The Mysteries of BreyerFest

Well, I finally had my official "BreyerFest nightmare" last night, and it was a doozy. All I remember of it now is that it involved Polar Bears and the color purple. I vaguely recall that the resolution was a happy one, too.

I will take this as a good portent.

I haven’t been giving much thought to what the last two "mysteries" of BreyerFest - the Surprise Special Run, and the Volunteer Model - will be. I’ve been too busy dealing with other things to give them much thought.

Last year’s Volunteer Model - a Liver Chestnut Show Jumping Warmblood - was Matte, Realistic, a Solid Color, on a more modern mold: chances are that this year’s model will be something that is at least not one of those things, if not more. The model from the year previous - the Gloss Palomino Clydesdale Mare - was also a Solid Color, so something Pinto, Appaloosa or even Dappled seems a safe bet.

For the "Quelle Surprise" Special I am hoping for something that could pass for a Selle Francais - like Giselle, Gem Twist or even Newsworthy - but a few hobbyists have mentioned the Esprit and the Make A Wish/Justadream molds as a possibilities, and I could see that, too. The latter, especially: like the Roxy Surprise from a couple years back, they could switch up the manes and tails.

What’s important here is that it has to be a mold that hasn’t had a lot of previous releases, and hasn’t been done as a Surprise Special OR as a Treasure Hunt item, either: that would rule out Silver, Lady Phase, and Othello. (Seriously, what colors are left for them?)

Other than the usual assortment - at least one each of Appaloosa, Solid, and Pinto - and the Glosses, they might throw in an additional surprise to the surprise, like a Silver Filigree, Charcoal or other Deco. That went over pretty well last year - in spite of some of a few glitches - and with the upped piece counts, there ought to be at least one true "rarity" in the bunch.

While I don't think a half Matte/half Gloss Special is likely this year, I wouldn't rule it out. (If so, can it please be the Red Bay Pinto Totilas Enchante? Gloss Bays are sort of a thing with me now!)

As for the additional Mysteries that will lie within the Ninja Pit of Death, I am not even going to try and speculate. This is not for a lack of ideas, but of desire: I have other commitments that will keep me out of the Pit this year, so for the sake of my sanity I’m going to avoid even thinking about it.

Plus, the last time I wasn’t able to make it there, they dropped those "Home Decorating Show" weighted models and the super-rare German Stablemate Special Run sets, both of which haunt me still.

I’m trying to comfort myself with the thought of being able to sleep in a real bed on Thursday night, but it’s a small comfort.

So help me though, if something in there turns out to be purple, or a Bear…

Beauty Is Not Box Deep

First of all, let me apologize for any testiness I’ve shared with the rest of the class this week. I’ve been working a lot of hours (and consequently not getting the best sleep) and I’m experiencing some technical difficulties at home you don’t really need to know the specifics of (other than the fact that it is, again, something I literally can do nothing about).

On the plus side, I got my sewing machine back from the shop, so at least I have sewing projects I can now distract myself with.

Also, if there are any issues with my facts that you want to correct, feel free to e-mail me privately, and I will deal with it on the front page, rather than leave it to the comments. I don’t want to be responsible for floating bad data around. It might take a while for me to get to it, since my schedule is so out of whack, but if it’s a nontrivial matter, I will get to it eventually. (I think I might actually have some free time next week, in fact …)

So, here’s the model that I’m currently obsessing over:

Weird, huh? In this era of super-limited-this and glossy-that, the model that’s been the focus of my attention for the past week is a plain old Treasure Hunt Lady Phase in Black Appaloosa.

She was one of those last-minute pick-ups at BreyerFest; I went into the sales tent on Sunday morning just to look around, and to mull over this year’s SR leftovers (I eventually decided to pass on all of them.) I had gotten to the park a little on the late side - not until about 10:30 - so I wasn’t expecting to find anything fabulous, but I wandered around anyway, hoping I might find some small treasure that everyone else might have overlooked. (Because, as you might have noticed, I have a talent for that sort of thing.)

I found a small assortment of the Treasure Hunt Lady Phases, and recalling that someone had mentioned that chalky-blanketed variations of the Appaloosas had been found in the mix earlier in the weekend, I decided to give them a quick once-over.

That lovely little girl above caught my eye: her masking was crisp, I saw no flaws, and her blanket definitely had a chalky cast to it. She was practically daring me to take her home with me. So I did.

Her (now disassembled) box also had a bit of a rough, cobbled together look, which suggested to me that she might have been a Sample, too. I saw a couple other of these Lady Phases on the table, of a similar quality and in similar packaging, reinforcing the notion.

Another secret I probably shouldn’t be telling you, but I will: when it comes to boxed models in the Ninja Pit, the rougher the quality of the box, the closer attention you should pay to the quality of the horse inside the box. It’s a good indicator that the contents aren’t necessarily what they appear to be.

The irony is that it runs contrary to convention thinking - where the so-called "serious" collectors focus just as much, if not more, on the condition of the box. So it’s no surprise that they turn up later in the BreyerFest weekend - after all the "pretty boxes" have been picked up, over and away.

Since the Treasure Hunt Lady Phases predated the VIN number program by several years, there’s no way to be sure. I bought her mostly because she was beautiful, and for the very adolescent notion of her competing for the affections of my far-too-many Stud Spiders. (Her name? Spider’s Bride, silly.)

Messing With Our Heads: The Early Years

I’m feeling ridiculously tired today. I suspect it’s the massive amounts of Easter candy I’ve been consuming the past three days: if I get too much processed sugar in my system, it totally wipes me out.

Having eaten little to no processed sugar for the six weeks prior probably lowered my tolerance level, too. Which is a good thing, I think. The stuff the Easter Bunny brought this year was primo - mostly from Belgian chocolatiers - so I want to make it last. Gotta stretch that budget, too: I’ve got some big, nonhorsey purchases I need to make in the next month or so.

I haven’t done much model horsey stuff in the past few days, other than to start giving a little more serious thought to some of my plans for BreyerFest this year.

Every year I tell myself I’m going to get things done early and relax, but I think y’all know how well that works out: several weeks of waking up from panicky dreams about not getting everything done in time. (Where are my clothes? Where are my horses? Did I pack spoons? Gah!!!)

Continuing on our adventures in ClassicsLand, here are a couple more semi-obscurities worth exploring further - the Classic Arabian Foal in Alabaster, and Slate Gray:


They were a part of the #4000 Classic Arabian Foal Blister Pack Assortment that was available from 1973 through about 1982 or ‘83. The Gray and the Alabaster are much, much less common than the other colors available in the assortment, which also included Chestnut, Palomino and Black. So much so that they are frequently mistaken as variations of later releases.

So, what’s up with them? Why are those two so much harder to find than the other colors?

Would you believe that it was an early case of Breyer messing with our heads?

That’s what Marney said, or at least that’s what I heard through the grapevine back in the 1980s. As the story goes, Breyer made limited quantities of the Grays and the Alabasters early on - probably in the first couple of batches, if that - as sort of an early version of a Treasure Hunt. They even went so far as using the Gray version of the foal in the 1974 and 1975 Collector’s Manual:


As I wasn’t formally in the hobby at the time of this daring experiment, I couldn’t tell you how well it went over then. But they didn’t repeat it with the #4001 Quarter Horse Foal Assortment a year later. The Chestnut one in that assortment is a little bit scarcer than the Palomino, Black and Bay, but not outrageously so. I occasionally hear rumors about Gray and Alabaster Quarter Horse Foals, but I think they're mostly wishful thinking.

Feeling the Rainbow

Lots of ground to cover today.

First, I "won" a Nympheas! Yay me! (Is it weird that I still get a bit of a thrill whenever I see my name on the Winners List?) I don’t have many Marabellas in the collection; not for a lack of trying, I just never seem to be in the right place at the right time for the right model. So that’s a happy way to start my weekend.

Second, yes, I’ve been brainstorming ideas for the Costume Ball ever since it was announced on the BreyerFest blog a few days ago. The first idea that popped into my head was hilarious, but probably inappropriate, and possibly illegal in the State of Kentucky. (No, the whip is not involved.) I still might do it if I can’t come up with anything else equally awesome. I thought my costume last year bordered on the inappropriate, and everything turned out fine.

Third, well … the Rainbow Weather Girls are out. I’m surprised at how much I like the Translucent Rainbow variation; I wasn’t a huge fan of their previous Rainbow paint jobs, but it really works on the Translucent plastic. Kudos for them for being able to pull it off so successfully.

I like the Pintaloosa ones too. It seems like an odd choice, but I get it - it’s a paint job with a lot of "color." I would not be displeased to get either the Matte or the Glossy version, if only because my Standing Stock Horse Fun Foal needs a Mommy:


Most of the "Herd" seems to think otherwise. Quelle surprise, non? Whatever. Some hobbyists just gotta complain no matter what. A few more realistic colors would be nice, but I’m not going to snipe, carp and moan about it. Or withhold my UPCs and hope for something "better." I’ll send them in when I finally get around to getting the rest of them, and be happy with whatever shows up on the doorstep.

We got spoiled on the multiple variants on the Hucks and Fun Foals: hobbyists seem to have forgotten that the first couple of Treasure Hunts didn’t have a lot of variations within them, and there wasn’t a huge amount of complaining at the time that there should have been more.

(Well, some: no subject in the hobby ever goes uncomplained about.)

It’s nice that Reeves seems to be going with a simultaneous and random release of multiple variations, something I wish they had done last year with the Othello Treasure Hunt. Allegedly there are going to be four variations total; whether the Gloss and Matte Pintaloosas count as one or two, I don’t know. If they’re going to go with variations on the "color" theme, I’m supposing there’s going to be a "Color Change" painted piece in the mix somewhere.

A Color Change Pintaloosa, maybe? Oh yeah, I’d totally dig that!

Peace Out.

Drama Overload

I didn’t think the drama surrounding the Weather Girls could have gotten worse, but it has. No to Glossies, yes to Glossies, no to Glossies again, and now maybe Glossies but rare - is it any wonder I stick to more ancient Breyer history? So much less of a hassle …

How sad is it that when I heard the news about "Steppin’ Out," my first reaction was "Well, Ohio isn’t that far away…" Then I plugged in the numbers: 480 miles round trip, with gas at $3.50 a gallon? Not gonna happen, unless I can get a caravan of locals to split the costs.

http://www.breyerhorses.com/news/detail.php?eventid=880

As I’ve said before in the comments, the whole situation with another super-limited Esprit - this time, an almost generous 200-piece run - is ridiculous. Is there some sort of arcane plan to make this mold totally uncollectible to almost everyone on the secondary market, except the rich and/or crazy (and their wannabes)?

There’s only been one "large scale" release of the Esprit mold so far, and contrary to what a lot of hobbyists seem to think, it wasn’t all that large. Just because some Tuesday Mornings got one in their latest Breyer shipment does not mean that Reeves had a gigantic surplus of them. There have been low-piece count BreyerFest SRs that have ended up in Tuesday Morning stores, for heaven’s sake.

The market for pricey Breyer SRs is not that big, either - just take a look at all of the high-priced beauties gone wanting on MH$P recently. Most of them, it seems, being sold by previous attendees of super-exclusive events in order to fund their attendance at the next super-exclusive event.

Sorry, no can do, not even if I could. I just can’t wrap my head around the idea of being that fickle with my horses. If I go through the trouble and expense of getting something that rare or desirable, I mean to keep it long term. More than a year or two, anyway.

Yeah, I do something similar with the stuff I find at the flea market, but on a much smaller scale financially - with lower expectations, and less grandiose ambitions. And most of it stays in the more affordable ranges: it’s been a couple of years since I had a sales item in the three-digit range, and those were models I never intended to sell, except out of financial necessity. (As in, I needed money to pay my bills, not finance another extravagance.)

Eh, enough with the griping - let’s cover a little history for a change. As promised, here’s the scan of the Poodle’s big announcement in the January, 1958 issue of Toys & Novelties:


Even though the photo is in black and white, it seems pretty obvious to me that the color of the collars is probably blue, not red. Reds tend to turn darker in black and white photography, and blues look lighter. (The collar on the white one looks much lighter in the original copy - my scanner’s being all naughty and contrasty.) There’s no real news here, only confirmation: it jibes with what we were already able to ascertain from the physical evidence.

In case you were curious, the books in the background appear to be about home decorating. That’s interesting. Was Breyer already thinking about a "Decorator" line at that point, or was it just a subtle suggestion to potential buyers about their product's potential as decorative accents?

Dating Discrepancies

Weather Girls are going to come in gloss, too? Oy. The online discussion of it all has gotten almost as insufferable as it has for the Sunshine Celebration. Nothing - and I mean, absolutely, literally nothing - can live up to that kind of hype. I'm just afraid that any kind of flaw, however minor, will be greeted by a similarly stupid overreaction.

It's not going to be pretty. (On the plus side, that means we won't have to deal with conseqences of them as glossed live show prizes. Good grief, that would have been awful.)

The research trip didn't quite pan out the way I hoped, either. I covered quite a bit of ground -from 1957 through 1960, more or less - and I found ... almost nothing!

I found lots of Hartland data, and some secondary information that might become useful later on, but I only one bit of Breyer information from the 1957 through 1960 time period surfaced: the announcement of the release of the Black and White Poodles. From the January, 1958 issue of Toys & Novelties.

(Sorry, no scan today - blogging from the road, no access to the scanner! Next time, I promise.)

Longtime readers will recognize the problem with that: the Poodles had already been featured in a couple of Christmas catalogs and an ad in the June, 1957 issue of Western Horseman. You could kinda-sorta explain the mail-order catalog thing: there have been a number of instances of items appearing in the Christmas catalogs in the months before their official catalog release (Stud Spider and Legionario III, most notably.)

But the Poodle was clearly not a holiday pre-release: the Western Horseman ad suggests that some retailers already had it in stock by mid-1957, at least. So, what's up with the obvious discrepancy?

There could be any number of explanations for it.

The magazine could have just happened to select the Poodle's writeup from a backstock of older press releases. Or maybe the Poodles had not quite been ready for release in time for the 1957 Toy Fair, and Breyer wanted to feature it in their 1958 display. (But why the Poodle, and not the Clydesdale or Old Mold Mare and Foal, who were also new for 1958?)

So what does it mean to my research? Nothing: I'm sticking with the 1957 release date. To heck with the "official" announcement: if it was available to consumers by June of 1957, it's a 1957 release.

It'll probably be several more months before I execute another research excursion. It's a "time and money" thing, not a "disappointment over what I found" thing. Sometimes you find stuff, and sometimes you don't. All it means is that there's just that much less ground to cover next time.

Safety Orange

Looks like my schedule will be a little bit better this week - not a lot, but a little. Next week looks like might be a rerun of last week, though. Sigh. (Seriously, does anyone out there want a copy of my resume?)

Bigger pictures of the new Treasure Hunt mold Weather Girl are out now, and boy, is that black one nice. I’ll definitely have to cough up the cash for that little lady. The Palomino and Gray Pinto are also pretty spiffy, but like everything else, I’ll have to take a wait and see approach to see if buying a full set is financially feasible.

Let me confess to a total reading comprehension fail regarding what the BreyerFest Store Special was: it’s not the Black Pinto Huck "Black Tie Affair", but a Dappled Palomino Halla/Bolya "Dusty". (I’ll blame it on my outdated eyeglass prescription.)

I don’t know if it’s because the mold already came in Palomino, as the 748 American Warmblood in 1998 and 1999, or that I prefer the braided Halla version of the mold, but I’m just not feeling the love for "America’s Horse" just yet.

(Could be the whole "America’s Horse" thing, too - seems like an awfully presumptuous title to me. Was there some sort of reality show competition I missed out on? I’d totally watch an American Idol-style reality show with horses. But I digress.)

It could be that it’s the photo throwing me off: he looks way more Safety Orange than Palomino. Are they going for a retro "Palomino FAS" vibe, or am I being tripped up by another bad photo? I loves me some crazy colors, but I’m not sure I want something that could be mistaken for a traffic cone.

It’s gotta be a bad photo. That, or my monitor needs some serious recalibration.

Rainbows and Rhinestones

That’s it, I’ve had it with the snow! No more! Normally the snow isn’t as big a bother to me as the cold, but we’re running out of places to shove the white stuff. Spring can’t get here soon enough.

I’ve also had it with wading through the online Treasure Hunt discussions. I’m just as happy as the rest of you that it’s an Eberl, but could y’all lay off the exclamation point key? My eyes just can’t process that many randomly punctuated exaltations of glee in such a short period of time.

I’m glad to hear that Brigitte has expressed an interest in doing more sculpts for Breyer, including (yes!) a Draft Horse Mare and Foal. I’ve wanted another Draft Foal for years. Another Arabian-type mare is great (especially since the Proud Arabian Mare is indefinitely off-limits) but the Breyer lineup is not as bereft of Arabians as it is of Drafts, especially in the Foal department.

I love the Clydesdale Foal as much as the rest of you, but that poor baby could use some time off.

I’m hoping that the "Rainbow" redemption horse is referring to either (a) the use of Color Change paint, or (b) the variety of different colors that will be available, and not a Rainbow Decorator. I’m not a big fan of that paint job. It worked on the "Fruit Stripe" Zebra auction piece a few years back, but all of the other Rainbows I’ve seen since then - Custom, and Test - just don’t do it for me. And that’s coming from a person who does this to Family Arabian Mares:


(Hey, it seemed like the most logical thing to do, when I did it. What else was I going to do with a surplus of rhinestones and FAMs?)

Anyway, that’s all I’ve got to say about that matter, until I can actually see a "Weather Girl" up close and personal.

In other news… yes, I saw that "volunteer opportunity" on the Breyer Facebook page - organizing their sample room and archive. Seems tailor made for me, no?

As much as I want to, I can’t apply.

It’s not the distance between Michigan and New Jersey that’s the problem, it’s the money. I can’t afford to do it. I don’t have any of these things: a full-time job, paid vacation time, a trust fund, a husband, or a sugar daddy. I can only afford to take one big trip a year, and I can just barely do that.

I can’t come up with any clever or funny way of expressing the way I feel, because there’s nothing funny or clever about it. My life is kind of small and sad, and this …is making me feel smaller and sadder.

There are some things rhinestones can’t fix.

2011 Treasure Hunt?

I think the frenzy surrounding the 2011 Treasure Hunt mold has the potential for ending very, very badly.

Normally I’m all for speculating on new releases, but I’ve seen this particular movie before. People start throwing out all these crazy ideas. A few of them really, really catch on, sometimes with no rhyme or reason (remember the nonsense about the White Moose?) Some people enter the discussion half way through, convinced that they missed something important, and start asking the same unanswered questions that were posed at the beginning. This generates several pages more of content-free commentary.

Lacking anything better to say, someone tries to be cute and throws in some "clever" innuendo about a horse’s reproductive anatomy, or references to a private joke that no one else either understands, or wants to. The conversation usually ends in a flurry of exclamation points, typos, and random bits of punctuation.

When the rumored release appears, disappointment always ensues. Doesn’t matter if it was a concept that was "all that" a couple of years ago, it’s not what The Herd WANTS NOW. After the initial rush of excitement, the mold is declared unworthy, and is followed by the unnecessary random bashing of previous mold releases. (Though in the absence of a model to pick on, they seem to have gotten a jumpstart on that part, already.)

Sorry for the crankiness: I went through twenty aggravating pages of discussion about it on Blab, wherein I discovered that the "ignore" function doesn’t work all that well, since everyone is almost obsessively quoting the one and only person I want to ignore.

(Yep, just one person. I didn’t want to do it in the first place; even the most obnoxious, wrong-headed person in the world can make some worthwhile input. But not this one. Look, this hobby is my happy place - I have enough difficult and high maintenance people to deal with everyday in the "ordinary world." )

(BTW, all you guys here are golden.)

I have nothing to contribute to the Treasure Hunt discussion, itself. The thought of another Eberl mold puts a smile on my face, but I’m not going to have a tantrum if it isn’t. If it is a new mold, of course I’ll get myself one - more, if they’re to my liking - but I don’t know if it’ll be enough for me to participate in the actual Treasure Hunt itself. You know, it's the whole "no money" thing getting in the way again.

As for what I’m spending my teeny hobby budget on nowadays, that’s up next.

More Glosses. Whatever.

All this whining about the Winter Othellos is starting to turn me off Glosses. Reeves should have made the Winter a Gambler’s Choice: if the off-the-shelf models in the series were available in Matte and Gloss from the very beginning, the Winters should have been too.

Then the whining would have been confined to individual tales of personal bad luck, instead of devolving into tedious arguments about the incompetence of Reeves’ marketing strategies. There’s much to be criticized there, no doubt, but the level of discourse rarely rises above "I didn’t get exactly what I wanted" = BAD.

I fall into that trap sometimes, myself: it wouldn’t take much effort on my part to construct a fairly righteous rant about my inability to secure a reasonably priced Diamond Jubilee, and the crazy way they seem to have distributed them. (No rhyme or reason, there.)

Speaking of crazy distribution patterns, I have no idea how the whole Gloss Valentine & Heartbreaker thing is going to pan out, either. Is this just a one-time thing, or all year/run long? Totally random, or a true one to five ratio?

It’d be nice if they did stick to the "one gloss for every five matte" ratio. That’d mean 1000 Gloss sets for every 5000 Mattes produced. If we peg the sales at a conservative 18,000 pieces, that’d be 3000 gloss sets out in the wild - more than enough to satisfy demand.

(Yes, really.)

It’s still too early to tell what Reeves is doing at this point. Trotting over to your favorite online dealer and placing an order for a Gloss one seems a little presumptuous to me.

It’s clear that they’re tinkering with different distribution patterns. I’m all for that: the more equitable or random the system, the better. The way it is now, some hobby-specific retailers have sort of gamed the system, and taken the "hunt" out of the treasure hunts.

I like the possibility that any given store might contain some rare or random treasure, even if it means that I might not get everything I want - like a Diamond Jubilee. The trick for Reeves is going to be in finally finding just the right plan - and hoping they won’t have ticked us all off by the time they do.

I do feel kind of sorry for the dealers: this should be the time of the year when everyone starts to get excited about the next year’s releases, tour stops, and the first real news about BreyerFest. Instead, everyone's having another meltdown about another glossy that may or may not be all that rare. And taking it out on them.

If I get lucky, I get lucky. I don’t have the time or the money to chase every shiny object waved in front of my face.

Black Leopards

Dealing with even more remodeling nonsense here: I had to clean out and move the other china cabinet. I sure do have a lot of breakables, for being a big, clumsy Buffalo!

Since so many hobbyists seem to be losing it over the Treasure Hunt Redemption Horse "Winter" - a Near Black Semi-Leopard Appaloosa - I thought I’d turn the spotlight on Breyer’s earliest attempt at the Leopard Pattern: the #115 Appaloosa Western Prancing Horse:


Yep, this one’s an oddity: no front stocking.

There are two variations of this paint job: some have dark gray stockings, and others have black. I don’t think there’s any consistency to the variations, at least I haven’t seen any. I used to think that the gray stocking versions came earlier, but my boy here with the missing hosiery has the USA mark, so it might be the other way around. It’s not something I’ve looked into yet.

When I first discovered that the Western Prancing Horse came Leopard Appaloosa, I became a bit obsessed with obtaining one. He had to be just right, too; I can’t recall how many times I upgraded mine. Then I discovered there were two variations to it, so I had to have primo examples of both. I found the guy above on eBay a few years back, and he became my representative example of the gray stocking version.

I have a pretty nice black stocking version too. And unlike Gray Stocking Guy, Black Stocking Guy has extra shading in his, ah, unmentionables. (A common feature on models from the 1960s and early 1970s.)


(The color difference is a little hard to see, I know. Like Chalkies, it's much more obvious in person.)

The Western Prancing Horse is another one of those models that was released sometime during the documentation gap of the early 1960s. Evidence suggests that he was a 1962 release, like the Running Mare and Foal, and that he was intended to be the replacement for the Fury/Prancer mold, who was starting to look a little dated by then.

The Appaloosa version of the Western Prancing Horse remained in production through 1973. In 1974, the Appaloosa Performance Horse premiered, as did a new style of Appaloosa paint jobs: masking replaced full-body splash spotting.

Splash spotting never went away, but today tends to be reserved for either reproductions of old-style paint jobs, or for models with airbrushed hip blankets (i.e. the upcoming Mid-States release.) Splash spot Leopards have turned up from time to time, too, but the Black Leopard varieties rarely come with the black mane-tail-point feature anymore. An exception was the 1990/91 Country Store Special POA:


I’m not sure what’s the big fuss over the new version of this old paint job. It’s not unrealistic; I seem to recall much oohing and aahing over a dark-legged leopard part-Friesian foal on Blab a few years back, whose photos inspired many custom copycats.

I think it’s a little bit of backlash over the two previous "owners" of this paint job: the Collector’s Choice Silver Matrix, and the BreyerFest SR Appydaze.

My negative reaction to Matrix wasn’t because of the paint job, but with the overuse of the Silver mold: he had already had his turn in the Collector’s Choice lineup, with Blue Suede Shoes. There’s no formal rule that a Collector’s Choice selection can’t be on a previously used mold, but with over 20 other releases in his relatively brief life, doing another CC Silver rubbed me - and many other hobbyists - the wrong way.

The Appydaze was a miscalculation on Reeves’s part. Having a model and paint job combo that was specifically designed for the younger set? A good idea. Making 1500 of them? Not so good an idea. You could sell over a thousand pieces of them - all of the other SRs that year were 1200 piece runs or less - and still have a ton of leftovers. When hobbyists see a lot of leftovers, they immediately think "That one must have been a dud." And regardless of their personal feelings about a model, most hobbyists tend to think twice before adding a "dud" like that to their herds.

It’s interesting that another model with a similar paint job - the Fest SR Ruffian "Heartland" - didn’t elicit the same negative reaction. Three factors at work with her, I think. First, the Ruffian mold definitely has its fans, or at least doesn’t get quite the negative press the other two sometimes attract. Second, she’s glossy: we’ve all witnessed the power of a Gloss Finish to drive hobbyists mad. And third, she’s a shaded Bay, not a flat Black: more shading and detail = greater perceived value.

It’ll be interesting to see what will turn up next. Most hobbyists are assuming a Gloss variation is on the horizon. A safe and logical bet, sure, but I’m kinda hoping for an old-school splash spot Leopard myself.

More Treasure Hunt Madness

Well, the whole Treasure Hunt thingie went from zero to crazy in nothing flat, didn’t it?

It’s still a little too early to tell if this is just an early release of the now-standard Treasure Hunt variations, or something that will carry on throughout the year. My guess is that it’ll be a year-long thing, partly based on the fact that Breyer "primed the pump" in early December with that odd poll on their Facebook page that asked, ambiguously, "Glossy or Matte? Which will it be?"

Glossy or Matte what?

Well, now we know.

I’m not sure if I’ll be participating this year. I like the Othello mold well enough, but I need to resolve a few things around the house (time, space, money - the usual) before I start buying more Traditionals, especially ones as shelf-consuming as Othello. I’ll probably cave if I see a Gloss Summer in person. Or the Bay; he looks especially fine in that color, don’t you think?

I’m just glad they’re releasing him in colors other than Gray.

Have you noticed that certain molds seem to be afflicted by a certain lack of imagination in their color schemes? Othellos get the Gray treatment, the #58 Hanoverian always ends up some shade of Bay … and the poor #156 Haflinger mold, a dozen different variations of Chestnut or Palomino, including the newest UK Special!

On some molds it’s understandable that the color scheme is somewhat restricted. The vast majority of Lipizzans are gray, so it’s not surprising that the Classic Lipizzan always ends up that color, especially since the pose he’s in is almost breed-defining. (Though I think it's another mold that would look smashing in a simple, shaded bay.)

But the Othello or Haflinger molds? Not so neatly defined. I know a lot of hobbyists get annoyed that they have to resort to some odd crosses to make their OF showstring competitive. It doesn’t bother me so much, since the world is full of oddly colored and not-so-typey horses. Seems more realistic to me.

(People, too. According to my ethnic background, I’d be some sort of Belgian Partbred or Warmblood: Belgian + Polish + Hungarian! And from the hair color, a bay roan sabino one, at that.)

Like the rest of you, I’m curious to see what color "Winter" will be. I’m hoping for something a little more daring, like a Snowflake Appaloosa, or a Reverse Leopard Appaloosa - something that’ll look wintry, without having to resort to Gray. Again.

(I doubt many of us would object to a Gloss Charcoal. Including me.)

2010 Previews and Stuff

It looks like I'll start the year with a truly clean slate: there was honest-to-goodness dusting performed in the office yesterday! I have no idea what got into me; I'll chalk it up to work avoidance and the absence of a cat to vacuum.

The work avoidance issue: dealing with the big black hole that is my research data entry slush pile. I'm always incorporating new data into my files, but not at the same rate that I research it. Then I find some unexpected lead, and off I am again on some other crazy topic. I think I'll probably spend most of my free time in the beginning of the new year dealing with the consequences of that foolishness. (In addition to working on the nascent hobby advocacy movement that seems to be coming into being – finally!)

The new year is almost here, and photos of the 2010 releases are already being floated about, and analyzed to death. I'm not going to be one of those people today: we should all know by now that it's not a good idea to judge a Breyer horse by its stock photo. Especially the new G4 Stablemates; it's pretty clear that a number of those photos are of prototypes, and not to be trusted. The two resin prototypes we had a sneak peek at BreyerFest this year looked just fine and dandy in person, and I suspect that most of the rest will be, too. There might be a clunker or two, but it's nothing worth fretting over until we have them in hand.

I'm glad to see a new Nokota and a new Peruvian, though – now there's a couple of favorite molds that might make me break my vows of model horse austerity. The Treasure Hunt Othellos are very nice – I like the mold a lot, but I'm not sure I like him enough to participate. I may reconsider, depending on the color and quality of the redemption horse. (Gloss Charcoal = YES! Another shade of gray = meh, not so much.)

I have a lot of reservations about the Breast Cancer Benefit horse. Normally I'd be attempting cartwheels at the thought of a mass-market transparent Traditional-scale horse; one of my few, true model horse grails is to track down and possess the Transparent Belgian I once saw in Marney Walerius's basement. I have all of the other transparent, or mostly transparent Breyer releases, except for the unaffordable Connoisseur Tortuga.

Benefit horses of any kind are good; I just wish it could have been targeted towards an orphan cancer that doesn't quite get the same level of funding or media attention.

You know, like pancreatic cancer.

Hell yeah, it's personal. Some of you may know, but others do not: I lost my Dad to pancreatic cancer almost two years ago. PC has a 5% survival rate after five years; we had 28 days, which is not untypical. There hasn't been much research done, because there's no money in it: there are virtually no survivors to campaign for it.

Now that they have the painting template for it, we can hope that maybe the idea will carry through to other causes, in other colors. (PC's color is purple.) And at least with PC, there would be a logical connection of the horse to the cause: Patrick Swayze was an Arabian horse breeder and enthusiast. I think there's even some footage of him competing at the Kentucky Horse Park on YouTube somewhere.

(And intriguingly, the Tempur-Pedic company is also doing a PC fundraising effort with a limited-edition teddy bear: their headquarters just happens to be in Lexington, Kentucky. BreyerFest attendees would much appreciate some comfy mattresses in a nap station in the Covered Arena, dontcha think?)