Toy Fair 2020

I have a not-inconsequential headache today (trying to kick my caffeine habit again, ahead of Lent. Not going well!) So just a little bit here about Toy Fair 2020. Reeves’s big product push for Toy Fair is…

… Mane Beauty Style Heads. This is basically the equine variation of the Barbie Styling Heads that some of us were subjected to as children when our requests for Breyer Horses (and only Breyer Horses!) were met with skeptical eyebrows. Here’s part of the formal press release:

The Breyer Mane Beauty Styling Heads are sculpted and decorated with long, no-tangle manes. Each comes with a styling booklet; a mane comb; and mane clips, spirals, and elastics for hairstyling possibilities. The heads are available in three styles: Blaze (black mane), Daybreak (white mane), and Sunset (blonde mane). The styling heads will be available this July. 

Press Release

Toy Fair web site page, with various links

I could easily have seen my nine-year-old self getting a Styling Head for Christmas, especially since Mom was kind of obsessed with styling my hair back then and clearly wanted me to follow suit. (Some of my grammar school “picture day” pictures are memorable for all the wrong reasons!)

While it certainly wasn’t exactly what I would have wanted, I would not have been completely displeased with it, either. Even today I’m pretty terrible at braiding and weaving, so I this product definitely would have reduced the amount of yelling involved when I was trying to teach myself basketweaving a few years ago, or this past week when I was trying to teach myself how to braid rope.

(Also not going well, but managing.)

The 70th Anniversary products do get a shoutout in the press release:

Breyer’s 70th Anniversary Assortment features five hand-decorated models, each commemorating a different decade. The models feature an anniversary logo and come in special packaging. There is also a limited-edition, rare chase figure in the collection. These figures are available now at specialty toy stores.

You can spot the Gambler’s Choice collection display in photos of their booth at Toy Fair on Twitter, too. But the focus is clearly on the Styling Heads, rather than the figurines we fret and obsess about.

If hobbyists have an issue with this (I don’t, but I’ve met my share who have), it might be worth revisiting how Reeves now defines Breyer itself: not as just a model horse manufacturer, but as a brand. Also from the press release:

Breyer, celebrating its 70th anniversary in 2020, is the world’s leading brand of horse-inspired toys, gifts, collectibles and live events.

This is part of their long-term strategy to reshape themselves into a lifestyle brand. It has been for me, for at least the past (yeesh!) forty-something years, so you know I’m okay with that. In fact, I’ve kind of been wondering why it’s taken them this long, but whatever…

The Web Site Remodel

I haven’t been online enough to judge the Breyer Horses web site redesign (too much offline nonsense to deal with at the moment. Life, man.) I pretty much just reactivated my account per their e-mail instructions, and did a little bit of poking around to make sure they didn’t hide any Super-Secret-Special-Runs anywhere.

I do like it visually – it’s a much cleaner, cohesive and professional-looking design, to say the least. The previous site design gave off a “generic toy company” vibe, while this design is more “slightly upscale aspirational equestrian lifestyle brand”.

Which makes sense, since they recently changed their company slogan from the almost meaningless “Let Your Imagination Play” to “A Horse Of My Very Own”. Their mission statement, under the Discover Breyer tab on the index page:

Ever since our first model horse was created in 1950, Breyer has been committed to making the World’s Finest Model Horses. Fans believe that when they hold a Breyer horse in their hands, it’s like entering the world of real horses.   

Our goal is build on the historical legacy of the brand, and bring the inspiration of horses to as many people as possible. As we do this, every expression of the brand, across our products, content, and experiences, is a touchpoint that connects us to that inspiration. 

That’s what I’ve been saying for years; I think I’ve expressed some variations of these sentiments on previous BreyerFest Volunteer Applications, because (duh) that’s what I sincerely believe.

(Though I prefer to think that the new-ish people in charge did their homework and came up with the concept independently, and that I was but one voice of many.)

I don’t have a place for the living-breathing kind of horses in my life – and likely never will – and Breyer Horses are the closest equivalent. Better in some ways, since I don’t have to worry about additional expenses (vet bills, boarding) and, if need be, I can walk away from them for a while and not have to worry about their physical or emotional upkeep.

(Leaving Vita alone for half the day is terrifying enough!)

Whether the site is easier to use or navigate I haven’t really had a chance to determine yet. I suspect there are some bugs that still need to be worked out; there always are.

In The Background

I found this at the local Salvation Army yesterday, on my way home from work:

I received this exact kit for Christmas way back when. I remember because I made a few “improvements” to the rather sorry design of the horse, making him look a bit more like the Family Arabian Stallion. I could do that because I had lots of leftover yarn from other latch hook kits I had received as gifts.

I got a lot of latch hook kits as a kid.

For the holidays, I’d hand all the relatives heavily annotated Breyer catalogs, but that rarely resulted in actual Breyer horses. Oh, they’d catch the hint about horses, but since I was the “artistic” kid, that meant… horse-themed craft kits.

Let’s face it: the horse world is confusing to people on the outside, whether it’s in “real-life” or in model-horse form. Unless you had another horse-crazy relative who understood, most of them figured it was Mom and Dad’s job to sort the Breyer stuff out. It was just easier to get you that craft kit they found at Kmart.

There was also never a reason for your other relatives to learn the ins-and-outs of the Breyer world, either: in spite of – or maybe even as a consequence of – being nearly ubiquitous, Breyers were always considered part of the background, much like the Japan clinkies you can just see on the box of this latch hook kit.

Breyer has never achieved the same cultural status or significance of Barbie, or Hot Wheels, or Legos. (Remember Jessie’s song from Toy Story 2? With the model horses that weren’t Breyer-shaped but were clearly meant to be Breyers? So close, yet so far... ) They never really achieved “fad” status, either, outside of the early successes of the Western Horse and the Davy Crockett set.

In fact, it was their relative lack of licensing success that probably saved them. Hartland found themselves scrambling in the 1960s as television Westerns faded from popularity, but Breyer continued to do what it had been doing all along: providing generic, license-free figurines for horse-crazy set.

Even that wouldn’t have been enough to carry them through: Breyer considered ditching the whole “Breyer Animal Creations” line in the late 1960s, but rumblings from the nascent hobby community persuaded them elsewise.

Through the 1970s, Breyers still had a solid, though peripheral, place in the toy industry, in spite of their best efforts to break through. In publishing terms, they were midlist items: they sold consistently, sometimes well, but they were never the bestsellers the industry or the country would talk about.

One of the numerous reasons why Breyer was sold to Reeves International back in the early 1980s was because of this issue: they wanted to develop the brand to achieve a bigger and more public presence in the toy and collectible market.

One of the ways to achieve that was to create Breyer merchandise that was not strictly models. We are not talking just about accessories like tack, props and stables, but “fun” and more ephemeral things. Breyer did have some products along those lines in the 1970s and early 1980s, like the Puffy Fun Stickers and the Coloring and Activity books:

http://www.identifyyourbreyer.com/images/8100.JPG

And in more recent years we’ve seen a lot more of these types of items both on the web site, and at BreyerFest: pajama pants, tote bags, notebooks and license plate frames, anyone?

But there was never been a coherent or coordinated plan to it all.

This is why I’ve been sort of puzzled by the negative reactions to the hiring of the two DreamWorks executives, and to some of the products they’ve “soft launched” on the web site. I am especially fond of this fabulous tote bag:

http://www.breyerhorses.com/vintage-breyer-tote

This kind of branding is nothing new: it has been a goal for a very long time. All they’ve done now is hire professionals they’ve worked with before, with real-world expertise.

Ironic t-shirts at Hot Topic? Breyer-themed pillows and comforters at Target? A “Stablemates” cartoon? Latch-hook kits with a more faithful rendition of the Family Arabian Stallion?

Those are the kinds of things I think we will be seeing in the near future, as they try to develop Breyer into a brand that doesn’t just acquire licenses, but becomes a license worth acquiring by others.

In effect, they’re trying to create non-horse Breyer things a younger me would have appreciated as gifts from well-meaning friends and relatives, in addition to the horses themselves.

In short, the horses themselves are not going anywhere: they are the core of the brand. We are just getting more Breyer-branded stuff.