Burmese

So much for my grand plans for the week: my body completely crashed and burned on me Thursday morning after work, and I’m still not anywhere near functional. 

I mean, I knew it was coming – there’s no way I was going to party that hard without consequences! – but I was kind of hoping to put it off until the weekend, when I could afford the time.

In lieu of Worldcon bits and pieces today, I suppose it’s appropriate to say a little something to mark the passing of the world’s most famous hobbyist this week. 

I won’t bore you, again, about the time I met Queen Elizabeth’s lady-in-waiting at BreyerFest; you can use The Google Machine if you want to re-read it. I do want to say a little bit, though, about the first Breyer Special Run created specifically to honor one of her horses, Burmese:

You don’t see or hear much about this 1990 German Export Special Run nowadays because it’s a rather boring and unremarkable thing: a solid, unshaded Black paint job on a Traditional Secretariat, a mold few people love or collect. 

Only 500 pieces were made – which was pretty typical for a special run of that era – and for a brief moment after they were released there was a market for them. There weren’t a lot of special runs getting made around that time, and this one was initially available only through European dealers, which made it a hot commodity among U.S. collectors for a while.

You don’t see many of them for sale today. Some of it can be chalked up to the passage of time: it was released over 30 years ago, and there have only been a million or two special runs released since then. 

Burmese was also a product of its time: as a consequence of its shift in production from Chicago to New Jersey, they lost a lot of the talented employees that made Breyer what it was. Reeves was primarily a distributor, not a manufacturer, and they could ill-afford those losses.

While many of the models that were released during this time were (and are) beloved by the collectors who discovered the hobby during that era, those of us who came before (and after) are a little more sanguine about them. 

Everything and everybody goes through a rough patch or two in their lives, and if the models Reeves released during this time period were the worst of theirs, I think weathered it well.

(Let us not speak of Shrinkies.)

Will Burmese see a renaissance of interest now, in light of Her Majesty’s passing? Perhaps. Mine is not going anywhere: I am rather fond of the Secretariat mold for a variety of sentimental reasons, and I am not the kind of person who sees my collection purely in monetary terms.

The Forgotten Generation

Star Wars tickets were successfully purchased, with a minimum of drama. And why yes, I am super-excited about the SPACE HORSES.

The connection between the model horse community and the science-fiction one is long and well-documented, so I will be very disappointed in you guys (waving hand at entirety of the model horse community) if I don’t see any Orback customs by BreyerFest at the latest. Get to it, everybody!

Anyway.

I only just skimmed my issue of Just About Horses (it arrived yesterday) so I’ll leave that for another time, other than to express the sentiment that I am sure is on the lips – or in the thoughts – of many model horse hobbyists: an injection-molded Akhal-Teke, at last!

No, what I want to discuss today is my annoyance at some of the early 70th Anniversary merchandise, like this Journal here:

(There’s also a blanket and a beach towel.)

Conceptually, these products should appeal to me as both a quilt designer and a Breyer historian. And at first glance, they did.

But then I took a closer look at it, and realized that… this was not terribly well-thought out or well-executed.

I think they started out with the idea of seven different models for each of the seven different decades, but started taking some liberties with it when they realized there weren’t that many horse molds released in the 1950s.

And by the end of it, it looks like they just decided to use whatever silhouettes they had on file.

Not only that, there are a number of historical errors in it. The Family Arabian Stallion probably debuted in 1959; the Family Arabian Mare debuted ca. 1960, not 1958 – that was the Old Mold/Proud Arabian Mare; the Running Mare was probably released in 1962, not 1961; and of course, the Zippo Pine Bar was a 1999 release, not a 2007 one.

(The graphic for Zippo obviously being cribbed from the 30th Anniversary BreyerFest graphic without being properly edited, I presume.)

I am also not thrilled that, like the generation that grew up on them (frantically waves hands) – models from the 1980s were largely ignored. Only four models from that decade were included, but three from the last two years – Bristol, Hamilton and Georg – were?

Not cool, Reeves. 

While it may be true that the 1980s were considered the least artistically successful decade in Breyer History, many of those molds are still in active use today. I’d consider some of them more historically significant – at least, at this moment in time – than newer releases like Latigo or Desatado.

Phar Lap (1985) was used for the first BreyerFest Celebration Horse Dr. Peaches; Buckshot (1985) has appeared as a BreyerFest Raffle Model, Prize Model, and Live Show Benefit Model (Winchester, Pele and Reno, respectively); Roy (1989) was sculpted by the legendary Francis Eustis and recently used as a BreyerFest Celebration Model; and Secretariat (1987) was Chris Hess’s last official sculpt for Breyer and also Secretariat.

So I would have swapped out a few of the 2000/2010 models with a few of those, and maybe included the Fury/Prancer and one of the Nonhorse molds (Boxer or the Brahma Bull) from the 1950s to even things out a bit.

But what do I know, right?

Another Odds-and-Ends Kind of Day

I’m so tired today that I feel partially melted. At least we don’t have to deal with massive amounts of snow here. Just the cold, and exhaustion.

Just a few odds and ends before I hit the sack.

That Breyer posted about the 5K Run on their BreyerFest Blog the day after I posted about it here was a coincidence, I swear. That’s not a wink-wink, nudge-nudge kind of denial, either.

Second: I was poking around the usual sales sites and found a couple of unpolished “Let’s Go Riding” Secretariats that were obviously not Samples, so I can confirm that they do exist. Determining whether the polishing occurred during production or before is still difficult.

It’s possible that they had a small stash of older Secretariat bodies lying around that they needed to use up anyway. It’s a not-uncommon practice: the Black Family Arabian Special Runs from the 1970s, the Chalky Dapple Gray Hanoverian from the 1980s, and the Warehouse Reissues were all made from previously molded/warehoused items.

For what it’s worth (small sample size over a short period of time), the unpolished ones do seem to be less common than the polished.

And finally, even when I’m not looking for anything, I find things:

A large Rain Plushie in the Stuffed Animal Bin of one of my regular haunts, on the way home from work today. She was just sitting on top of the heap like she was waiting for me. Plushes were on sale today, too, so I had no excuse not to take her home.

I don’t have a lot of plushies – Breyer or otherwise – because Vita considers all plushies her personal property. In fact, she personally inspects every shopping bag that enters the house in hopes of adding new victims to her toy heap.

Not today, sweetie. This one’s hiding in the closet until I determine a less gruesome fate for her.

A More Polished Secretariat

So tired today; work is in its busy season, and sleep has been in short supply. I’m grateful for the overtime, but what I wouldn’t give to be able to sleep in one day this week ...

(Sunday. Maybe.)

I did take a quick opportunity to do a little decompressing after a particularly rough day earlier in the week, at an undisclosed location on the way home that had some Breyers in it. I was mulling over the recently discontinued #1440 Let’s Go Racing Set – the one with the Black Secretariat. I collect the mold, and the notion of buying a Breyer play set appealed to my inner nine year old.

Then I noticed something: the Secretariat mold has been “polished”, just like the Traditional #54 Trakehner mold!

It actually looked good on him, though as a member of that mold’s slender fanbase, I’m a little wistful about alterations being made to Chris Hess’s last official Breyer mold.

I don’t know when the polishing occurred; I traded for an NPOD sample of one that still had that slightly rough-hewn look, and the promotional photos and video all show that version as well:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBgP2EPRfG0

I hadn’t noticed the change before because it wasn’t something I had been looking to get until recently, now that it’s been discontinued and some of the remaining warehouse stock has been shipped to Tuesday Mornings and the like.

Plus I had the Sample, and Burmese the solid Black Export Special Run of one of Queen Elizabeth’s favorite horses. Black Secretariats are not in short supply here.

It’ll probably be a while before I actually pick up the polished mold version – it’s time, not money, that’s not on my side.

Me and the Triple Crown

The flea market was excellent; some good bodies were present, but mostly I went for the non-model stuff, including a Palenske print of Whirlaway I found in a box of loose ephemera. It was dirty and damaged, but I thought it deserved a better fate than becoming part of someone’s scrapbook project. A much better looking example here:

https://www.liveauctioneers.com/item/3347297

Speaking of Triple Crown winners…

I didn’t want to be like all those other folks jumping in on the bandwagon, so even though I was home at the time and had no pressing commitments, I decided to not watch the Belmont.

You know how I have a knack for predicting upcoming Breyer releases? I used to have that same "gift" with horse racing. It’s not really a gift, as much as it’s a side effect of deep research: the more you know your stuff, the easier it is to make more-accurate-than-average predictions - sometimes even unintentionally.

I was good enough that I even briefly considered - much to my parents' horror - a career as a bookie.

I haven’t followed racing with that kind of intensity in years. It is interesting that in spite of that I still retained a bit of my horse racing senses: this was the first year I can remember since Affirmed that I didn’t dismiss the idea of another Triple Crown winner to anyone who mentioned the possibility to me.

Horse racing - especially the Triple Crown excitement of the 1970s - is what brought me into the hobby in the first place. Although I had been collecting for a few years prior, and I had been talking about the hobby with a couple of acquaintances I had met on the junior high school bus, I didn’t officially enter it until a few months after Affirmed’s Triple Crown in 1978. I received my first issue of Just About Horses shortly afterwards, and an issue of The Model Horse Shower’s Journal (via JAH) in September of that year, and it’s been downhill ever since.

If recent Breyer history is an indicator, there will be an American Pharoah model, possibly by the end of the year. In general, there haven’t been that many issues with getting permission or licensing rights. I know if I owned a famous/successful racehorse, I’d certainly be welcoming that phone call!

It can take several months or even years to create a mold from scratch; we didn't get the Classics Ruffian mold, for instance, until 1977 - a year and a half after her passing. Since they’ll want to get the model out as soon as possible, the likelihood is that they’ll reuse an already-existing mold.

I could see some slight mold modifications to an existing mold - the simple changes to manes, tails and ears that they’ve been doing for a while now. The suggestion I've seen most often is for the Lonesome Glory mold, and they’ve made changes to that mold before (for the last official Connoisseur, Mosaic), so that might be a good choice.

Second, for those still clamoring for an entirely new mold, let me remind you that only two other winners have had their own dedicated molds: Secretariat, and Citation. The Secretariat mold was not well-received, and the Citation is a G1 (Hagen-Renaker) Stablemates mold.

Everyone else - save the Christmas ornament series - has been on a repurposed mold.

There’s no shame in that. Affirmed was my guy, and I love the example they made of him on the Cigar mold - especially the one in Gloss.

1990: The Year of Shiny and Chrome

In another forum and in pursuit of another nerdy passion, discussion turned to the quality and degree of worldbuilding in Max Max: Fury Road. In particular, the dialogue: in a world that’s worn, rusted and broken, the words "shiny" and "chrome" have become slang for awesome/glorious/wonderful.

I laughed to myself a bit when I read it: in a vocal segment of the model horse community, shiny and metallic are already considered positive attributes.

Though the sentiment is not universal; indeed, in the late 1960s and most of the 1970s, Breyer ran away from making shiny and metallic things precisely because they were not considered good, in any sense of the word. The Decorator items – including the metallic Gold Charm and Florentines – had completely tanked. Hobbyists and collectors were also demanding more realistic-looking horses, and that meant more Matte Finishes and less Gloss.

The Decorators were discontinued by the mid-1960s, and Glosses gradually petered out through the 1970s, with models like the Dapple Gray Old Timer and the Brahma Bull finally making the transition to Matte in the late 1970s or early 1980s. Occasional newer Glosses did turn up in the 1970s – some of the early Stablemates, those infamous Gloss Dapple Gray Shires, randomly glossed things they’d toss in boxes just for the heck of it…

Technically, the first "modern" Glossies were the Enchanted Doll House Special Run Alabaster Family Arabians, in 1988. Other than the mold marks and changes, and the date "1988" written in ink on their bellies (under the gloss), they were nearly indistinguishable from older Gloss releases. Which is why they really didn’t make that big of an impact in the hobby world.

They were kinda boring.

The same could be said of the next new Gloss – the Western Horse in Gloss Brown Pinto, a Just About Horses SR in 1990. It was pretty much the same model as the original Vintage release, except for a slip saddle instead of the original snap. There were some minor mold and paint changes, but nothing dramatic.

It was that year, though, that we saw a more heroic return of the Gloss Finish – and finally, the return of metallic Decorators. On the same model!

That first new metallic Decorator was the Signing Party Special Run Gold Charm Secretariat. He wasn’t a perfect duplication of the Gold Charm models of old – he didn’t have the white mane and tail typical of the paint job – but we were happy to see it again, anyway.

The Glossy came a few months later: the Sears Wishbook Special Run Gloss Racehorse Set featured the Sham, the Traditional Man o’ War, and Secretariat – again!

Even though they were little more than Reissues, the Gloss Finish a thin and pale imitation of the Gloss Finishes of old, and their coloring bordered on the fluorescent (especially the Shams – yikes!) this set finally clicked for some weird reason.

Unlike the Gold Charm Secretariat or the earlier Gloss SRs, the Gloss Racehorses are still a rather desirable set among hobbyists; it is not an easy one to come by nowadays, especially complete.

Beautiful Things from Scary Boxes

The flea market made everything better yesterday. All the Breyers were boring and body quality; on the plus side, they were cheap. But so were these little guys…

All found loose at the bottom of a shoebox of other miniatures, on a junk table! Mostly vintage Hagen-Renakers, with a few Josefs and Japans mixed in. The ones on the left are probably staying, the ones on the right are probably going. Some might be upgrades. I haven't had the time to sort it all out yet.

(Yes, that’s a Toadstool up in the corner. Mine, mine at last!)

From the releases and the quality of the paint jobs, it appears most of these little ones are from the mid-1970s, or earlier. I’m having a hard time believing what nice shape they're in. Most of them did have Sticky Wax or putty on their bottoms, so I figure that they were well cared for before their brief stint in the Shoebox of Doom.

I did pass on a couple of chipped pieces, which I later found out to be a bad move, since one of them was quite rare. Actual Rare, not eBay Rare. It’s usually the other way around for me, regarding H-Rs: I’ll toss in something extra to round out a box lot, and it almost always turns out to be the one ridiculously scare or desirable thing.

It’s a dealer who’s a semi-regular, so maybe I’ll luck out again next week. It’s not like I "lost out" on a huge amount of money, but it’s going to bug me anyway. The ones that get away always do.

As you can see from the relative size of the left side (keep) compared to the right side (sell), I’m not going to be making bank on this deal. I thought I was, at first, until I started doing the research and realizing that these were not the pieces I assumed I had.

My overall knowledge of Hagens is good, but I don’t have the deep knowledge like I do with Breyers. Whenever I see miniatures at the flea market, I rely on this simple equation to solve most of my problems:

Cute + Cheap + Possibly H-R = Buy It!

Rarely fails.

Then I found this on top of the used book dump bin at the local Salvation Army today, on my way home from work: Big Red of Meadow Stable: Secretariat, the Making of a Champion:

It’s not in the best condition, but it’s a first edition with intact dustjacket. I didn’t realize how scarce this book was until I did a quick search on Google when I got home. I’m not quite sure what I’m going to do with it now - put it on the shelf with all of my other vintage horse racing books, or go for the bucks on eBay? Money good, but the odds of me finding another in the same or better condition for the same price is nil.

Argh! But a good argh.

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.