A Tale of Two Ruffian Variations

Might as well discuss these two before they get lost in the shuffle of everything else that’s been coming and going:

You know how you’ll sometimes look at a Regular Run model and tell yourself “If only I could find just the right one…”

This is the story of how I ended up with not one, but two Palomino Classics Ruffians.

The last time I was at Tuesday Morning, pondering those Semi-Gloss Stablemates and the Squishie Classic Haflinger, I also spent a little time looking over a couple of the Classic Palomino Ruffians – aka the #932 Thoroughbred Cross, just discontinued late last year.

I liked the concept of a Palomino Classic Ruffian, but none of the ones I had come across really appealed to me. The ones at Tuesday Morning were very nice; additionally, the packaging was slightly different than the standard Classics packaging, and the assortment consisted of recently discontinued items from very late in their production run – possibly the last pieces produced in their respective runs, making them another possible de facto Special Run.

But like the Haflinger and Stablemates, I left them behind.

Then I found that slightly pearly Palomino one on eBay a few weeks ago, with the unmasked mane and oversprayed tail, and no eyewhites. I was in love.

Because I happened to be in the area and I needed to buy some storage boxes for some of my ephemera anyway, I went back to that Tuesday Morning and bought one of those, too. Obviously they needed each other, and I felt I could justify it because unlike her Traditional-scale sister, the Classics Ruffian takes up hardly any room at all on the shelf.

This is where my lack of attention to the recent Classics releases has come to bite me in the behind. Is my pretty, pearly Ruffian a variation, an oddity, or something else? Her VIN number says she was produced in early 2014, but all the photos of her in the ephemera, and online show masking right from the start.

I have similar questions about the Tuesday Morning Ruffian (whose VIN number indicates a September 2017 production date). Is she different from the bulk of the run, or am I just imagining it?

I fear this may lead to me buying more Palomino Ruffians.

Sometimes oddballs and variations just happen, for no rhyme or reason. Fretting over their origins sometimes gets in the way of appreciating them in the first place.

Squishies

Had a close call earlier this week; I had to make a quick pit stop after work (bran muffin-induced emergency) and found myself in a Tuesday Morning – and ooh, they had some mighty fine high-semigloss Stablemates Mystery Foal Set variations!

They were quite tempting, especially since my attempts last week to track down the Walmart Specials – not to buy, necessarily, but just to see “in the wild” – met with abject failure. Every store I happened to find myself in during my work travels either looked liked it hadn’t been reset yet, or had already been plundered for all the gold. It was nice to see a store with actual models on the shelf, for a change.

Fortunately I managed to escape the Tuesday Morning unscathed, but tomorrow is payday and I’ll be in the same part of town….

…and they had an intriguing Classic Haflinger Mare that is bothering me even more than those lovely little Stablemates. She was seriously squished, kind of like my Woodgrain Boxer here:

He’s normal looking from the side, in case you were wondering:

The Haflinger’s side profile was also distorted – that’s how I noticed she was a little peculiar in the first place – so an even better example would have been one of the later Stablemates G1 Quarter Horse Mares with the twisted barrels. But I am in no mood to go digging through my Stablemates tonight.

I’m fairly sure it was a factory-originated flaw and not one that occurred in shipping, because her shading was exquisite – either someone at the factory took it upon themselves to make up for her other deficiencies, or her more dramatic contours enhanced her paint job naturally.

The Haflinger was obviously a one-off, possibly caused by a handling or machine error while the mold halves were still warm and freshly molded. More uniform examples like the Boxer might be – like Bloaties – a result of climate/temperature changes, issues with the mold itself, or a problem in the assembly process.

(The narrowness of more recent molds – like Duende, or the Imperador das Aguas – is most likely an issue with the metal molds themselves, I think.)

Although not as common – or beloved – as Bloaties, this molding flaw occurs with enough frequency that I feel like I need to coin a name for the afflicted. Collapsers? Squishies? Skinnies?

I kind of like Squishies, at the moment.

Special Runs and Rarities at Tuesday Morning

I finally got to see both Garrett and Santana “in the wild” – and I liked the Santana more than I thought I would, but not quite enough to pull out the wallet.

I was more tempted by the “New Beginnings” Appaloosa Classics Set, but I think I can wait on that: it has a 700 series Special Run number, which means it’s probably not a TSC exclusive and will be a little easier to acquire down the road, if need be.

I did a lot of travel for work this week, so I managed to hit a couple of Tuesday Mornings, too. I bought the Pony Pouches, but I managed to resist the Smokin Doubledutch. I didn’t see any of the AQHA Horses, though if the weather is less-than-ideal for flea marketing on Sunday, I might head back to see if I can snag one of those Black ones that have reportedly been turning up in their next sale assortment. Especially if they’re only $19.99!

(The promo pic is from their sales flier on their web site at http://www.tuesdaymorning.com/)

This is not the first time that Reeves has unloaded scarce items at Tuesday Morning: some of the 2001 BreyerFest SR Classic Racehorse sets – the one that included a Palomino Kelso, Buckskin Man o’ War, and the Fleabitten/Roan Silky Sullivan – turned up there. As did the Toys R Us Special Run Pacer “Horse of a Different Color” and Five-Gaiter “Valiant”.

They made a ton of the Racehorse set, and they had a ton of them left when that BreyerFest was over. There were so many, in fact, that the rumor that most of them ended up as regrind became accepted knowledge – that I dismissed once I saw the sets at one of my local TMs. The Toys R Us SRs ended up there presumably due to some sort of contractual dispute.
 
Although they weren’t necessarily made specifically for them, the circumstances of their distribution makes these sets – and now presumably, the Black AQHA horses – de facto Tuesday Morning Special Runs.

Actually, I sort of figured that this was how the AQHA scenario was going to play out. Since the Black pieces didn’t come out until the end of the year, when most retailers still had a bunch of Bays and Chestnuts on their shelves, a big chunk of the stock containing the Black pieces never escaped the warehouse.

That doesn’t necessarily mean that the market is now going to be saturated with them; the aftermarket prices will drop somewhat as completists fill that gaping hole in their AQHA lineups, but the Black will still be the rarest of the six official retail releases of that run (excluding the Gloss online promotional pieces, of course!)

What it does mean is that the AQHA pieces in the assortments dropping next week will likely have a higher percentage of Blacks than the full-price retailers did, and shoppers will have a slightly better chance to acquire one than they did before.

Which is also why I’m seriously mulling over a return visit on Sunday.