Brindles

I honestly wasn’t expecting the rather intense reaction to the latest Stablemates Club release Diesel – a Gambler’s Choice/Surprise on the G4 Reiner:

Guess that means I can cross off trying to complete the set – at a reasonable price! Ah well, it’s been a long time since my Stablemates collection was more or less complete, anyway. (Though I am thinking about remedying that situation somewhat next year.)

I’ll be happy with whatever one I end up with, but I think the Brindle is my favorite – it’s a rarely attempted color, especially on horses. The best known Breyer Brindles include the 1995 Boxer “Pug”, the Companion Series Great Dane, the 2008 Exclusive Event Bull Rodeo Drive, last year’s BreyerFest SR Le Taureau, and the Broken Horn Saddlery Bull “Charlie”:

We rarely see brindling attempted on horses, outside of Test and Auction pieces, like this year’s Man o’ War Lot:

(I liked him, but I could have done without that weird tail.)

And this lovely Smart Chic Olena from 2012:

http://www.identifyyourbreyer.com/BreyerFest/images/bf12smart.jpg

There’s probably a reason for that: Reeves is still trying to get “brindle” right, at least from a mass-production horse standpoint. It’s one thing to make a singular piece for auction, but it’s quite another to reproduce it consistently and well across several hundred or thousand pieces.

It’s been reserved largely for Nonhorse molds because aside from being a more commonly found pattern in dogs and cattle – and cats, if you count “tabby” as a type of brindling – collectors tend to be a bit more forgiving when it comes to paint jobs on Nonhorse molds.

If I am remembering right, I do believe the little Diesel is the first mass production attempt of a full-blown brindle paint job on a horse mold. Though in this case, it is only a Stablemate, and there will still only be a few hundred made, at best.

But it’s a start.