Showing posts with label Wind Dancers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Wind Dancers. Show all posts

Monday, April 27, 2015

Wind Dancer Knockoff

These Dollar Tree Breyer knockoffs aren’t new - they’ve been around long enough that gently worn examples are turning up in the "dollar a bag" toy bins at my local thrift stores:


If you’re having a hard time placing the face, it’s a knockoff of the Breyer Wind Dancer Sirocco, but with hard plastic wings and white nylon hair:

https://www.breyerhorses.com/sirocco

Some hobbyists have been buying them for the not-bad set of wings they come with; they’re not accurate anatomically, but for a dollar? They have potential. 

I haven’t added any real Wind Dancer items to my collection yet, other than one of the adorable little plushes they were selling super cheap at BreyerFest a few years ago. I do plan on doing so in the future: the sculpts are really nice for something specifically targeted to the younger and/or more fancifully-inclined set. With a little customizing, they'd make very passable "real" equines.

One big plus is that there are a mere seven molds, each having just a handful of releases since their introduction in 2005-2006, some of them Reissues. The only Special Runs that come to mind were the ones made for Walmart in 2005. If I wanted to assemble a complete Wind Dancer collection, it wouldn’t be too hard or too expensive.

A few pieces are harder to get - the Glow-in-the-Dark "Firefly" Foals sell for retail or better, and the still-current purple "Kona" seems to be perpetually sold out in whatever store I happen to be in.

The Scented mare and foal sets sold in 2007-2008 don’t seem to be very common, either, but I can understand the buying public’s hesitation there: intentionally scented toys don’t age well. I’m a little leery of them, too: I prefer the original "New Horse Smell"!

What the Wind Dancer line lacks in releases it makes up in related merchandise: books, accessories, activity kits, and the plushes mentioned above. There’s a lot of it, and I’m a little embarrassed to say that I haven’t kept up to date on all that.

Wind Dancers may be recent history now, but they won't stay that way forever.