Models from "Breyermess"...

Well, yesterday my Special Run models arrived from last weekend's "BreyerMess", but I didn't open them until today.  And for the record, I still haven't opened the box with Ballynoe or the Stablemate set.  I have no place currently to put the cardboard boxes once I'm done.  

Anyway, I was fairly lucky with my two ticket times.  My #1 wanted model was Epona and got that one on my Friday "trip through the line"

She came in a braided mane/tail version as well as loose.  I got the braided version, which I am happy with because I think it looks more polished and it's just my preference.

For my Sunday line, I don't remember which models I put in which order, but I ended up getting Oak...

I had made plans to trade with someone for a glossy Thorn, but I may just end up keeping him.  I obviously like him or I wouldn't have put him on my list.  I don't know.  He's pretty neat.

I also got to Slainte Surprise models.  My #1 pick was the leopard appaloosa and I am happy to say, that is who I got...

I didn't care if it was glossy or matte and, as you can see, I got the matte version.  My 2nd choice would've been the matte silver bay or the glossy palomino "paint" (most people don't seem to realize she's a paint lol).  But I didn't get either one of those.  Fortunately, I didn't get another appaloosa, but rather I got a glossy red roan...

I don't know if I'm going to keep her or not.  I'm not a huge fan of roans because the darker head "bugs" me.  The Slainte surprise head isn't super dark and she looks better in person than her promo photos, but I'm still not completely sold on her.  I'm looking at a couple of resources for what they're selling for on the secondary market, but most of the ones I've seen have been matte.  I think I've only found 1 that is glossy and I don't want to price myself out of the market.  Maybe I can find someone willing to trade an Acadia... hahaha.  Of course, since Acadia has been out for a couple of years now, it's doubtful I'll be able to find one in super good condition and the Slainte is pretty close to being mint.  I am in no big hurry, although the longer she stays here, the less likely it is that I'll sell her.  hahahaha.  Not that I have anyplace to put any of these models, which is why it's tempting to just sell all of them.  I won't, but it's tempting.

In other Breyer news...not that what I just posted was "news"...there's another model in the Berries series.  First introduced in 2016, the Berries series introduced horse lovers to a sweet crop of berry-inspired ponies.  For 2020, we are expanding our berry patch with a farm-fresh herd of new ponies you'll be excited to pick!

One of the first fruits to ripen in the spring, strawberries are a popular and delectable treat native to North America.  As the plant grows, it sends out rooting shoots called "runners" to spread.  Before fruiting, strawberry plants are dotted with lovely, delicate flowers.

Our sweet Strawberry is a fantastic decorator model on the Hackney mold, and his coat was designed by Sommer Prosser.  This clearware model sports a soft, shaded pink coat that's adorned with strawberry designs and finished with blue interference.   I'm ambivalent on the Hackney mold.  I know I've had at least one or two over my collecting career, but mostly during the "gotta have it all" period.   I am, however, a huge fan of strawberries, but I won't be entering for a chance to win.  This isn't the type of decorator I collect.  I don't think I have any clearwear models, but that's not because I dislike them.  They just tend to have fancy-schmancy designs on them like Strawberry.  

Well, I guess that's it for now.  Nothing super exciting is going on right now.  Until next time.

Slainte Surprise Reveal...Yes, there are pictures...

Surprisingly, people are already starting to receive their models from Breyer"Mess" that only just ended a couple of days ago.  Some collectors are trying to keep it a complete surprise until theirs arrive on their doorsteps, but not me.  I wanted to know as soon as possible what the surprise model was so I could start planning.  And while I'm not hugely fond of the mold, it could have been worse and I like 3 of the 4 colors so I'm hoping the two I get will be two of the colors I like, but my luck, I'll get the one I like least.  hahahaha.

Anyway, so here we go...The Slainte Surprise is on the Giselle mold and came in 4 colors, as usual.  What isn't "usual" is the lack of a decorator on the set so maybe there's a 5th out there nobody has seen yet?  I don't know.

My favorite, and the one I'm most hoping to get is the leopard appy...

then the 2nd favorite is a toss-up between the glossy palomino...

and the silver bay...

My least favorite of the 4 is the red roan paint...I'm not a huge fan of red roans and the circle of white around her neck makes it look really thin...

I haven't received a ship notice yet for my 4 SR models so I have no idea when they'll be here.  My Ballynoe and 4 pack Stablemates are supposed to arrive today.  I'm glad they went back to using the little bag this year rather than the cardboard boxes they've used in the past.  I don't mean the ones that look like mini Breyer boxes, but the ones...you know what I mean.  These ones...

I don't like those.  The bags for Celtic Fling are really cute, too.  Not as clever as Denim & Diamonds where they look like pants pockets, but still cute nonetheless...

I should say, none of these photos are mine.  I got them from an Instagram user who got them from someone else on Facebook.  Anyway, my SM 4 pack and Ballynoes are supposed to be here some time today.  Each bag is a different color, although all are Tartan Plaid, and has the model's name on it, which is usual.

So, on Monday I was decided not to include some photos from the photo show, but I think I'll do that today.  Some really impressed me while others...ehhhhh...not so much.  First of all, I'd like to give them props, though, for entering the show to begin with.  I've heard showing at Breyerfest can be brutal so the fact that they attempted it is worthy of my respect.  I didn't look at all the classes because many of them I'm not interested in, but here are some of my favorites from the ones I did look at...

This first one is from the Western Trail class and was done by Natasha Kaehler.  I'm honestly surprised she didn't place.  I thought she did a really good job at blending her base with the background.  Sure, there's some minor scale issues with the background, but nothing like I've seen in other photos.  I'm certainly no expert in judging...it's been a long time since I've judged any photo shows, but I think this photo should've placed in the top 5...

When I first saw this photo submission by Nicole Cunningham in Western Games, I briefly thought it was a real horse and wondered what it was doing in a photo show, but then I saw it was, in fact, a model.    Nicole made good use of natural arena footing, but the background is very much out of scale.  The fences can almost be "excused" but the houses are just too big and she probably should've broken up some of the dirt clumps...

My favorite entry is probably from the Scene class by Michelle Seipol and this one actually won 2nd place, but personally, I think it was better than the one that got 1st and ultimately Champion in the Miscellaneous category...

Cat herding.  hahahahaha.  Anyone who is owned by cats knows how impossible cat herding is.  Michelle had all sorts of documentation about how it's a "thing".  Regardless if it is or not, it's very clever and definitely deserved a high placing.

Okay.  So, I saw a lot of photos with wonky backgrounds.  Mostly they were sheets / fabric backgrounds that had wrinkles in them or some such thing.  But this one...this one I had to call out, but I'm not going to say who it belongs to or what category it's from, although it's obviously from one of the Western classes...

When I first got into model horse showing...photo showing...one of the first things I learned was about angles.  You wanted to photograph your horse from the side, with an occasional exception.  The Pole Bending photo I shared above probably wouldn't look quite as good from a side angle.  Not to be super judgmental or anything, but this photo would look so much better if she moved the Celtic Fling railing so it was against the background and shot the photo from the side rather than this angle.  The idea is for the scene to look as realistic as possible and that's kind of hard with the big New York Yankees logo in the background and the table on the right.  And the orange cone seems kind of random.  And whatever she used for the flooring doesn't fit very well together because you can see that big seem running from top to bottom.  The model and doll are spot on and I like the use of the Breyerfest logo on the railing, but because of the distracting background, it's hard to really like this one.

Okay.  That's enough for now.  I hope everyone is doing well.  Take care and until next time...

Virtual Breyerfest...the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly...

By now, most people have blogged about the first ever (and hopefully LAST) virtual Breyerfest, but most of them did it throughout the weekend.  I'm going to do it all in one spot and I'm not going to hold back.  Not that the others did, but the whole experience was beyond frustrating that if they decided to hold it again, I likely won't participate.   Some people have expressed a hope that in the future, Breyer will allow people to attend/buy SR models virtually so as to make it more inclusive, but I can't see that working very well in terms of numbers.  They would have to either make a LOT more SR models or risk over-selling.

So let's start with the "Good".  I like that it was available to so many people who wouldn't ordinarily be able to attend.  As I mentioned before, I had hoped to go this year, but virus aside, that wasn't going to happen.  I missed a lot of the workshops, but the videos will be available on the website for awhile so I'll get a chance to get caught up.  There's only a couple of them I want to see anyway.  On the surface, it looked really well planned out, but then it gets into the "ugly" category and I'll leave that for later.  So it was nice that I was able to go through the "Special Run Line".  I had two tickets: 10am Saturday and 12pm Sunday.  Would you believe, I don't remember what I picked for my choices?  You could either do individual choices or a master list and from the looks of what people on Blab were saying, I'm glad I went with individual picks since a lot of people were getting duplicates.  But that's also part of the "bad".  I know I had picked Epona and Slainte Surprise as my top two picks on Saturday and that's who I got so that made me happy.  We still don't know what the Slainte Surprise model is and won't until boxes start hitting doorsteps, which, who knows when that will be?  Breyer employees usually take a few days off following Breyerfest, but since they now have orders to pack and mail...and LOTS of orders at that...I imagine they'll still take a few days off and actually mentioned that somewhere on social media.  I just don't remember where I saw it.  But people are going to start wondering where their horses are so they won't be able to get away with taking too much time off.  Besides, since no travel was involved and no being out in the heat...  What else was good about Virtual Breyerfest?  During my Sunday ticket slot, I got Oak and another Slainte Surprise.  I don't think they were my top picks, maybe 3 and 4.  I hope the surprise horse is on a mold I like or it's one a lot of other people like so I can sell it.  Some people want it to be a total surprise and won't look at spoilers, but I want to know so I can decide if I'm going to keep it or sell it as a "true surprise", meaning, I don't know what colors are involved.  Another good was the ability to see photos from the "live" show and I'm going to include some of my favorites at the end, along with an "oops" or two.  hahaha.

I would like to put this auction model in the "Good" part because she is just the most beautiful thing and I would love to have her in my collection, but she was already out of my price range when I first saw her so I didn't even try.  It's a Roxy mold done in Leopard Appaloosa and is just stunning!

Hopefully we will have a model like this sometime in the near future.  Obviously not an exact duplicate because that would be wrong and unfair to the person who paid a big chunk of change for her, but something similar.  Well, I guess we already sort of have one in Haute Couture from 2015 Breyerfest, but not quite the same...

So now we'll move onto the "Bad"...There aren't as many "Bads" as "Uglies" so this will be short since it's pretty much all related.  Virtual Breyerfest got off to a bad start.  Glitches with the website and timings with the Special Run "lines".  Models weren't showing up on your account page.  More models showing up than what you're "entitled" to.  Duplicate models showing up.  But that was more of a Master List issue, I think, than anything else.  They did "warn" us that duplicates were a possibility if you submitted a Master List.  Ticket times were running about 2 hours behind schedule on Saturday so my 10am ticket time didn't show up until 12pm and on Sunday, I got this message...

How can I be early if I didn't try to access it until AFTER it started?  And it stayed there until just about 12:30.  And this was AFTER Breyer had assured us the ticket times were "wide open", meaning, they were on time.  Obviously, that wasn't the case, but that goes in the "Uglies".  But I was finally able to access my chosen models and got another Surprise and Oak.  I will be trading Oak to another collector for her Thorn because she really wants Oak and I want Thorn more than I want Oak so it will work out nicely.

Well, now we have to move on to the "Uglies" and that's where it hit the fan.  Yes, I get that they only had about 4 months to plan this.  And I get that they could've just as easily have cancelled the whole thing rather than have it online.  I do appreciate the effort that went into it, but it was just one disaster after another and I really think maybe they should have just cancelled (are there two "l"s or just one?  Neither one gives me a spellcheck hit).  When it was first announced it would be online this year, several people expressed a concern that the Breyer web servers couldn't handle that sort of traffic.  It hasn't before and it was for a much smaller "event".  We were assured that they'd be increasing their bandwidth and would be hiring an IT company to help out and other stuff.  But there were still a lot of issues that continued through the weekend.  Initially, you were limited to the number of times you could make purchases in the store.  Each check out was a "trip".  Well, people would try to buy something, but weren't able to.  They'd have it in their cart and the cart would freeze.  Or it would be taken out of their cart before they could finish the purchase.  Some people sat in front of the computer all day on Friday and Saturday, hoping to get something, just to have the cart freeze or the item sold out from under them.  We didn't know how often they were restocking the store until Saturday when a timeline was posted.  I did not sit at the computer the whole weekend.  There was only one thing I really wanted, the Stablemate set, but I didn't want it enough to spend all that time on it.  I feel bad for the people who did and still never got what they wanted.  Twice I had the SM set in my cart and twice the cart froze.  Yesterday I was doing something else and missed the last re-stock.  Oh well.  I won't lose any sleep over it.  Anyway, on Saturday they said the bugs had been fixed and that things wouldn't be taken from carts and everything should run smoothly, but that didn't happen.  The Special Run times still weren't working properly, things were still being taken out of carts.  There was a data breach on the auction site they were going to use so they had to scramble to find an alternative.  On Sunday, Special Run lines were still behind, albeit not as bad.  Stuff was still disappearing from carts and people were unable to even buy their special runs.  It was a weekend of Epic Failure and many annoyed people.  Breyer kept saying "we thank you for your patience" and I just had to laugh.  For one, we didn't have a choice.  There was nothing WE could do.  But there were a lot of complaints, but they likely fell on deaf ears.  To "make up" for the cart theft, Breyer decided to gloss 3 of the models and offer them for pre-sale. You won't get it until December, though, and a lot of people were annoyed that they offered that.  I'm not sure doing that was the right thing, but I don't know.  I know there has been "cart theft" in the past, but it's not literally people stealing stuff out of your cart.  It has to do with internet connections and carts freezing.  So what they ended up doing was eliminate the "trips" you could take and basically turned everyone loose on the store.  Grab bags were still limited to one purchase per account, but none of them interested me, even if I ever saw them available.  hahaha.

I'm sure there was more "Uglies" than I am remembering, but that's the gist of it.  This blog is already long enough that I'm not going to include the photos from the "live" show.  Maybe later.  Yesterday Breyer announced the theme and dates for 2021...

A very non-specific theme.  Should be interesting to see more details in the coming months.  Hopefully THAT one will be in-person and not this virtual crap.

Until next time!

New Feature and Meet Jake the Farrier's Cousin!

Okay.  So.  I'm kind of excited about this and I hope the 2 or 3 people who actually read this thing will enjoy it.  It's kind of a spin off of featuring different models from my collection.  What I'm going to do is pick a year that has been significant in my life, hobby-wise, and feature the models that were released in that year and which molds I have, even if they aren't the original model.  Does that make sense?  I hope so.  So, my first year is 1970, which is the year I was born.  The Indian Pony was introduced that year, but I don't have the original IP.  I DO have, however, 2 models on that mold so those are the ones I will showcase.  Got it?  Good.  hahaha.  I should offer a bit of a disclaimer, though.  I was unable to find a master list of every model released every year, so my information is coming from ID Your Breyer.  I guess it's possible they only released 2 or 3 models a year back in the early days, but it seems like such a small number.

Are you ready?  Okay.  Here we go.

1970.  The year I was born.  Yes, I'm "old".  hahaha.  Hush up.  In 1970, 3 new models were released by Breyer.  They were:  Indian Pony #175, sculpted by Chris Hess; Scratching Foal #168, also by Chris Hess; and Quarter Horse Yearling #101, sculpted by...you guessed it, Chris Hess.  Now, I haven't owned any QH Yearlings, but I did have the black blanket Appaloosa Scratching Foal at one point.  I don't anymore.  I do, however, have 3 models on the Indian Pony mold.

#882 Ichilay the Crow Horse - Circled Eye released 1993...

And #701796 Halayi, which was an exclusive from PetsMart released 1996...

Oddly enough, I only remember buying Halayi.  Maybe because he came from Toys R Us and I still remember how exciting it was to go into the store and straight to the aisle that held the famous yellow boxes. I don't even recall where I bought Ichilay and why I chose him over the other three variations available.  Maybe the red circle one was the only one available.  Who knows?

Information about Ichilay from the hangtag:
Ichilay (pronounced eegee'leh) is the Crow word for "horse"; it means "to search with".  Warriors painted their horses according to their medicine.  Often, the horse's face was painted to match the warpaint of its owner, or markings were painted to match the warrior's medicine shield.  If a warrior was wounded in battle, he was entitled to tie a red feather in his horse's mane for each wound.  The Crow warrior was an individual and his painted horse reflected his spirit.

And from the Certificate of Authenticity on Halayi:
A wild mustang stops to graze in a clearing overlooking a Hopi Indian reservation.  The golden, spotted Appaloosa looks longingly at the children playing below.  She is alone and longs for companionship.  She senses they are friendly and enters the village anxiously.  She whinnies her friendship, and a child adopts her through a wild horse adoption agency.  Her new Hopi friend has named her Halayi (Happy).  Now this one lonely Appaloosa has good reason to be a truly "Happy Appy".  Halayi was limited to 1,000 pieces, but for some reason they weren't numbered.  Not on the body of the model and not on the COA, but something makes me want to say there was a sticker of some sort on the box and that's where the number was.  I'm not sure.

What do you think of this new feature?  Do you like it?  Is there information I'm not providing that you'd like to know?  I'm open to suggestions to make it a more interesting read.

Next up, I would like to introduce you to Jake the Farrier's cousin Cassie.  She has decided to come live at the Desert Horizon Ranch for awhile...or for good, I'm not sure.  hahaha.  Here she is with one of her many cats she brought with her.  Yes, she's a crazy cat lady.  The cat's name is Cinder.

If Cinder seems to be a bit of an unusual-looking cat, remember...she's related to Jake and apparently the apple doesn't fall far from the tree where knowledge of animals come into play (remember his new "dog" Ribbon?).  Cassie is at a cross-roads in her life right now.  She left a job in the corporate world to go live in the desert and "play with the pretty ponies".  She is thinking she might like to train horses, although she has no experience doing so.  She barely knows how to ride, but just HAD to buy the cute little outfit that would make her look authentic.  Tune in later for possible adventures with her and Jake as well as both of them individually.

I guess that is it for now.  I hope everyone is doing okay.  Until next time!