Paddy

My schedule just changed this afternoon, so I’ll just do a little something on the current Web SR Paddy, today. I’ve been told that Paddy was among the SRs in the leaked photos, but it must have been one of the ones I missed. So my comments here are a little more off the cuff than you might imagine.

I think he’s rather cute and clever: a Cleveland Bay in Hunter Clip, with shamrocks and clovers stenciled/clipped on his behind? I find it a rather pleasing compromise between the realistic, and deco. I like it - moreso than any other colors I’ve seen on this mold other than the original Bay, and the Gloss Dark Dapple Gray Limerick SR for BreyerFest in 2008. (Yeah, I was one of those weirdos that wasn't all that into the King Arthur raffle model last year. Nice, but no big whoop for me.)

Are people complaining about him? Of course they are. If my cursory skimming of the discussions about him last night are correct, it appears many hobbyists are only entering on the hope that they’ll win the "Pot O’ Gold" variation in buckskin. Because having a unique, one-of-a-kind model is just so the thing right now.

(If there’s any one topic in model horsedom that I have less interest in, it’s the whole Peter Stone factory custom, whatever-they’re-calling-it-now program. If it’s not production, or preproduction, it’s a custom. Which I find interesting only in "gauging what’s trendy in the hobby now" sort of way. And even then, not so much. But, I digress.)

This is only setting themselves up to be even more disappointment down the road, since there’s only one out of a lottery that has only 223 winners in the first place.

(BTW: I refuse to use the term OOAK. It looks like something my dog would type. And knowing the little snot the way I do, she so would.)

I am just glad he is not some shade of green. While I love the color green - it’s the color I use most often in my quilts, bar none - I’m rather particular with it when it comes to horses. I'm just not into it unless they go full Decorator with it, a la a "Jade", or do it as a Transculent.

Or it happens to be a honest-to-goodness Christmas Decorator. (Which would be moot, because I probably would fall over dead at the shock of finding of it in the first place.)

I only have one Cleveland Bay so far - the Limerick. I wouldn’t mind another - whatever color it happens to be.

Because It's My Job

I’ve given up fast food, carbonated drinks, candy bars, and quilting for Lent. I decided to forego giving up caffeine, because that would simply not be pleasant for anybody. I haven’t entirely given up sweets either, but if I want any, I have to make it or bake it.

Since I have little time for that kind of thing, it most likely ain’t gonna happen.

I finally opened my Dandy today - very nice! The paint job is beautiful, and the sticker is a spot-on reproduction of the original. Though I must point out that most Gloss finishes were discontinued before the "Big" Blue Ribbon sticker debuted ca. 1969.

I know, I know, they picked that style of sticker so they could print the name on it legibly. It’s sort of my job to be nitpicky, you know.

My other nitpick with it is the certificate - as far as I know, the Clydesdale mold debuted in 1958, not 1957. It’s true that the Poodle was technically "debuted" at the 1958 Toy Fair, but it was available from multiple retailers in 1957; I haven’t seen any evidence of the same situation for the Clydesdale.

If it wasn’t available for retail sale in 1957, it wasn’t "released" in 1957, period.

A picture of the Fall Dealer Special Esprit is finally making the rounds - and he’s Dunalino, not Palomino. He still appears to be Glossy, and an Appaloosa, and somewhat limited, so the alternating fits of hysteria and swooning continue unabated.

He is pretty spiffy, though I was secretly yearning for an airbrushed blanket with splash spots, instead of the masked one. Totally okay with it, either way.

(BTW, thanks for the tip, KD ~)

So let me get this straight: a Dunalino Appaloosa paint job on the Esprit is acceptable. The Fun Foals Chestnut Pintaloosa Standing Stock Horse Foal is acceptable. But a Silver Pintaloosa on the Weather Girl is a crime against nature?

(Does that mean desirability of an exotic paint job is inversely proportional to the anatomical correctness?)

I’ve never understood the hatred in some parts of the real (and model) horse world over the very existence of pintaloosas. I’m not a big fan of breeding for color, but if you just happen to get a lot of color on an pretty nice piece of horseflesh, all the better.

I never did get around to sending away for my Rainbow Weather Girl, even though I did manage to luck into the Black one fairly early on. If I happen to find one in the NPOD this year - matte or gloss - I won’t hesitate to pick it up. Because I’m certainly not going to pay the prices some sellers seem to think their "ugly, undesirable" Weather Girls are worth.

If its very presence pains you that much, slap a body price on it and let it go where it goes. That’s what I do with the stuff that annoys me. Just keep lowering the price until someone bites. Or sell it as a body. The end.

The Answers to Everything

Got a gander at the prices the Gloss Joeys on eBay are bringing - yeowch! I sure could use the money to get some work done on the car, but mine’s not going anywhere. I’ll just have to nickel-and-dime it, the way I usually do. (I’m giving up a whole bunch of stuff for Lent that should help, too. My finances, if not my attitude.)

I’ve decided to keep the Joey in the box for a while longer. I was cleaning up the office last night before going to bed, and noticed that the box liner/insert the model was attached to was coming undone.

Because it was put together using Scotch Tape, and not the industrial quality strong-enough-to-set-tile-with stuff they usually use. The boxes themselves were assembled in New Jersey!

The notion of a box-assembling party in the Reeves offices amuses me no end. (Was pizza involved?)

Another box came yesterday - the one with the Vintage Club Dandy. I haven’t had the chance to open it yet; as usual, I’m a little crushed for time. The shipping box is kind of interesting - a new take on the original Fighting Stallion shipper box - except that the UPS stickers obscure all the best parts.


I’m going to assume that this is going to be the standard shipper for the Vintage Club, and not worry about the condition of this one. I should have plenty of opportunities to get that one representative sample.

My Vintage Club membership number is … 42. The high holy number of the Internet, the answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything? Awesome.

(Yes, I do keep a towel in my car. Right next to the pantry.)

Henceforth, all my Vintage Club horses shall be named after Hitchhiker’s Guide characters. (I already have a Clydesdale named Dent. Coincidence? I think not!)

The extra little surprise that they gave us is a copy of the 1953 (not 1954!) Boxer flier, with a copy of the pastel rough on the opposite side. I already had copies of both (of course) and an original of the Boxer ad, from an early 1953 issue of Playthings magazine (February or March, I forget - whatever month Toy Fair was that year.) Mine has a list of the regional representatives on the bottom, and the ad for the Western Horses printed on the opposite side.

Did you see the disclaimer at the bottom?

"This archival copy and all images may not be reproduced, posted to the Internet, or used without the written permission of Reeves."

Dudes, that bridge has already been crossed. Not just by me, but by lots of hobbyists. I can’t speak for the actions or intents of other hobbyists, but I feel that most of what I do here would fall under the Fair Use Doctrine, as codified in the Copyright Act of 1976.

If anything, my use of the materials in question actually results in a net benefit to Reeves. (FYI: My opinion only. I have had a little bit of legal training, but I am not a legal professional.)

Joey in the Box

Who doesn’t love a box with their name on it? Especially when it’s a gift?


Here he is, mostly out of his box. (You’ll have to cut me some slack; I just opened the box a few minutes ago.)


According to the sticker on the outside of the shipping box, his release number is 712073; the number on the box itself is 1489, which is the release number for the Regular Run release of Joey, on the Man o’ War model.

Why the discrepancy? The box is (what I’m assuming will be) the standard one for the Regular Run release of the Joey, on Man o’ War. Unlike previous boxes, it’s not a generic box with stickers and labels added: everything is printed on it directly.

As I haven’t examined the packaging for any of this year’s new releases in detail, I don’t know if this is a new thing, or specific to this release. The past few years of BreyerFest releases weren’t generic either, so I’m going to assume that it’s a new thing.

If that’s the case, I hope it doesn’t spur a new trend towards box saving. I kind of like that the hobby has a more lax attitude about boxes than others do. It helped, I think, that prior to the early 1970s, there weren’t a whole lot of boxes worth saving. Horse/Rider sets, the licensed properties, and some of the illustrated shippers have some visual appeal, but the plain old corrugated shipper boxes everything else came in? Not so pretty on the shelf.

Plus, we show them. You can get away with showing MIB items in Collector’s Class entries, and maybe in halter, if you’re willing to push that envelope. Performance is out of the question, though, unless you’re other hobby is building ships in bottles.

I probably have a few more boxed items than the average hobbyist, mainly for research purposes. If I were more of a shower than a historian/collector, the vast majority of those items would be box-free, also.

I’m actually a little bit on the fence about deboxing my Gloss Joey completely. I do "need" one representative sample of this packaging, and I am unsure if I’ll be getting any other items this year that would come in the new standard packaging. And he’s not a mold and/or finish one normally shows much outside of collectibility anyway, so…

A Serious Hobbyist

I don’t know what’s been going on the past couple of days, but I am dead tired. I thought I was getting enough bedtime, my work schedule hasn’t been too crazy, and I haven’t felt sick otherwise. Every time I sit in my big comfy office chair, though, I’m out in 15 minutes.

I suspect it’s simply become a habit. An annoying, time-sucking one.

Another annoyance this week: I lost another pair of auctions for Breyer reference materials. It wasn’t a surprise, really. It’s becoming increasingly obvious that I’m being priced out of the online market. A scarce (but not unique) pricelist I needed - a two page, double-sided pricelist - went for more money this week than the 1960/1 Dealer’s Catalog I bought not that many years ago.

As I’ve said before, there are some things I need to research, and there’s no other way to do it other than having access to the original source materials. And if I want access, I have to buy them. It’s not like I can go to the nearest university library and review them at my leisure.

I’m having way too many issues with clarity, color drift, conservation issues, etc. to want to deal with copies anymore, except in the rare instances where the source may be unique, or nearly so. I’m also having a few issues with the prices some people want to charge for said copies. ($25 per page? Are you nuts?)

If nothing else, I consider myself a serious hobbyist, and a serious collector of Breyer ephemera. But has anyone else noticed a subtle shift in the usage of that term in the hobby, recently? It’s become the accepted euphemism for "someone willing to spend a lot of money for something."

As you might have guessed, I’m not real keen on that particular definition. I’ve written nearly 400 blog posts, several articles for JAH, self-published a book on restoration, and composed and printed nearly 20 annual issues of my Sampler. But I am of limited means, financially, so I guess that means I cannot be serious.

I have another euphemism to share with you about how I feel about that line of thinking: poppycock. (Pay particular attention not just to the definition, but the origin of the word. It would be NSFW, if it was not so polite, itself.)

If anything, I thought the opposite was true: serious folks, regardless of their calling, soldier on in spite of a lack of resources. Even though you get beaten, again and again, by people with superior resources (i.e. money).

I’ve met way too many people who come into a hobby (not just ours), throwing money left and right, who then leave a few years later, almost as suddenly as they arrived. Personally, I have a hard time finding those kinds of hobbyists truly serious, even if their money is.

I keep hoping that the market will eventually get saturated enough that everyone willing to buy in at that price point, but it quite obviously hasn't happened yet. I’m fearful that it’s only going to get worse, when Reeves starts sending out those "copies from the archives" they’ve promised as extras to Vintage Club members.

Which I should be happy about, because that means more people are interested in what I am interested in, and who doesn't love that kind of vindication?

I suppose I’ll have to soldier on, as I have been.

Speaking of soldiers, is that the box for my Glossy War Horse, sitting in the foyer? Squee!

White Jumping Horses

For your viewing pleasure, pictures of the White Jumping Horses mentioned in the previous post. First, the QVC SR Gem Twist, in a semi-chalky finish:


He’s not super common; one of the many QVC Special Runs that flew under the radar, due to a lack of promotional support. He was one of those weird reissues - like the San Domingo "Traveler" - where they put the paint job distinctive of the original release on a completely different mold.

It’s an interesting, and a not unappealing idea. Five-Gaiter Sorrel on a Clock Saddlebred? Yellow Mount on the modified Stock Horse Stallion? The old Leopard pattern from the POA, on a Bouncer? I would buy most of these.

I suspect others would, too. Especially the Sorrel on the Clock Saddlebred; I think he’d look great in that color. (Semi-gloss - with eyewhites, of course!)

Here’s the Jumping Horse that I found in the Bentley Sales dump bins at Model Horse Congress, back in the Dark Ages. He originally came with a factory unpainted jump, which I still have; when I do display him, I usually put him on one of my spare painted jumps, for a dressier look.


I’d actually classify him as a borderline Test Color/Cull, since he doesn’t have a lot detail on him, outside of his head, and there’s a little roughness to his body texture that suggests he may have spent some time in a cull bin. I still think he’s pretty darn cool, regardless. He was one of my earliest Tests/Culls, so I have a lot of sentimental attachment to him.

Most of my Jumping Horses are not out for display right now, because like a few other molds that shall remain nameless, he takes up way too much shelf space. I used to have a substantial number of variations of the Bay - whose sock variations verge on the countless - until I realized that I’d never be able to display them in a way that would do them justice.

I still have more than an average collector should have, though. Just not as many as I used to.

I’m taking it as a very, very bad sign that I have already given the Best of British Contest Prize Horse a name, in the exceedingly rare possibility that I might win one. It’s based on one of the ideas I’m thinking about for my entry, so of course I can’t tell you what this cool name is.

This idea I’m mulling over at the moment will likely go over the heads of the judges, again; I have a bad habit of being a little too clever for my own good. I sure wish I could figure out what the judging criteria for that contest is, because some people seem to have figured it out.

And regarding the Costume Contests, I think I need to remind some of newer or more casual readers that I was Princess Beatrice last year. I could potentially use it - with a little modification - for either contest, but using it for both might be tacky. I do have another idea for the Poppycock Parade that might be worth pursuing (funny + only slightly inappropriate) but I might not be able to fit the components in the vehicle, on top of all the other things I usually bring along.

Argh! It’s way too early for me to be spending this much brainpower on anything for BreyerFest!

Little Miss Dressup

I was in a really strange place yesterday, during and after work. I felt almost euphoric. I didn’t have any reason to be, other than at the prospect of finally getting more than a few hours of uninterrupted sleep. It was more likely from the lack of sleep itself, and the sugar buzz I got eating half a bag of dried pineapple for breakfast (Hey, I was running late, and it was the best available option in my car’s pantry. Yes, my car has a pantry.)

So they released a couple more pics of BreyerFest SRs - a Bay Semi-Leopard Cantering Welsh Pony as a British Spotted Pony, and a Fleabitten Dappled Gray Jumping Horse, as the Best of British Contest Prize. Neither one of these pics were a part of the leaked batch, so they were both a surprise to me, too.

http://www.breyerhorses.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=1955

Well, I was expecting a CWP, and a British Spotted Pony; wasn’t expecting them to be the same model. Kinda cute; don’t know if I want her yet, but I won’t rule her out, either. The only thing that worries me about it is what it means about a potential Bouncer SR: now it seems more likely to be a raffle model, or a live show prize (the Brookside Pink Magnum, in gloss.)

That would be scary. Hobbyists haven’t exactly been rational on the topic of Bouncer, lately.

I am not extremely excited by the Contest Prize Horse. It’s not that I don’t like the model or the color, or the combination thereof: it’s that I already have two - a QVC SR Gem Twist, and a Test Color Alabaster Jumping Horse, from the mid-1980s (another Bentley Sales Dump Bin Find, at Model Horse Congress.) So it’s not like I really NEED another.

I’m still entering the contest, regardless of the quality of the prize. It’s about the competition, man! I’m sure he’ll be beautiful in person - I’m imagining a paint job something like the FEI World Cup Strapless from 2007. Loved it.

I need to start brainstorming some ideas, though. I’m trying to not be like everyone else and go with something Beatle, Dr. Who, Harry Potter, or Royal-related. (Or, heaven forbid, Austin Powers. There’s something about Mike Myers that makes me want to hit things with a hammer.)

As far as the Costuming contest goes, I fear we might be seeing much of the same. We’re not as imaginative (or knowledgeable) a group of people as we think we are. (Just how many "Maid Mare-ians" are we going to see? Or boyfriends/husbands dressed as James Bond?)

All the ideas I have so far are potentially illegal, possibly immoral, or dreadfully obscure. I think, for instance, a Professor Quatermass costume - complete with a giant stuffed grasshopper tucked under my arm - would be brills, but everyone else? Would be clueless.

Neil Gaiman? Incredibly easy: black jeans, black leather jacket, black Lou Reed tee, sunglasses. Not sure anyone except a few of my friends would get the reference.

The Avengers? Benny Hill? Dame Edna? Gordon Ramsay? Ada Lovelace? Space:1999? See where I’m going here? I am not lacking ideas - just ideas that might be recognizable to more than a half-dozen people.

I could just go the easy route, and reuse last year’s costume, but I think I might be reusing part of it for the Fascinator contest. The same concept, for both costume contests? Seems a bit tacky, to me. On the plus side, it’ll save me time and money.