Rest in Pieces

I was kind of hoping that I could get a custom or two done in time for a show coming up in September, but that doesn’t look likely. I always forget how difficult it is for me to visualize things in three dimensions! I fuss and fuss over the anatomy, and every time I think I’m done (or almost done) I find 16 other things I somehow missed.

At least I’m enjoying the process, and ultimately, that’s all that should matter. I wish more people would see it that way: being creative doesn’t necessarily mean you have to end with a finished product. Sometimes it’s just worthwhile to goof around with art supplies until the urge to goof around with them subsides.

It only becomes a problem when you decide it’s a problem. Or the art supplies start taking over your house. 

Speaking of questionable anatomy, here’s another unexpected BreyerFest acquisition!

Believe it or not, in spite of having at least a dozen #47 Man o’ Wars littering this place, I did not have a Shrinky one yet. Weird, I know! You’d think I would have come across at least one in my travels before now. 

Maybe it’s because part of me is unwilling to buy something that I know has such a short shelf life, compared to all the other models I own. (He was a gift from a friend, so problem solved, there!)

There’s going to come a time when I will have to do something with the remains of “The Toad” – a lumpy, desiccated, and now quite unappealing pile of plastic horse parts that was once a Pony of Americas “Rocky” in buckskin. And who was, for a while, the world’s most (in)famous Shrinky.

Whenever I finally get the time – and gumption – I just might make a video of Toad’s funeral, with “Slim Jim” here officiating.

The only problem with this plan being the fact that I will then have to steel myself for Slim Jim’s eventual demise. 

Shrinky Misty

This sinus infection is totally kicking my butt, so here’s a picture of that Shrinky Misty to entertain you in ways I cannot:

When I am not pondering the mysteries of model horse history, I design and (not as expediently as I wish) sew quilts. It’s my philosophy that with the right combination of pattern, texture and design you can get literally any two colors to work together in a quilt.

This model is making me rethink this philosophy. Highlighter Orange and Tan? I don’t think so.

Like Chalkies, Shrinkies are not necessarily limited to or defined by a specific time period. You can find Breyer models that have shrunk, warped and turned a peculiar shade of something else from just any time in Breyer’s past. It’s just that the ones from the late 1980s are more abundant, more readily available, and turned weirder faster than the rest. 

In fact, all Breyer models – be it five years from now, or 150 years from now – will eventually shrink, warp and discolor. 

There are plenty of models from the 1950s and early 1960s that still look as good as they did when they were manufactured, so don’t freak out just yet. The speed is dependent not just on the chemical composition of the plastic, but on the environment they are kept in.

There was definitely something that went wrong during the “Shrinky Era” of the late 1980s: this was shortly after manufacturing moved from Chicago to New Jersey, and a lot of “institutional memory” was lost in the transition. I suspect it was either a bad batch of raw Cellulose Acetate, or something went slightly awry with the plastic mix that did not get caught immediately because the old pros weren’t around to do periodic quality checks. 

I still haven’t decided whether or not to keep her. She seems pretty stable for Shrinky (no active oozing, doesn’t smell that bad), but I really don’t need another crazy Misty variation. If anyone wants to make an offer and make this decision easier for me, feel free!

A Doozy of an Oozy

I got through another section of my inventory without any major surprises – other than one of my Little Bits Drafters spontaneously and spectacularly going “oozy” on me. What looks like a white plastic bag underneath him is actually the now-soggy tissue he was wrapped in:

(It looks like crime scene photo, doesn’t it?)

It was one made during the “Shrinky Era” – the late 1980s to early 1990s – so it wasn’t a completely random occurrence. Just a messy and inconvenient one.

Incidentally, everyone else in that box was absolutely fine. But just a few months ago, the Oozy One was fine too.

I got lucky with Shrinkies/Oozies: the late 1980s/early 1990s were exactly the same time period I was least active in the hobby, and buying the fewest models.

It had nothing to do with quality or production issues: I was busy with other things at the time, and simply taking a break. (In the SF/fannish communities, it’s sometimes called “gafiating”, or Getting Away From It All.)

Consequently, when other hobbyists started talking about models shrinking and oozing, I had very little first-hand experience with the phenomenon, beyond the Black Horse Special Runs – the Indian Ponies and Proud Arabian Stallions, specifically.

I’ve made up for it since then, and I’ve even bought a few Shrinkies intentionally. (I am sure some of you remember... The Toad?)

But that Little Bit Drafter caught me by surprise. I had last seen him back in June when I was pulling items out for my display at BreyerFest, and I noticed nothing amiss then. The weather has been unusually warm and humid this year – two things that adversely affect Shrinkies – so maybe that kickstarted the process somehow.

He has been the only one, so far, and the boxes that I’ll be going through next are mostly newer items and vintage items outside of the “Shrinky Era”. The only other surprise I can see lurking in those boxes is exactly how many more Bay Jumping Horse variations I still have. (How many did I buy over the years? Yikes!)

Being a Little Bit/Paddock Pal, he won’t be difficult or expensive to replace, though I am just a wee bit hesitant all the same.

The little Oozy One isn’t going anywhere, either. Since he already happens to be here, I’ll use him as a test subject for possible treatments. If there’s some way to stop it, or at least slow it down significantly, that’d really come in handy. There were some really nice Special Runs during that era, and I would hate to see them all meet an earlier-than-necessary demise.

If you have any yourself, just keep them cool and keep them dry in the meantime. And tuck a few extra paper towels in the bag if you have to keep them in storage, just in case.

Shrinky Stablemates

Ever have one of those days where you have all the time in the world, and you can’t get one darn thing done?

Today was that day for me. Grr. Argh.

But so far I’ve managed to resist the temptation of the BreyerFest Leftover Sale, so perhaps Thursday will be a better day.

Yes, I’m deciding to go for a Chesapeake ticket. I figure all of the Events from this point forward will be even further away and less accessible, aside from any more potential Factory-centered Events, so I might as well give it a shot. I’ll be home most of the day to monitor the availability anyway.

If it happens, it happens. If it doesn’t, it doesn’t. The particulars I will sort out, if it does.

Here’s a little something I picked up at the flea market just before Kentucky – and I do mean little: a Shrinky Stablemates Bay Morgan Stallion!

The shrinkage is a little more noticeable in this photograph:

Yep, Shrinky Stablemates do exist. What’s fascinating about them is that since they are (by and large) molded out of solid acetate, they pretty much shrink at a consistent rate all over.

There is very little bending, warping or any other physical distortions, aside from the color shifting: they just get smaller and more adorable.

How much smaller, I don’t know. I guess I’ll be able to find out, now!

Dimensional Stability

I was doing a little cleanup in the office yesterday and noticed something on my research shelf of Family Arabian Foals:

The variable heights aren’t the big news here: most of us know that Cellulose Acetate is susceptible to shrinkage, both during and after molding. It’s more a quirk of the manufacturing process than a concern, unless it is also accompanied by paint discoloration, distortion, and oozing that indicate the model may be suffering from the dreaded “Shrinky Syndrome”.

What’s interesting is the composition of the tallest member of this little crew: according to his “B” mold mark, he’s molded from the Cellulose Propionate plastic.

It hadn’t occurred to me before, but that makes a lot of sense.

Breyer briefly experimented with this slightly different Tenite cellulosic plastic in the late 1970s and early 1980s, with mixed results. It was more widely available and had greater dimensional stability, but was also more brittle and difficult to finish/work after molding.

Better dimensional stability means less shrinkage and warping.

What that means for us is that this Foal is the most accurate depiction, dimensionally, of what the interior of the Family Arabian Foal’s mold actually looks like.

I now find myself almost intrigued enough by this idea to seek out other Propionate models and cross-compare them with their more standard Acetate counterparts.

Not What She Seems

One of the advantages of switching to overnights at work for the time being is that I’ve managed to miss most of the drama involving Copperfox. It’s kind of hard getting angry or righteous at 7 a.m. in the morning, after working the previous 12 hours.

As for my opinions of the matter itself, I’ll have to decline on commenting, as I was once in a very similar position myself many years ago. Nothing that progressed to the point of incurring any legal or financial burdens, fortunately, but it did provide me some insight and and a certain degree of circumspection.

Here’s another little nugget I unearthed recently:

At first glance, she looks like a Buckskin Touch of Class. Since the Touch of Class mold was never released in Buckskin, either as a Regular or Special Run, the first assumption would be that she’s either a Test Color or a variation, right?

Well, that’s what I thought when I bought her, too. You don't see many Tests, Variations or Oddities of the Touch of Class; she's not the most popular of molds, so she doesn't get around much. As you likely know by now, I sort of have a thing for Tests and Oddities on unpopular things, so I was somewhat excited when I came across her on the Internet some time ago.

However, when I received her it was very obvious that she was a Shrinky who had color shifted in a particularly appealing way: to a Golden Buckskin, instead of the more typical Greenish or Grayish variety.

Funny how slight changes in the paint formulas can lead to such different chemical reactions!

It's probably a moot point with this Touch of Class, since she's not the kind of thing most hobbyists would take to a show anyway, but I've often wondered how we'd classify something like her.

While it has some similarities to the situation we have with older Breyer Palominos, in this case the color has changed not from one shade to another, but from one thing (Bay) to another thing (Buckskin).

Yes, I am aware that Buckskin is a dilution of Bay, genetically, but we're talking paint and intent here. She wasn't meant to be Buckskin: when she came out of the factory, she was a run-of-the-mill Bay. It was a fortunate combination of chemistry and environment made her the way she is today.

Perhaps we can create a "fun" class for Bloaties, Shrinkies, and other ne'er-do-wells who would otherwise be collectible? We all have a few environmentally-challenged beloveds in the herd just itching to get in the ring, even if only in jest...

I wouldn’t mind seeing a Touch of Class in this color for reals, but considering the lack of popularity of this mold, it seems to be a ways off. Especially since she was just released this year in flaxen chestnut in the new #1727 "Let’s Go Racing" set.

Another Science Experiment

I decided the first big project of the week off: the herd culling I’ve been griping about. It’s going well so far; I’d say I’m about halfway through the boxes I wanted to get through. It’s not going to result in a lot of "Big Money" sales, but I'll do okay. Some oddballs, variations, some items with better than average shading, things like that.

There will be some good stuff from this year’s NPOD sales also - nothing that I’ve already featured here, just a few rarities and Samples I had been wavering on. Nothing wrong with them, per se, just not enough room in the stables.

One of the non-NPOD oddballs I’ve decided to surrender is this old Classics Sagr:

Yes, he’s a Shrinky AND a color variation. The variation is not his neon-bright red chestnut coat - that’s a consequence of the shrinking process - but the white mane and tail. Later releases of the original Sagr had a mane and tail that were almost pale enough to pass for white, but this Sagr’s mane and tail were genuinely unpainted white, back when the Sagrs still had distinctly flaxen ones.

I picked him up at one of Marney’s Model Horse Congress garage sales in the 1980s: I can’t recall which year, though I’ll look that up when I finally get around to listing him. (Possibly as early as this week, depending on how the rest of the week, and the culling, go.) He is a Variation, and he has an excellent Provenance, so I won't be giving him away. But he leaks and he reeks: he oozed rather profusely when I took him out of his bag to inspect him, as you can probably see from the preternatural shine to his head.

I’m not expecting a lot out of him, monetarily, unless there happens to be a run on leaky Sagrs that I am not aware of. As to the reasons why he is leaving my collection, I already have one creepy/weird Science Experiment - aka "The Toad" - on premises, and I don’t need another to tend to.

(Note: everything is going on MH$P first, before it hits eBay. All those nonpaying bidder stories I’ve been reading have been making me nervous.)

Toad

Finally, a good weekend! I was so excited about the magnificent weather, I had to suppress the urge to rip off my coat and run around the market grounds screaming for joy. Instead, I opted to go with giddily mumbling to myself, and buying random crazy stuff like bullwhips and auto shop name patches.

(I’m not kidding about buying the bullwhip. Next time, kids, next time.)

All told, I bought nearly a dozen horses: a few bodies, some decent vintage Regular Runs, and one okay Chalky - an Appaloosa Yearling with chipped ears. Nothing spectacular, but it did scratch that itch. I left a ton of stuff behind, too, including a few things I probably shouldn't have, but I was feeling good, and wanted share the joy with some of my fellow hobbyists.

Some of you have already met one of my "keepers", but he’s too good - or perhaps, too bad - not to share with the rest of the world. Meet my lovely little Toad:



At first I thought he had been the victim of a fire or some other sort of household incident, but when I picked him up and got a good whiff of him, I realized he was no accident victim: he was a Shrinky. Possibly the worst Shrinky I’ve ever seen. He’s not just shrunken, discolored, smelly and cracked, he’s lumpy: Lumpy and warty, like a toad!


Hence, his name.

I’ve seen some pretty messed up Shrinkies in my time, but this guy’s right up there with the worst of them. I’ve never seen lumpiness on a Shrinky like that before. Was it a consequence of the plasticizer pooling on the surface of the plastic? Was a "good" batch of plastic mixed in with a "bad" batch, with the lumps representing the unshrunken "good" bits?

I found him in a fairly large (60 piece) collection of contemporary (late 1980s-early 1990s: i.e. The Shrinky Era) pieces, most of them in good or better condition. There were a few other Shrinkies in the herd, but most of them were just smaller, smellier, and a little discolored - nowhere near the same horrifying level of deformity of my little Toad.

Some folks on Blab have speculated that something must have happened to Toad to make him this way, but I’m not so sure of that. It could be that like some people, he "lost" the genetic lottery, and just happened to get made out of a particularly bad batch of plastic, at a time known for that sort of thing.

He’s not oozing or weeping, at least not anymore, though I am hesitant to give him the "taste" test. I already suspect I got a contact high the other day from handling him so much. It’s not like I need to confirm what is already very obvious to my eyes, and nose. (Did I forget to mention that you can smell him a couple rooms away? That boy is pungent!)

Oh yes, he’ll be coming to BreyerFest this year; I’m thinking about setting up a little "kissing booth" for the Toadster and run some sort of fairytale-style promotion. "Kiss the Toad, and get a prize?" Hmm.

(Too bad I already have a great idea for the "Happy Endings" contest, because he’d make a great - and super easy - "Frog Prince" entry. Just set him up next to an unshrunken Rocky, with "Before Kiss" and "After Kiss" signs, and voila!)

8 Buck Hucks

Good gravy Reeves, just when I thought you were starting to "get" it, you pull this kind of nonsense on us again. Here you had us - and me - convinced that this wasn’t going to be anything more special than recently discontinued merchandise, old XMAS stock, and maybe a little of the WEG stuff. You made a big fuss about there not being many "highly limited" SRs.

You might want to review your dictionaries, too. I don’t think the term "highly limited" means what you think it means. Color Crazy Hucks and Fun Foals qualify as "highly limited" SRs to a lot of folks.

Marking stuff up to 80% off was not an endearing move, either. It’s not an incentive, it’s an irritant: $30 Dances with Wolves or $8 CC Hucks do not magically make a 12 hour commute any more plausible.

Don’t get me wrong: I have nothing against the concept of a warehouse sale. It’s the execution that leaves so much to be desired.

Onto other things. I think I’ll clear up a couple of issues that came up in the comments section recently.

First, about Shrinkies: yes, I am aware of the existence of more recent Shrinkies. Unlike the late 1980s Shrinkies, the more modern ones occur more randomly - a batch here, a batch there. That suggests to me that the problem is more a result of faulty plastic, than faulty molding. (Bad molding certainly wouldn’t help, though.)

All Cellulose Acetate models will shrink eventually, it’s just a matter of when. If your models manage to make it through the first decade or so of their lives without exhibiting any unpleasant behaviors, I think they’re safe for the long haul, however long that may actual be.

Now, a few more words about shipper boxes.

We call the early, corrugated cardboard boxes shipper boxes because they were designed to be shipped as is. One side typically had the spaces marked out for the shipping and return addresses:


The other side would have the shipping details and instructions:


If you can’t read it, it says:

Contents: Merchandise - 4th Class Mail
Postmaster: This parcel may be opened for postage
inspection if necessary. Return and forwarding
postage guaranteed.

The example illustrated above (from a #22 Brown Pinto Shetland Pony) was obviously never mailed, but some were. I once owned an old Family Arabian Stallion with a used shipper box. (The best part was the return address: Mission Supply House!)

The shipper box was the standard packaging for virtually all Breyers prior to 1973. There were some exceptions - Lassie, Rin Tin Tin, the Horse and Rider sets all came in fancy shelf boxes - but most models didn’t merit that kind of treatment. It was cheap, and practical, especially for mail-order businesses like Mission Supply House. Address it, stamp it, and it’s ready to go!

Shipper boxes worked for retail businesses, too. In the 1950s, 1960s, and into part of the 1970s, most toy stores would have a display of horses on a shelf or a case. You’d make your selection, and the store would then go to the stock room and get you a still-boxed one. A fancy box wasn’t necessary to make the sale.

I imagine that the shipper box might have even been a bit of a selling point, especially to grandparents with distant grandkids. Straight from the toy store to the post office - no muss, no fuss!

I’m guessing that my bull was either old store stock, or a gift that was purchased, and never given. Doesn’t matter either way, he has a happy home on my shelves now.

Metropolis, and Vinegar Syndrome

I was flipping through the channels on the TV machine last night, looking for something to keep me company as I labored on my quilting project. Wouldn’t you know it, the restored version of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis was on TCM.

I just about plotzed with joy, until I realized that I had already missed the first hour. I’ve made a point of not watching a film that I’ve already missed a significant portion of, unless I’ve seen it before. While I’ve seen Metropolis - several times, actually - this near-complete version, with nearly a half an hour of previously lost footage, might as well be a completely different film.

That film and I have a history. It was one of the first films I obsessed over. An influential science-fiction masterpiece of the silent era, the original cut lost shortly after its original release? It seemed so romantic, mysterious and alluring: I pulled my first all-nighter in my early teens just to watch a blurry, incomplete print on a fuzzy UHF channel. (Only rich folks had VHS machines back then.)

I didn’t see it again until college, when an electronics company gave a presentation about their latest newfangled video player, using the Giorgio Moroder version. I had only seen snippets of that version in the video for Queen’s Radio Ga Ga, one of my favorite music videos then or ever.

That song eventually inspired Lady Gaga, and then Lady Gaga inspired me at this year’s BreyerFest.

Let that be a demonstration of my ability to weave Breyer into virtually any conversation about anything.

Actually, there’s a much less roundabout reason here for discussion old films and the restoration thereof: vinegar syndrome. The topic of shrinkiness and ooziness came up again on Blab a few weeks ago, and much mention was made of "vinegar syndrome," which is the term that film archivists use to describe the breakdown of film stock. Film stock that’s made of almost exactly the same stuff that Breyers are made of.

"Almost exactly" is the operative phrase here. While the base materials are the same, the manufacturing processes and plasticizer ratios are different, as are the conditions each product is subjected to. Even the most banged-up of carpet herds lives a far more genteel life than any given film print.

I know from personal experience: I worked in a movie theatre for several years. That whole "frame melting on screen" thing? Saw it live, ladies. (We had old projection equipment, so I got real handy with the splicer.)

The irony of it all is that acetate film stock was invented as a more stable and less explosive alternative to nitrate stock, which had a habit of spontaneously combusting. (Metropolis's original negative was on nitrate stock. The fire that destroyed it, however, was not spontaneous.)

Breyer shrinkiness and ooziness are undoubtedly the effects of a form of vinegar syndrome, but it’s also obvious that the Shrinkies of the late 1980s were outliers, rather than the norm. There are far more models that are just fine, and will continue to be for some time to come.

We don’t really know what the shelf life of an average Breyer model is, or will be. It took about 25 to 30 years for vinegar syndrome to become a problem in the film industry, but it hasn’t been all that much of a problem with Breyers - yet.

Some of that can be attributed to the fact that hobbyists are already doing everything "right" in terms of mitigating acetate degradation - storage in cool and dry places, away from extremes of heat and light. We’re only about 60 years out on this product, and only time will tell if vinegar syndrome becomes a more widespread problem.

For what it’s worth, I’m not worrying too much about it.

The Incredible Shrinking Appaloosa

As I was compiling my BreyerFest saleslist yesterday, I discovered that I had three different Appaloosa Yearlings. I didn't realize they were all that popular around here: the Thoroughbreds and Adioses I find I understand (I live in an area that used to have a small but thriving horse racing industry.) But Appaloosa Yearlings? Go figure.

I have a disproportionately large collection of Appaloosa Yearlings in my own private collection, but that's because it seems to be one of those models – like the Black Stretch Morgan, or the Chestnut Saddlebred Weanling – that comes in endless variations. My post today, however, is about only one of those Yearlings. This one:


I purchased her several years ago at BreyerFest. Even in the low light endemic to the host hotel, she stood out: she was one weird girl. Nearly gray, with pale yellow spots. I had to have her! For comparison, here's a relatively normal/average Appaloosa Yearling:


And believe it or not, it's a variation that actually comes with an explanation: my gray girl is a Shrinky!

I almost totally missed out on the Shrinky phenomenon originally: most of the Shrinkies collectors discover or seek out nowadays date to the late 1980s or early 1990s, a period in which I wasn't really buying all that many new horses. (There's a long, interesting story about how I ended that hobby “hiatus,” but another time, sweeties, another time.) The only ones I recall having were the BHR SR Indian Ponies: my Bay one was particularly … oozy. And at the time, I attributed it to something else entirely.

I don't know what precisely causes the shrinking: something is slightly off in the composition of the Tenite, or in the molding process, that causes models to shrink, warp, crack and (sometimes) ooze. I haven't put any time into discovering what the precise problem is – it is again, another consequence of a lack of time and way too many topics to cover.

Just because some of your models are slightly taller or shorter than others of the same mold doesn't automatically make them Shrinkies, however. Tenite is a semi-synthetic material that's subject to environmental factors, and you're going to have some minor variations in size and shape as a result.

There are several other indicators of a models status as a true Shrinky, and this very pale girl of mine taught me that.

A while back I took a picture of this girl as an avatar on Blab. She was a bit dusty in spots, so I gave her a quick lick in lieu of walking over to the nearest sink and rinsing her off. I wasn't expecting her to taste so … nasty! I had to run to the sink anyway and rinse out my mouth!

I had licked some of my Breyers before in similar situations and had not experienced that before. Sometimes I'd feel a bit of a tingle, but nothing quite so dramatically wrong. What on Earth was going on?

I compared her to my other Appaloosa Yearlings and noticed that she was somewhat shorter than the rest – not dramatically, but noticeably. I then recalled a Spanish-Barb Buckshot I had in my collection that was slightly smaller than average, and of a somewhat unusual color – more pink than chestnut. So I pulled her out of storage, and gave him the lick test too.

Same result. Grossness! And out of that grossness came an epiphany (of sorts.)

I had noticed on eBay and elsewhere a number of unusual looking chestnuts – ones that were more pale, peachy pink than actual chestnut. Most of theme were on models from the late 1980s or early 1990s. They were pretty distinctive: why hadn't I noticed these guys before, when they came out? Was it another case of me being insufficiently observant?

No, it was probably because the paint finish hadn't yet started reacting to the messed up chemical composition of the Shrinky plastic. It took a few years before Chestnuts turned pink … and Bays turned gray!

My Appaloosa Yearling was not a variation, in the strictest sense. She was a Shrinky.

Shrinkies do still occur from time to time: last year at BreyerFest, my friend Bernie showed me a smallish, slightly off looking Diamondot Buccaneer who, one lick test later, revealed his true nature. And he was made several years after that first, now notorious batch.

I'm not advocating a wholesale licking of your collection to root out your potential Shrinkies – there are some that definitely don't need that test. (Especially if they're oozing!) But if you're curious, and have nothing better to do in the privacy of your own home ….