The Latest in Walking Black Angus Bulls

Well, so much for trying to inventory all my bodies. 

First I found the giant hoard of Family Arabian Mare experiments, then the stash of Little Bits/Paddock Pals I planned on making into a carousel at some point. Then there were the Mini Whinnies and Stablemates I keep in my tabouret for potential diorama projects, and not to mention several actual unfinished diorama projects. 

There are seven more-or-less active Traditional or Classics-scale customs (including 3 FAMs and 2 Mestenos). I also (inexplicably) happened to buy another box lot of bodies over the weekend because why the heck not at this point, right?

And then, finally, I got to the actual body box! That’s when I decided to go into my basement and get some sewing done, instead. (I did work a little bit on the Mesteno yesterday, though. Looking good!)

Here’s some Breyer History content, while you’re here. My latest #72 Walking Black Angus Bull, another BreyerFest purchase:

For something that came in solid black for almost two decades, this model came in what seems like a billion different variations. There are three well-known coat versions: “Poodle Cut”, “Semi-Rough Coat” and “Full Rough Coat”. There are at least three different halter colors: Red, Brown, and Gold. (I have one with what appears to be a “Copper” halter, but I don’t know if that was intentional, or just a weird discoloration of the Gold.)

There’s also a multitude of eye detailing: eyeliner, eyepinking, the standard two-stroke eyewhites, and the underpainted eyewhites that were a thing in the later 1960s. He came in Gloss and Matte, and a transitional finish somewhere in-between that most collectors classify as Matte but could honestly go either way.

There’s nothing especially special about this variation of the Bull, except to note (quite obviously) that he’s one of those early transitional Mattes. I’m not quite sure how many of these Bulls I have at this point…

(Runs upstairs to check. Five, not counting the Hereford ones?)

…but I didn’t have this variation. I had a hard time finding good quality vintage pieces at BreyerFest this year, and for some reason this guy struck my fancy. The “Poodle Cut” variations may be the most desirable, but I’ve always fancied the “Full Rough Coat” best: I love how those rows and rows of marcelled curls feel in my hand. 

Considering how popular the Bull molds are – and how overused some of them are getting (mumble mumble BreyerFest SRs on the Spanish Fighting Bull mumble mumble) – I am kind of surprised we haven’t seen much of this guy since he was discontinued in 1977. 

I am assuming that aside from his rough texture and lack of viable color options, him being small, old and a little dated doesn’t help, either. 

Little Boxes

My sales were rather excellent this week, so today’s post is going to be more pictures than words. (I’ve got about a half dozen packages to get wrapped up and out of here by tomorrow.) Don’t fret, I’ve got some nice, meaty posts in the pipeline.

Much fuss was made recently concerning the petite size of the Giselle Melange’s shipping box. Fortunately, there did not seem to be any issues with damages above and beyond the usual amount of spoilage, aside from the mental duress experienced by collectors world wide upon seeing those boxes for the first time.

This isn’t the first time that Breyer has used boxes that seemed, shall we say, snug. Take a look at my most recent acquisition, an upgrade of my #72 Semi-rough cut Walking Polled Angus Bull, mint in his original illustrated shipper box:


I had been hoping to upgrade my Semi-rough cut for quite some time, but I wasn’t expecting one quite that grand. (An illustrated shipper? Awesome!) He’s so minty-mint, the wrapping tissue is still intact:


In case the snugness of the fit doesn’t boggle your mind, here’s the box in comparison to a Family Arabian Mare. No special reason for the selection of a FAM, other than her ubiquity:


It’s teeny-tiny! (Yeah, yeah, she’s a Sorrel FAM. She’s part of the office herd.)

I already knew how small the mold is (he’s only slightly larger than Classic scale, more or less) but it still blew my mind to see how comfortably the whole package fit into a standard 12 x 12 x 8 Priority Mail box.

The only damage incurred in his 50-year trip through time and space? A pair of very slight eartip rubs.

Angus Black and Angus Red

Is today Friday or Saturday? I’ve lost track. It was another rougher than expected week; I didn’t make it home from work one night. (Chocolate cupcakes were involved. That’s all I’m saying.)

When I’ve had a few moments to think this week, I’ve been thinking about, of all things, the Standing Black Angus Bull.

Nobody thinks much about the #365 Standing Black Angus Bull. That’s because there’s not much to think about. He was introduced in 1978, as an updated and more to-scale replacement for the Walking Angus Bull, and discontinued with most of the "Farm Friends" molds in 2004. He came in basic solid Black, without much (if any) shading. Some have glossed eyes, and for a few months in 1997, he came with bi-eyes.

And that’s about all there is to know.

I do have one in my collection, but only by accident. A few years ago on eBay I bought a large lot of Breyer non-equines that included, as its main attractions, a SR Hampshire Hog and a Polled Holstein Cow and Calf set. A Black Standing Angus Bull just happened to come with. Even though I didn’t have one in my collection at the time, he was initially slated to go to the saleslist with some of the duplicates in the lot.

I decided to give him a reprieve. I still had a bit of room to work with back then, and I figured, what the heck? He had fallen into good company, so he must have had some merit I hadn’t noticed yet. No harm in keeping him around.

There was a little bit of sympathy in the decision, too. While he’s not a part of the display collection at the moment, I always manage to shoot a bit of positive mojo his way whenever I run across him in the storage collection. I totally understand the whole "not being noticed" thing, buddy; you’ll get your moment in the sun someday. (Like me, I hope.)

In contrast, his one SR counterpart, the Red Angus Bull (aka "The Big Red One") has enough history, complications and attention to spare. He was an early SR in an era when we didn’t have a lot to choose from (something that would change very, very quickly in the early 1980s) and a non-horse SR? Now that was something!


There were about 1000 models made, in four batches: 100 of the first batch, 200 of the second, 300 of the third, and presumably 400 of the fourth. The first batch of 100 is easy to distinguish from the rest, as they came with pinkish noses: the subsequent releases did not.

Later releases can be distinguished from each other by their hand-numbering: each batch had a slightly different numbering system. The first batch was over 100 (i.e. "23/100") the second over 200 ("145/200"), the third batch over 300 ("223/300"); the fourth batch didn’t indicate a batch quantity number ("278.")

Mine’s from the second batch: I’m not feeling up to photographing the numbering between his front legs to show you, so I’ll just scan the certificate he came with instead:


I still have the box he came in, too: just an ordinary illustrated shipper for the #365. The box is as I received it, save for the tape being yellowed and all that; all I did was slit the box open, pulled the bull out, and tossed the box in my closet, like a good little history nerd. The handwriting is original, and not my own.


I'm not normally a big fan of his "dead red" coloring, but it looks good on him. Breyer thought so too, and followed up a short time later with another SR Bull release - the Shorthorn Bull, on the Charolais mold.

I have one of those too, sorta. It's another long story.

Walking Black Angus Bull

Still being a bit lazy; I’m trying to finish at least one of my big sewing projects by the end of the week, and while I am a good multitasker in general, I am not quite good enough to sew and type at the same time.

I just happened to still have one of my Walking Black Angus Bulls on my desk, leftover from the Boehm posts: I think I’ll talk about him today.

The Walking Black Angus Bull is supposedly based on the Boehm Black Angus Bull, though the resemblance is the weakest among the four known Boehm copies: the original was standing, not walking, and didn’t have a halter. There are other differences, too - enough to make me think that there might have been an intermediate step in the mold’s translation to plastic.

He was a relatively late addition to Breyer’s lineup compared to the other Boehm molds - either in 1959 or 1960, at least three years after the Brahma and the Horned Hereford Bull were introduced. Coincidentally, this just so happened to be around the time that Breyer was having legal troubles with Hagen-Renaker concerning the Old Mold Arabians: could it be that Breyer, spooked by the lawsuit, made some pre-emptive changes to the Angus Bull mold?

There just so happens to be rumors of a Standing variation of the Walking Black Angus Bull, originating in Marney Walerius’s book Breyer Models. On page 23 of this now collectible reference book, it’s listed as a separate version of the #72 mold, released in 1957 and 1958.

No such models have turned up anywhere, however, and I rather doubt they will.

Why do I think that? Well, a lot of Marney’s research was based not on physical documentation, but on memories, hearsay and rumors that she picked up in her many trips to the Chicago factory. But memories, hearsay and rumors are unreliable things, and have a nasty habit of changing over time.

I think there is a kernel of truth in there somewhere. Marney was right more often than she was wrong: it’s just taken us years of research and documentation to sift the truth out of the debris. In the case of the Black Angus, we still don’t have enough objective, independent data to distinguish one from the other yet.

Did she confuse the Boehm Angus with the Breyer Angus? Did Breyer create the mold in a standing position originally, and change it prior to production? I don’t know.

Even after he was released, Breyer continued to tinker with the mold. There are three known "states" to the mold: "poodle cut," "semi-rough," and "full rough." It is generally believed that the "poodle cut" version is the rarest, but the "semi-rough" is not easy to find either, probably because it looks similar enough to the "full rough" on first glance that it gets overlooked. It’s only when you put them side to side that you can really see the difference.

A lot of early Breyer molds had significant mold alterations made early on, with the Clydesdale Stallion’s shoulder being the best known of these changes. The reasons for most of these mold changes - including the Walking Black Angus - is unknown.

Not Just About Horses

Normally I'm not given to obsessing over particular test colors, because the odds of me owning any one of them are pretty close to zero. Oh, there are a few on my list – the seal bay Peruvian with speckled stockings (in a BreyerFest auction, a few years back), the Dapple Gray Traditional Man o' War, Marney's Transparent Belgian – but I've tried to keep the list short, because there really are better things to daydream about.

But I think I'm in love with the Walking Black Angus Bull from last Thursday. The one in blue roan. He's going on the list.

It's been a really, really long time since we've even seen the Walking Black Angus Bull in production: 1977, to be precise. There's a possibility that he was rereleased in the 1980s, but I'm not sure if these models were part of an actual production run or simply factory leftovers. (I'll discuss that more fully whenever I finally get around to the Breyer Weathervanes.) It's been a long time, either way, and I'm glad that Reeves may be considering his return.

I know most collectors focus on just the horses – sometimes even to the exclusion of the accessories the horse may come with – but back in the 1950s, Breyer apparently had a broader vision of their line. They weren't "just about horses" back then: by 1953, they adopted the name "Breyer Animal Creations" for their toy line, and in a 1954 Directory of Toy Manufacturers published by Playthings Magazine, they list its main products as “Plastic horses and dogs.” (The 1953 listing only mentions “Money manager banks,” an odd discrepancy.)

As late as 1958, the non-horse molds outnumbered the horses: there were seven different horse molds listed, but eight non-horse! On the horse side, we had the Arabian Mare, Arabian Foal, Western Horse, Western Pony, Fury-Prancer, Racehorse, and Clydesdale. On the non-horse side, there was the Brahma Bull, Walking Horned Hereford, Boxer, Lassie, Rin Tin Tin, Poodle, Elephant, and Donkey. There's more if you'd consider the Rigid Riders, but classifying them as non-horse molds is just weird. I don't count the Small Poodle, since it was not officially released back then.

You might notice that the Walking Black Angus was not on the list. We're not 100% sure of the Walking Black Angus's release date; he's another one of those models that was released somewhere in that undocumented gap between 1958 and 1963. The 1960 you see is just an educated guess.

Horses didn't start to dominate until the early 1960s, but even then, Breyer was still releasing a fair number of new non-horse molds: Bear, Bear Cub, Deer Family, Bassett Hound, Kitten, Elk, Buffalo, Moose, and the Standing Polled Hereford Bull were all introduced in the 1960s. The 1970s saw a significant number of new non-horse molds, too: Cow, Calf, Spanish Fighting Bull, Pronghorn, Bighorn Ram, St. Bernard, Jasper, Brighty, Rocky Mountain Goat, Charolais Bull, Benji, Tiffany and the Standing Black Angus Bull.

So throughout much of Breyer's early history, the non-horse molds made up a significant percentage of their mold base. Far higher than they do today, even if the Companion Animals are factored in. (I haven't done the exact calculations, sorry!)

The only problem with the non-horse molds is that for many of them, there's a rather limited number of colors to choose from. And most of those are brown. What they lack in versatility they tend to make up with longevity. An excellent example is the #74 Standing Polled Hereford Bull: he had an insanely long production run, from 1968 through 2004 - that's 36 years! They're not huge sellers, but they're steady ones, often purchased by noncollectors as home accents.

I know there has been some grumbling about “The Widow Maker's” non-equine nature, but I think it's high time that one of the many non-horse molds that helped build Breyer is finally being honored with a Connoisseur release.