Fandango and Stuff

The weather’s getting cold and the Seasonal Affective Disorder is starting to kick in, so it’s another random, hodge-podge kind of day.

With the end of the year approaching, we’re going to get hit with a ton of news about next year’s everything; I’m not overly concerned about BreyerFest, but I am kind of curious if there’s an Exclusive Event in the works, since that might affect my travel plans for next year. (Especially since BreyerWest is a no-go.)

Incidentally, it’s unlikely I’ll be traveling for pleasure from now until the end of the year, model horse related or otherwise. I mean, I essentially drove the circumference of Wyoming, I think I can relax. 

Speaking of that, I am contemplating dedicating the month of November to writing the very first draft of the travel memoir, NaNoWriMo style. If I can get some of the craft projects I’m working on to a better place, which is not entirely certain.

I saw the price that Sorceror’s Apprentice went for on eBay – yikes! Especially since they were going for about $400 not all that long ago. I wonder if the fact that this mold hasn’t been translated into plastic like Avalon (Paddock Pal) and Prince Charming (Stablemate) is having any bearing on the prices, or is it just another example of the secondary market being straight-up insane?

The two customs I gave a quick coat of primer to the other day are now looking less terrible, though I think I am at a point with both of them where may stop fiddling with them and just wrap them up and move onto the next ones. My inability to “let go” has probably been the biggest impediment to finishing, aside from my anxiety about painting.

I have no preference on the Virkie; I haven’t gotten a Splash on any of these Gambler’s Choice models, so maybe that one?  

I am a little annoyed with myself for not holding out that extra day on ordering my Thunderbird, though. I already “ordered” the Fandango, since the shipping was free:

Like the Paddock Pals thing, I am having a little bit of a hard time mentally reconciling the existence of a previous Fandango – a 2004 BreyerFest Live Show Prize Moody Andalusian in Matte Dun – with the new one. Then again, the likelihood of me ever acquiring the first Fandango is laughably small. 

Oh, The Purpleness....

A few years back there was a Clydesdale Stallion Unicorn silhouette included either on a box or some holiday-themed fabric, and I remember thinking: that’s so crazy, but it kind of works. Put something pearly/metallic/shimmery on that boy, go wild with his ribbons and bobs, and I’d totally buy it…

We came kind of close in 2021, with the Stablemates Christmas Clydesdales. But alas, they were (a) Stablemates, (b) sans horns and (c) the Stablemates market is still too bonkers for me to complete my set. 

(I need the Blue and Silver ones. Again, I am not in a rush.)

So naturally, the only item from this year’s holiday collection that’s really tempting me – aside from that insanely cute little knit hat included in the Fjord gift set, because tiny fabric accessories get me every time – is the Unicorn Mare and Foal set Hyacinth and Wisteria:

They remind me a great deal of the 2015 Web Special Unicorn Andreus, in lavender pinto. I have half-heartedly been looking for him in the secondary market, because all the ones I’ve found have been way too rich for my blood. 

Since I’ve been in a customizing mood, I am now tempted to make myself a Metallic Purple Clydesdale Stallion Unicorn. But I probably should finish one of the half dozen or so pieces I currently have loitering around the office. 

Unfortunately, I just sprayed a bit of primer on a couple of them, and that dashed all my hopes that either one was anywhere near completion. 

(Makes note to go check my body box stash for Traditional Clydesdales anyway…)

Weird Places

Nothing special here, just the standard (initially offered) Surrey and Axle:

When I heard about the variation, I was mildly freaked out that I’d get the Action Stock Horse Foal: even if it had turned out to be a one-in-ten variant, I would have been kind of annoyed, the same way I was a little miffed about having to find the Cremello Uffington secondhand.

A big part of the reason I bought the set was for that Standing Stock Horse Foal. A Few-Spot Appaloosa Lady Phase didn’t hurt, either. I know a lot of hobbyists aren’t fans of Few-Spots, but I am definitely not one of them!

Anyway, crisis averted.

The Standing Stock Horse Foal, incidentally, was one of those “more common” models I was looking for to fill in some holes in my collection, but all the ones I was specifically shopping for were in short supply. Which is super-weird, considering how popular the mold used to be as Breyer’s generic, go-to Stock Horse Foal!

Again, I am not in a rush. I am assuming I will pick up what I need in a box lot somewhere along the way. 

Since I had an unexpected day off last Saturday, I used that opportunity to look at – but not actually buy – some of the newest “Paddock Pals” at my local Dollar General.

I haven’t bought any of them since the initial batch dropped at Five Below a while back, and we didn’t know what the heck was going on. But now we kinda do. It’s what I speculated all along: it’s a budget-priced, entry-level line sold at dollar/discount stores and marketed to younger kids. They even have a web site now with backstories for every single release:

https://paddockpals.breyerkids.com/meetthepaddockpals.html

I like a lot of them, and I may end up buying a couple more in the future, but actually collecting them looks like it is out of the question. 

It’s not just that I don’t have the time or space, it’s that they exist in such a weird place. It’s a completely new scale that’s somewhere in between Traditional and Classic, that’s both realistic in terms of anatomy and conformation, but also not really live showable as-is (without special accommodations). And they gave the whole shebang the obsolete name of a now largely obsolete scale: the Little Bits. 

My brain doesn’t quite know how to process them. 

Scary Things

I knew I had a rough couple of weeks, but I didn’t realize just how rough until I was at the 7-11 after work on Friday, and the night cashier walked up and asked me:

“Are you okay? You don’t look okay. I’m worried about you.”

Anyone who’s had the privilege working the night shift at a convenience store knows that you sometimes see unspeakable things, so I’m not quite sure how to process the fact that I managed to scare the night cashier at 7-11. Dang.

Onto lighter topics. Let’s talk about a couple of things in the September Newsletter!

I was aware of the existence of “The World of Breyer Horses” promo video, but I can’t recall if I ever got to watch it in full before; it was made during my live show heydays, so when they started showing photos from contemporary live shows, I was momentarily terrified I’d see a picture of myself.

Lucky for all of us, I was not present. 

There are other Breyer videos out there with me in them; at least one of them was shot a few years after this video at a very early BreyerFest, back when the live show was still held in the Covered Arena. 

And Reeves probably has more photos of me on file than my family or workplace does. It (morbidly) amuses me that if anything newsworthy-dreadful actually happens to me, chances are any of the photos you see of me on the news will be from Reeves. I take some consolation in the fact that I will be smiling in most of those.

They failed to mention (on the website, at least) that the narrator of the video was also the model for Bitsy Breyer. From her last name you can kind of figure how she got the job!

A lot of the kids featured in Breyer promotional materials in the 1970s and early 1980s were the children of friends and family, incidentally. This is nothing unique to Breyer; a lot of the family-owned and operated businesses I have either done business with or worked for worked that way. You are not just a member of the family, you are also an employee...

I have no idea who the mystery model is in the Sneak Peek:

Since I am trying to behave, I already told myself that I’m going to avoid entering for most of the Winter Web Specials, unless an Elk, the Deer Family, or one of the Dog molds is involved. If the Christmas Day Surprise is an Emma I’ll probably spring for that one too, of course, because Emma. 

I’ve had a good year, so I think I’m entitled to a break. 

Next time – I finally unwrap my Surrey and Axle!

Scurrying About

Things are… better. And I’ll leave it at that. And I have to work this Saturday, too, but that’s mostly unrelated. It sets me behind a bit on my crafting, but I can’t argue with the paycheck! 

I am still moderately amused that I was not chosen for a Yellowstone, even from multiple waitlists. It just slays me that their efforts to make some Special Runs “easier” to acquire (i.e. significantly larger piece runs) usually result in making it harder for me. 

Aiming for the big stuff seems to be working out better, at least for now. I’ll pick up a Yellowstone eventually. 

I was thinking about going to BreyerWest next year, but the flights are all significantly more expensive than my Wyoming adventure was, so it might be a no-go. Off to research Derby tickets, I guess!

(Yikes! Maybe that wasn’t such a great idea either.)

Anywho, the rest of my week is full of meetings and appointments, I’ll keep it short again today. Here’s a better picture of my two Scurries, one of whom is actually a variation of a variation, but one that wasn’t necessarily planned for: 

I find it amusing that the two choices I made on my one and only ticket this year were both 50/50 variation splits. Considering that they were among the less popular choices this year, you think they would have included the variants in them to encourage sales, instead of including them in runs that would have sold out regardless, like Peanutine, and (eventually) Speos.

I also wasn’t overly enamored of them using Hamilton as the Surprise model this year – not because they didn’t turn out nice (most of the color options were really well done) but because it now sets an uncomfortable precedent.

Instead of the unpredictability that was part and parcel of the Surprise before, there’s now going to be an expectation that the Surprise must be the Current Hotness, and if you’ve had more than half of a day’s experience in the Model Horse Internet, you know that for the loudest voices among them that nothing else will now suffice. 

And if Reeves accedes to that demand, the Surprise will no longer be all that… surprising. Or for me, all that interesting.

(Still annoyed that we didn’t get an Old Timer this year. I know the reasons why, but I would have paid that premium, dammit.)

Hoping For Better Days

I’ve occasionally made the joke about how any time I’ve done “well” at BreyerFest, I always end up paying for it in the end, regardless. 

I was hoping to avoid that fate this year – or at least, mitigate the damage – but the shoe might be dropping this week, and to be frank I am kinda scared. I can only hope that I am believed and that I come out of the experience relatively unscathed. 

But there is no guarantee, and I did not sleep a wink Saturday night. 

Needless to say, any positive energy you can send my way would be very appreciated. 

I had some shopping to do on Sunday – mostly craft and storage supplies – and while I was out I finally managed to see some of the Tractor Supply Specials. The Stablemates were quite tempting, and the FFA Decorators were much nicer than I expected, but I managed to walk away without pulling out my wallet. 

If any of the Gibsons had been the Chalky variation, I would have bought one, but they were not. 

Since I’m not feeling particularly chatty again today, here’s another BreyerFest purchase:

This Seabiscuit – and another one painted a semi-leopard Appaloosa, in hobby enamels – were the only purchases I made from the Linda Walter estate. By the time I had made it into the room, most of the better Breyer items were already gone, and I didn’t trust myself to bring home any clinkies unbroken. 

But for some reason this little guy (and his partner) really caught my eye. I already have several variations of the original G1 Seabiscuit, but this one was – as you can see – exceptionally well-shaded. So well-shaded, in fact, that for a brief moment I mistook him for the Hagen-Renaker original.

The melancholy part of all this is that the context is missing. Was he just a lucky find on Linda’s part? Did Marney find a particularly nice one at the factory and send it Linda’s way, because of her love and advocacy of Hagen-Renakers in general? Or nothing at all?

I’ll probably never know.

I had another Stablemate in my showstring that I was having some second thoughts about, and I swapped him out for this guy. 

And I believe he was the first model that even placed for me in the show. For a while I was worried that that would be my only placing (and a tenth, at that), but things got better for me.

I can only hope this week ends the same way. 

Lost in Translation

This has been another not-great week, and I will be grateful when it ends. (Without injury, I hope. No guarantee there, unfortunately.) 

I am currently self-medicating with an extremely elaborate quilt piecing project, art restoration videos, and homemade pound cake.

Let’s focus on some positives. First, the pound cake was a new recipe, and freaking delicious. And second, the latest Vintage Club release has been revealed – a Gambler’s Choice Silver, named Thunderbird!

Boy, that guy was a hard secret to keep under wraps. He looks awesome in all four colors; it appears that the Appaloosa is the online crowd’s clear favorite, but I will be happy with whatever one I comes my way. 

(And he’ll definitely cheaper than trying to buy something like a Goldfinch on the secondary!)

I also managed to secure a spare couple of hours of free time earlier this week, and used that opportunity to sort through some e-mails and ephemera, which wasn’t quite as big a mess as I thought it would be. (But yikes, I’ve got some gaps to fill.)  

It also reminded me that I needed to show you guys my other big Ephemera find at BreyerFest this year: 

Breyer got a lot of mail from its fans in the 1970s and early 1980s, to the point where they had to generate in-house materials to deal with it. There was a preprinted postcard that acknowledged your suggestions for future models, that infamous (and somewhat inaccurate) historical list of Breyer releases, and – news to me! – a short history of Breyer (above), and an explainer on how models were made (below):

There’s nothing new or revelatory here, but the wording on the history page is both more clear, and more nuanced than the initial history I heard bandied about it my early days in the hobby. The game of telephone did it no favors! 

The ways information get conveyed, interpreted and distorted haven’t improved much in the decades since, but that’s more of a statement about human nature than of the hobby itself.