Size, Shape, and Scale

Wait a minute, I won an Athena? How did that happen? I only entered once!

Dang, there goes my persecution fantasy, straight out the window. And with a release that seems to be pretty popular, too - until they start arriving on hobbyists’ doorsteps, and the magnifying glasses come out.

(I have not even remotely touched any discussion of the Wyatt, anywhere. It’s been a not-half-bad week for me, and I don’t want to spoil the good mood I'm sailing on into a pretty three-day weekend.)

The only other Ruffian I have is the original release (a lucky half-price-at-Marshall’s find). I did have a BreyerFest SR Heartland at one point, but in a moment of weakness, I sold her to a friend who now adores her.

There haven’t been any other easily available Ruffian releases that have really captured my eye; they’ve done some fabulous Test Color Auction pieces that I wouldn’t mind owning, and the Buckskin one that’s a prize in the Open Show this year?  Sigh.

But a lightly dappled Red Chestnut minimal overo is a very nice consolation prize. No complaints!

The only issue I have with the mold is that, like the Running Stallion, the Traditional Black Beauty, and Cigar, it doesn’t fit on my shelves very well. It hasn’t stopped me from collecting these molds - the Cigar and the Running Stallion, in particular - but every one I do add to the collection does accentuate certain storage and display issues.

Speaking of size and space issues, let’s get to the promised topic: the Giant Size Foal-Thing. (I think everyone's calling her "Foalzilla" now? I like my name better, but not everyone is going to get the joke.)

Like the Wyatt, I’ve been trying to step away from the online discussions and evaluate it cleanly, without getting caught up in other people’s opinions. Whether other people like it or not shouldn’t be a consideration in the first place, anyway.

The scale of "Foalzilla" doesn’t bother me: it’s 1:6, rather than the standard Traditional 1:9. As others have pointed out, it’s the scale used by military modelers, and there’s been some speculation that the Foal is a precursor to Breyer’s entrée into that very profitable market.

If it’s one thing that Breyer has never been consistent on, it’s scale. Many of the earlier molds were adapted from a variety of sources, and none of them matched each other in scale. They didn’t even start classifying molds by scale until the mid-1970s, shortly after they acquired the leases for the Hagen-Renaker molds.

While the size may just be an artifact of the resin it was adapted from, "Foalzilla" is still approximately the same size as a Traditional Adult Horse. It might look a little weird standing on the shelf next to your other models, but it’s still going to fit.

Another thing worth considering is the economics of it all: Foal molds sell really well. Because they are smaller in size than an Adult, but require almost the same amount of effort to product, I’m guessing that the profit margin on them is considerably slimmer. Making a larger scale Foal mold that you could ask a Traditional Adult price for makes a certain amount of business sense.

If they sell well enough, other molds in this scale may follow. Or not. The hobby has more or less adapted itself to the 1:9 scale, so if there are any further "Supertraditional" releases, they may be tailored to the military model market’s specific needs and wants, and not necessarily our own.

Sometimes a Foal is just a Foal, and not the death of Traditional Scale models.

Traditional Foal Shortage?

Still having some time management issues here. I didn’t realize how far behind last week’s crazy work schedule put me. And that rambly post I had been working on all weekend was, frankly, an unpublishable mess. Something I wasn’t in any mood to rewrite last night, especially since I had to be up early this morning for the BreyerFest Reservation Roulette.

So I’ll just spread out what I was attempting to cover in that one post over the course of the week. They’ll be a little shorter than average, but they’ll have the added benefit of actually making sense. And today’s topic shall be… Traditional Foals!

I was originally going to present some research to show you all that there was a dire shortage of Traditional Foal Molds, and that Reeves should do something about it. This was partly in response to a comment about the need for another Draft Horse Foal (something I agree with, wholeheartedly) and also an observation made in light of the recent Fun Foal releases.

The funny thing is that I did the research, crunched the numbers, and guess what? There isn’t a shortage, or at least, there isn’t a significant percentage difference when compared to the Classics or Stablemates line. Foals comprise about 11 to 13% of all three lines, depending on how you calculate it.

For the record, there are approximately 17 different Traditional Foal molds - 16 if you discount the Proud Arabian Foal, who is currently unavailable, or 18 if you want to include the Quarter Horse Yearling:

Action Stock Horse Foal
Amber
Ashley
Clydesdale Foal
Family Arabian Foal
Grazing Foal
Le Fire
Lying Down Foal
Phantom Wings
Proud Arabian Foal
Quarter Horse Yearling
Running Foal
Saddlebred Weanling
Scratching Foal
Sea Star
Standing Stock Horse Foal
Stormy
Suckling Foal

I haven’t included the Connoisseur Foal Gilen yet, since he’s still technically unreleased, and his status as a production plastic mold is still uncertain. (I did not include any exclusively non-plastic molds in my original calculations of the Traditional line anyway, precisely for that reason.)

There were several factors that skewed my perception of the Foal situation. First and foremost was that we’ve had number of new Classics and Stablemates Foal molds that have come out recently. Since 1997, we’ve had six new Stablemates Foals, four Classics, but only three Traditionals (Amber, Ashley and Le Fire.)

Second, there may be more Classics and Stablemates molds historically, but some of those molds were created to replace the Hagen-Renaker molds that are now unavailable for production: the Classic Arabian, Quarter Horse and Mustang Foals, and the G1 Thoroughbred Standing and Lying Down Foals. If you just count the molds that are available, the percentages fall back in line with the Traditionals.

Third, most of the Traditional Foal molds are quite old. Prior to Amber and Ashley, the next youngest Foal mold is the Action Stock Horse Foal, who was released in 1984 - 13 years earlier! While they still retain a lot of sentimental charm, they’re from another time period altogether, both historically and artistically. There have been only three new Foal molds in the modern, post-Chicago era.

Actually, the age issue may be argument enough for more Foal molds. While the Clydesdale Foal is still as cute as he ever was, I’m not so sure he really "belongs" with Wixom, any more than the Family Arabian Foal would go with the new Arabian Cross Mare. These foals were designed for a different time, and a different line.

So, here’s hoping that Gilen is a harbinger of things to come.