

Sometimes I run across people I call peripheral hobbyists. Although they either were never directly involved in the hobby, or even aware of its existence, within their own enclosed communities (or even just their own homes) they pretty much did everything we do in the hobby anyway.

Basically, they invented the hobby for themselves. Sometimes they happen to meet other people who do the same things, and sometimes some of those people have some contact with even more people, and eventually that’s how they get into the hobby proper.

(From what I hear – I didn’t formally enter the hobby until 1978 – that’s pretty much how the hobby created itself. We needed it, we created it. Breyer is just along for the ride.)

But sometimes they don’t, for whatever reasons. Interests change, they get frustrated by the state of their artistic skills, money becomes an issue, or that crucial “first contact” never happens.

Was that the case here? Someone who either made some tentative steps into the hobby – the larger one, or the one of their own making – then stepped away?

I found her in a dump bin of toys – almost literally the definition of no context – so I’ll never know.

I plan on keeping her around for a while, and possibly making her a rehab project like some of my quilts, trying to take her where her original artist intended.

I See Stars!

Another one of those got-nothing-done days; I’ve liked getting more hours at work the past couple of weeks, but I hate having to leave some of my more ambitious blog post ideas in my head. Anything that gets stuck in my head too long either ends up getting lost, or getting weird.

(Though a disturbingly large portion of you don’t seem to mind the weird, for which I am grateful.)

Anyhow, since I’m short on time, again, I’ll spotlight another relatively obscure (yet significant) variation from my fabulous herd: the original version of the Classic Quarter Horse Family, ca. 1974.


There are a number of small details that make the original versions stand out from the later releases. The color on all three molds is softer and less "bright" compared to later versions, with the Foal verging on Buckskin. Both the Mare and Foal feature dark tan or "natural" colored hooves, that were changed to gray later in the run.

The Mare also has what I like to call "black to the belly" points: instead of blending the black points on the legs into the base color, the legs are solid black all the way up to the barrel - and sometimes, then some. It’s a peculiarity not uncommon on Bay paint jobs from the early to mid-1970s; I’ve seen it on the Bay Cantering Welshies and the Mahogany Bay Proud Arabians, too.

The earliest Stallions also do not have the "copyright horseshoe" mold mark - although, oddly, the Mares always did; I have a couple of Test Color mares I believe were Preproduction pieces, and they both have it. The Foal never had it in the first place.

The most obvious difference between the earliest Classic Quarter Horses and the later ones, of course, are the small stars on all of their foreheads:


The stars are a charming little detail, but it’s pretty easy to see why it got eliminated early on: because they were so darn little. The painters probably found them to be a nuisance, and the vast majority of their customers at the time - nonhobbyists, mostly - wouldn’t have noticed them one way or another.

The Star-faced Classic Quarter Horses are definitely not common; I see a handful of them a year, at most, which leads me to believe that this variation was extremely short-lived - to the first few months of 1974, perhaps. The gray-hooved versions were featured on the 1975 Dealer’s Catalog and Collector’s Manual, though the Stallion (but not the Mare or Foal!) does have a star.

In spite of their rarity, however, there’s not a huge demand for them. A lot of new hobbyists that didn’t grow up with the Hagen-Renaker "Love" molds just aren’t all that into them, or can’t see past the rougher seams and less sophisticated paint jobs of the era. The absence of the molds from the Breyer line, due to legal reasons, doesn’t help matters either.

Out of sight, out of mind.