Mystery Surprise Rivet

The weather has turned cold and I am not a fan. (Vita is, but let’s not discuss what the BAD GIRL was up to today, shall we?)

What I am a fan of? Stablemates, obviously:

This isn’t even all of them now cluttering my office, just the ones I could fit on top of the printer. I am quite enamored of this fellow, the Bay Overo Rivet from the 2018 Mystery Horse Surprise Assortment:

You know I love the Rivet mold in general, but I hadn’t bothered to acquire this example until recently because what assortments I found locally were well-picked-over by the time I got to them. But I noticed an untouched box at our local Family Farm & Home store last week, and decided to scratch that particular itch.

(And yes, I did look for the Florentine chase piece, too – without success, obviously.)

I’ve said this before, but it’s really remarkable that Stablemates of this quality – especially compared to the very first Breyer Stablemates issued way back in 1975 – can be had for less than five dollars.

Sure, most of the newer molds aren’t as conformationally or anatomically correct or “showable” as the original Hagen-Renaker G1 releases, but in every other way these new Stablemates are superior. The seams are cleaner, the assortment of molds is crazy, and there’s a greater variety to the paint jobs – enhanced by clean and remarkably detailed masking that would have blown my ten-year-old mind back in 1975.

And this little guy isn’t even the “Chase” piece – just another “Regular Run” in a blind bag assortment!

The only thing that is a bummer about the current Stablemates boom we are going through? Being a completist is now (probably) out of the question.

Before I give in to my desire to hibernate, I do want to address a question in the comments from the previous post: yes, there is a Vintage Club Stablemate for this year. Who or what it is, on the other hand...

Shrink Ray, Activated!

Alas (and as I feared), it appears I will not be able to make it to the local Fun Day next weekend.

Darn it! The past week has been kinda stressful and I really could have used a “Horse Girl’s Day Out” kind of thing. I guess I’ll just have to content myself with pizza and the Friday night TCM Godzilla movie marathons for the next few weekends instead. (Original Japanese cuts with subtitles, because that is how I roll!)

Anyway, I noticed last night that Reeves was starting to put up all of next year’s club and event stuff on the web site, and some of the pages went live today, including the 2020 Collector Club memberships.

With the “Deluxe” level of membership, you’ll get a Stablemates-scale Fighting Stallion in Gloss Palomino:

Reeves turning its “shrink ray” on some of its Vintage molds is something many of us had hoped and/or expected, and it makes perfect sense that the first of these is being released in conjunction with next year’s 70th anniversary celebration.

It’ll be fun to see who – or what – else gets shrinky-dinked. I’m assuming that the rest of the original “Decorator Five” – the Mustang, Five-Gaiter, and Running Mare and Foal – will be up next. But then who? The Family Arabians? The Clydesdales? Man o’ War (please?)

It should be pointed out that the item in the promotion pictures probably isn’t the Stablemate Fighting Stallion itself, but – more than likely – a Test Color on the Traditional mold. (I’m not 100 percent certain of the Test Color part, because the images a just a tad bit too low-resolution for me to determine.)

(And if so, can I call “dibs”?)

More on the Vintage Club stuff another time, because obviously.

Chalky Brighty

Another quiet weekend mostly spent cleaning my office and my car, sorting out the consequences of my last two shopping excursions (Stablemates, Stablemates everywhere.)

A few days ago I did end up at one of my local Salvation Army stores – ostensibly to see if they still had a fabric remnant I saw a week earlier, one I realized (several days later) would be ideal for another long-unfinished quilt project – and found a Chalky Brighty chilling in the toy bins:

One does not, of course, leave a vintage Chalky behind. Even if it is relatively common and not exactly in pristine condition.

Brighty is “common” because like the Appaloosa Performance Horse and El Pastor – all introduced in 1974 – she began her Breyer career as a Chalky. This is smack dab in the middle of Breyer’s so-called “Chalky Era”, which ran from roughly 1973 through 1975/6, an era when many (but not all!) Breyer releases came in the now-insanely-popular Chalky variation.

No vintage Chalky is truly “common”, but unlike other Chalky releases of the time, those three molds – being new – were probably produced in greater quantities, and possibly over a longer period of time. Hence, they tend to be among the easiest of vintage Chalkies to find.

Brighty was originally issued in the #2075 Brighty Gift Set, which was discontinued in 1981; the model was reissued the following year as release #375, without the special carrying case and book. So technically whenever a Chalky Brighty is advertised for sale as the #375 release, it’s misidentified: all Chalky Brighties would have been from the #2075 Gift Set release.

Well okay, the vast majority: there are always some exceptions to the rule floating out there somewhere. Though I do not personally know of any in the case of Brighty.

And yes, I also know that Brighty’s mold number is #375, but mold numbers are rarely used as a reference point in sales listing. Except by us history nerds trying to gussy up a sales post, perhaps...

But anyway, I already have a mint and lovely Chalky Brighty in my herd, so she’ll be up for sale whenever I finally find the time to start doing so again.

(Soon, I hope.)

Appaloosa Drafters

Yes, I am aware of the new shrunkified Traditionals and Classics in the latest (Series 3) MiniWhinnies now available at Walmart. And I am trying very hard to not think about them, since (a) I bought too much last week as it is and (b), I do not have time for this nonsense right now.

She’s not a new mold and she’s being released in a quasi-Decorator color (Matte Gray Appaloosa) that’s never been wildly popular among collectors, but I don’t care, Priscilla is my favorite Stablemates Club release this year (so far):

Like Matte Charcoal, Matte Gray Appaloosa doesn’t get a lot of love in the hobby – which is a shame, because when it’s well-executed – as it is here – it can be a very attractive color.

I can remember a time when Draft Horses with Appaloosa marking were an exotic and somewhat daring thing in both the “real” and model horse world. Norikers were one of the first “obscure, but cool” real-horse breeds that one learned about in the hobby back then – primarily as a way to justify some of your customizing choices!

However, the first Original Finish Appaloosa-flavored Draft Horse didn’t appear until 1986 – and it was almost completely by accident:

The Belgian was originally designed to come in a somewhat more mundane shade of gray – a variation of Smoke, actually –as seen in the original Your Horse Source flier:

(Beligans? LOL!)

But apparently that color was not well-received when it was shopped around to mail-order retailers, who requested something “more like Buckshot”.

Buckshot was the hot new item in 1985, mostly because of its fairly complex paint job (for the time). Initially they tried selling it as a Grulla AND a Blue Roan, but somehow forgot to mention the Appaloosa part:

Anyway, long story short, we ended up with… an Appaloosa Belgian! He was something of a thing back then, but he’s not so hard to find now – I just took a quick lookie-loo on eBay and found three, all well under a hundred bucks.

Living the Dream

Don’t tell my family, but this wasn’t the only horse I bought this weekend:

Long story short, Saturday afternoon I happened to be in the neighborhood of a toy store that’s normally a bit out of my way, so I stopped in to see if they had any Khalids.

They did! And they were having a storewide sale. And they actually had a couple American Dreams; since I figured this would probably be my last chance to get one until December (according to the web site!) and this example was so dark and pretty…

I liked the pictures of him I had been seeing online, but now that I’ve seen him in person and in the round, I think he’s my new favorite modern Classic/Freedom mold. I can’t wait to see this pretty boy in any of the vintage Mustang colors. Bald-faced Buckskin? Gloss Charcoal? Gloss Gray Appaloosa?

(The solution to getting more collectors collecting Classics is… making more and better Classics? How... obvious!)

Then I ended up going to a nearby Ollie’s and picked up a couple of those SR Walmart Stablemates sets because there were some beautiful variations mixed in; then for good measure I hit up a farm store (part of a local chain) that happened to have some unrifled-through Stablemate Blind Bag boxes, and salt water taffy. (The taffy was the bigger draw there: Don’t ask me why or how, but I am on a huge taffy kick right now.)

And finally, the weather was cool but mostly cooperative so I went to the flea market Sunday morning and found a whole bunch of goodies, including a C.W. Anderson portfolio and a Royal Doulton Scottish Terrier.

But aside from the produced-based flea market purchases, the only thing that’s made it into the house so far is the American Dream.

Not that anyone would notice right now – there’s some work being done in the kitchen for the duration, so I could probably sneak in an actual, live Shetland Pony and I doubt anyone would notice.

(Except maybe the dog. I don’t think she’d appreciate someone bogarting her carrots and peppermints.)

But seriously, this will probably be my last significant “horse shopping” binge for the year, outside of obligate club purchases, and possibly the Christmas Surprise and CC Appreciation Sale. I have too much stuff and I definitely need to do more selling than buying in the next three months.

If I can find the time. Sigh.

Fun Daze

Interesting: apparently most – but oddly, not all – of my Breyer e-mails have been going into my spam folder for at least a month now. Not quite understanding why some were marked as spam and some came through just like normal, if they’re all marked with the same address and originate from the same server. The problem is now fixed, I hope…

Second – there’s a National Fun Day planned for October 19 at retailers across the country. Normally I don’t go to these events because they tend to be tailored to a younger crowd – justifiably! – but one of the participating retailers is only about twenty minutes from my house.

Hmm. Interesting.

Since it appears that I won’t be able to make it to any live shows or other model horse type events until next year, I might swing by just for the model horse chatter. While I might not be the same age as most of the participants, we definitely speak the same language!

And sometimes that’s all that matters, especially when you are surrounded in your “mundane” life by people who don’t know Bay from Chestnut, or a Saddlebred from a Standardbred. Or, when they hear you mention Breyer think you’re talking about ice cream.

Right now it’s too soon to tell if my schedule will even allow it. I hope so.

Third, all of the Halloween stuff is now sold out except the Plushie Boo, who they are now offering as a freebie with qualified $50 purchase while supplies last. Not my thing because of the dog, but in case you were planning on some shopping over the weekend, there you go. 

And finally, the Giraffe is not the Giraffe I was expecting: it’s Lonesome Glory and not Forever Saige.

Nadifa is very nicely executed, but the over-the-top craziness I require in my modern Decorator purchases is not quite there. I will enter once, but other people love Lonesome Glory far more than I do, and I won’t stand in their way.

On the plus side, I can now go purchase a Khalid (and whatever else tickles my fancy) without the budget guilt. If anymore are left to be found; I just saw what they are going for on eBay, and now I know why my local store just ran out!

Sticking My Neck Out

OMG, is this what I think it is? The Giraffe-themed Forever Saige I deemed the obvious second release in the Wild Animal Series in a blog post about a year ago?

Naturally, I need this like candy sprinkles on a sundae. Of course.

At this point, I think just need to set up a GoFundMe site for the new sewing machine, because Reeves is determined to get most of my disposable income for the rest of the year.

Incidentally, if any of the other concepts I mention in that post also come to pass, I am going to start requesting Artist’s Proofs, Samples or something….

(Though I changed my mind on the Oryx: the Marwari mold would suit that one just fine. And sit on my shelves better, too.)

Back to normal blogging in a day or two.