Magpie Model Horses - Two Wonderful Welshies!

I've always been a fan of craft type models - I came into the hobby via Julips, after all! 

The second brand I took to heart was Magpie Model Horses - after 'meeting' them in person at live shows and realising they were exactly my cup of tea, I started off by ordering a few brand new regular runs, then a few more second-hand to tick off the full range of colours, including older variations in different shades. Some special runs came out, so of course I had to get those, too. As the addiction to these welshies deepened, I found I wanted them all, and collected as many older Personality special runs as I could find and afford, mostly through ebay or hobby friends selling or thinning their own much-loved herds. 

Sadly, Magpie Models closed down production for a period in the mid 2000s, when the company was sold and the next owner didn't do anything with it (other than selling blank shell kits for a short time). My own Magpie herd, although still treasured, started to go a bit dormant, too. With no new arrivals, the ponies on their shelves were just there on display, looking pretty but doing nothing. 

In 2017, Magpie reopened, now owned by a fellow hobbyist, full of enthusiasm for bringing the brand back into the spotlight, and new horses into the homes of collectors. Although there's not been a new take on the old regular run colours, several totally new limited edition Personality collections have been released.

Recently I was lucky enough to find two of them on the second-hand market, and the first parcel of this new generation of Magpie ponies came to join my collection.

Their release names are Orion (left, Personality Collection 11, 2018) and Jecquelyn Hyde (right, Personality Collection 12, 2019), but I've yet to find the perfect Harecroft Something names for my own two - I'm still thinking!

This striking and unusual colour isn't a roany pinto, but an extreme fleabitten grey - she was based on a real pony the Magpie owner saw at a horse show, with extensive 'bloody shoulder' type markings all over one side!.

This other side, like the real pony, has barely any condensed patches of heavy speckling, and a very light coating of flecks through the rest of her coat.

What makes this already-unusual pony even more interesting is that each one painted was given similar but slightly different markings. I found a small copy of a workshop photograph online, showing nine models standing together before they went up for sale and off to different homes, and when I emailed Heather at Magpie she sent me a larger copy - I can easily pick out which one is now mine!

The welsh pony mould remains my favourite Magpie mould, even though I'm a big fan of the donkey, I think this is one of the nicest pony sculpts in the model world, and one works just as well in solid common colours as these more exuberant paintjobs!

Orion is also an interesting colour, a dark buckskin with rabicano roaning on each side. The old Magpie regular run 'dun' colours were actually buckskins too, as they were never given dorsal stripes, but at least this time he's designed that way on purpose!

Another feature of his rabicano colour is the little streaks of white hair at the base of the tail, carefully put in when the hair was bundled up for each pony.

His mane came laid on the off side, which I always think is the most flattering 'display side' for the mould, as the slight curve in the neck has the pony bent toward the camera.

When I emailed Heather at Magpie, she asked if my second-hand ponies came with their registration certificates, and kindly offered to post me reprints if not. So here they are, with their smart new copies of their original paperwork.

A Breyerfest special

It's Breyerfest weekend, and although I'm sitting out the whole online participation thing just as completely as the usual live event in Kentucky, I thought it'd be nice to mark it on the blog by going back through the Breyerfest special runs in my collection.

I've mostly gathered these on the second hand market - several years down the line you can often pick up a bargain Celebration model for only a few pounds more than a regular run costs these days. A few were trades or pickups by American collector friends who went in person, back in the days when international shipping, customs fees, and exchange rates were all much more favourable.

Let's take a look back; I've arranged them by year, so we'll start with the oldest in my herd...

Three keychain special runs - 2000 made, for the year 2000. I'm not normally a decorator fan, but these are sleek and pretty, and were perfect for keeping my conga lines complete back then (I had to give up on that once exclusive clubs and specials came along, and I couldn't afford to track down every release on a mould).

Harecroft Calimero, aka Nobel II, the Celebration model in 2004, 4500 made. The Andalusian Stallion mould looks wonderful in this faintly shaded pale grey, and I'm so glad I got him because the white-grey regular run release, Templado, was far too pearly for my taste! I can't actually remember how or where I bought this one, but can tell it was a few years after his release from the date I took his photograph.

Tommy Turvey's Joker, the 2006 Breyerfest Celebration Model, with a rather random number of 5018 made. He came all the way from the States via Ebay, with a very very long delay which had me worried he'd got lost en route, but he was worth the wait - I've named him Harecroft Solitaire.
I'm surprised we've never had a nice tobiano pinto regular run on this mould, it would be lovely for a paint horse - there was a Collectors' Choice limited edition once but I don't think he ever came into stock in the UK, so doesn't really count to me!

Harecroft Herald of Autumn, release name Rushmore, was a special run for 2007's Breyerfest, with 1250 made. He was my birthday present that same year, a horse I had no idea I was getting, but a wonderful choice because I love his colour and mould combination, I don't think we've ever had such a well-painted roan before or since!

In the summer of 2008, one of my American model-horsey friends was going to Breyerfest in Kentucky, and a couple of weeks later, I was going to the Julip open weekend down in Dorset. We arranged a trade - I'd pick up a live show special one-of-a-kind Julip for her, and she'd get that year's Celebration model for me.
Luckily, the horse I got in exchange for posting off one carefully wrapped Julip was one of the most sought-after Breyerfest runs ever...

Yes, I have an Alborozo!
A run of 6000 models might sound fairly big, but this was a one-off use of the mould, destroyed afterwards, so the Alborozo sculpt would never again be used for any regular or special run release. Needless to say, a lot of people wanted him (both for Original Finish collecting, and for custom potential), and we still see him reliably making £300+ on the second hand market. Mine, Harecroft Fitzcarraldo, will never be for sale - long before he was a Breyer model, a photograph of the real stallion Alborozo was my computer's desktop background, so I was delighted to add him to my herd, and still treasure him to this day.

As well as Alborozo, my friend asked if I liked any of the other special runs, and offered to brave the queues to pick them up for me. I told her my favourite, and my second favourite, and that I didn't mind which she managed to get, and would understand if it was too manic on the day, or they'd sold out - but I ended up with both!

Riesling, a chestnut hanoverian, 1250 made. Harecroft Admiral Of The Fleet is one of the most handsome warmbloods in my whole collection, a mould and colour combination which hasn't been bettered - this boy is still part of my show string a decade later, despite a lot of more recent releases. Breyer did another similar bright chestnut on the Salinero mould, a portrait of dressage star Mistral Hojris, but I didn't get him because they're too similar to need both.

My final 2008 model, a Tent Special clydesdale called Saltire (mine renamed Harecroft Dughall Mor), 1500 made. Over the years Breyer have tried several different ways of doing extensive sabino patterns, this one has a masked blaze on his face but his leg and belly markings are softly faded in with a speckly airbrushed effect - at first glance he could be mistaken for a grey, but I'm sure they intended him as a heavily roaned black sabino - look at the deliberately uneven shading on his barrel and neck.

2012's Breyerfest had a racing theme, so this special run of 1400 was named Aintree. Quite why they chose to pair a thoroughbred mould with a decidedly non-tb coat colour I don't know - to me it would've been more logical to have this paintjob on a QH mould and spotlight that other breeds are raced too! But he's a good-looking horse for my collection, now named Harecroft Shooting Star, with beautiful subtle dappling and shading which bring him to life, and I just have him down as a crossbred to explain the colour!

I didn't get the 2012 Breyerfest Celebration Model, Mariah's Boon (4400 made), for several years after his release - I'd coveted them on US ebay but couldn't afford the shipping and import fees, so when one came up on UK ebay, I jumped at the chance to own this great big gorgeous cob, with one blue eye and one brown. As with the other Celebration models, he's a portrait of a real horse, so I'm really happy that they chose one of my favourite breed types this time, and he really stands out on my shelf.
Harecroft King's Ransom is the first of these Breyerfest models to have arrived after I'd got my blog to post him on, read his post (with lots more pictures!) here.

Another chance find on UK ebay, for the same price as a regular run - Marsh Tacky Two Step was a special run of 1200, in 2013. Although I picked him just because of the dramatic mould and unusual colour, I enjoyed reading up on the Carolina Marsh Tacky while he was on his way to me, one of those moments when model horses proved their educational value as they introduced me to a breed I'd never even heard of til I looked up what his strange long name could mean. I gave him a name with meaning in return, mine's called Carolina Fox Trot, the fox trot being the gait unique to this breed.
He's one of very few models in my collection with primitive dun markings, with the wide band of pale frosting on his mane, and barring on his legs, shoulders, crest, and rump. Another who arrived after I'd started my blog, you can see more pictures and a review of him, here.

For quite some time I've been a big fan of the 1930s books written by Aimé Tschiffely, an excellent combination of travel guide, nature and social history, all with loyal horses as the main characters along with the author on his travels. His most famous is Tschiffely's Ride, the account of his journey from Buenos Ares to Washington DC with criollo horses Mancha and Gato (which he also told, from their point of view, in The Tale of Two Horses the following year).
I'd already got my much-loved Julip portraits of Mancha, the pinto who painted myself at a Julip open day, and Gato who was ordered from Julip's workshop as he needed a sprayed colour. But when Breyer announced they were making the pair for Breyerfest 2015, I knew I just HAD to get hold of them somehow! Again, UK ebay provided the chance, with a retailer listing some special runs they'd managed to get hold of.
My Julips will always be my favourite version of Mancha and Gato, but I'm proud to own this official set too.

Every now and then, a Breyerfest Celebration Model pops up second-hand on UK ebay for an astonishingly reasonable price, less in fact than a current regular run would set you back. I always feel lucky to be the first buyer to spot them before they're snapped up in a flash, and that's how I got Imperador das Aguas JM, from 2016 (8000 made). He's got a lovely warmth of his shading, and brilliantly done dapples of varying shapes and sizes, one of the best grey paintjobs there's been!

This beauty is Harecroft Suryajhuke - officially Nazruddin, 2017's Celebration Model, and one of the most tempting they've done. Much as I like models of stock breeds and quarter horses, I do love it when Breyer broaden their horizons a bit and focus on some of the brilliant and important breeds from the rest of the world. A big fan of the marwari horse, I was happy to see he was the Celebration release and not a more exclusive and limited run, as they're always much easier to find in the resale market in the weeks and months after Breyerfest. I spent a long while looking at photographs, sizing up the costs and risks of getting him shipped in, regretting the times I got outbid by a lot on UK listings, and then finally seeing that Buy-it-Now button and being able to grab one for my own! He's every bit as lovely as I'd hoped, and will remain a real favourite in my herd.

2020 brought the first online Breyerfest, and stunning bright bay event horse Ballynoe Castle RM as the Celebration Model. Perhaps because of the more international nature of selling online tickets, a lot more of him came up on UK ebay than previous years' horses, and I was able to buy mine (Harecroft American Dream) new in his box, for a reasonable price, without all the waiting and agonising over getting hold of a Nazruddin!
He's also the first Breyerfest horse that I've met in real life - more about him and my photos of the real one, here.

And finally, two Stablemate special runs from the same year, because a seller split a couple of 5-piece sets and listed them individually on Ebay, I treated myself to the ones I liked - Durham the warmblood (Harecroft Gauntlet), and Viaje the mustang (Harecroft Gleaming North). Again, a couple of extra photos in this post where I first introduced them.

This year's Breyerfest is going ahead, in it's virtual form, right now. I'm not sure what and when, but I hope everyone 'attending' in this high tech way is enjoying the experience - perhaps buying models online will be less stressful than the old infamous heat-and-queues of Kentucky Horse Park, and certainly more people outside the USA will be able to join in this way.
This year's Celebration horse is a flat-out stunner, a brilliant flashy and detailed paintjob on a very good and relatively new mould, so I can see her being one of the most popular ever.
And there's so many other runs, there's bound to be something for everyone, no matter what your taste in models.
Anyone got a wishlist drawn up?
Have you bagged what you wanted already, and just have to wait for the postman?
Or do you, like me, rely on the resale market and try to get hold of Breyerfest models without actually joining in?

Tales from the Body Box - Breyer Paint By Numbers pony gets a new lease of life!

Today's introduction comes from a Breyer paint-by-numbers kit, wilfully mis-used!

In the original boxed set, you got a set of acrylic paints, a brush, and a blank white resin model which is, rather than printed like traditional paint-by-numbers boards, actually cast covered in grooves which mark the colour outlines and numbers. I can't find a photo of the exact same sculpt as I have, but this one is the mould which replaced it when they updated the sets - you can see the deep lines in the resin.

The trouble with this is that the outlines and numbers would still be extremely visible after the painting was completed, which would bother me. Clearly, it also bothered whoever had this body before I bought it - they've been filled and smoothed over with what looks like Apoxie Sculpt! Now, I can't remember where this one came from; whether it was bought from a friend, from ebay, or a sales table - at any rate, somebody who gave up on trying to fix it, and passed it along to sit in someone else's body box instead!

I found the poor thing a few weeks ago when digging through the dustiest corner of long-neglected resin bodies, which have been there around a decade, while my painting habit switched on and off intermittently in chunks of years, but never ventured toward tackling those bigger models.
At first I thought 'Hmm, I remember getting that', then 'It's actually really nice', and decided to move it to a slightly more prominent if I keep seeing this I'll feel guilty enough about the delay to paint it kind of place. And it worked! One evening last week, I was feeling in a painty kind of mood, none of the Stablemates I picked up seemed to inspire me, then my eye settled on the old paint-by-numbers pony. With a bit of sanding and smoothing prep, it was ready to finally get a coat of colour.

I don't know what breed the sculpt was originally intended as - the lines in the mould and the box design to copy showed a bay leopard-spotted appaloosa - but to me it read as either a rather chunky arabian, or a pony with a lot of arabian influence, like the welsh. The head especially looks ponylike, so I decided to go for a welshie, and that's what she became...

I chose a relatively simple colour, typical of the breed, and plenty of white markings to lift it with some flashy brightness. Some sabino roaning or body markings were a possibility, but as I went along she just seemed to feel right staying relatively plain.

I really do like this sculpt, there's a lot of energy in the pose and it matches the lively character of the welsh breeds, even if that wasn't what Breyer meant us to do with it! I wonder if perhaps the reason I'm enjoying it so much is cos it's so little seen - the plastic moulds are released over and over again in different colours and there's customs too, we get familiar with them and they stop being fresh and exciting to look at once you've owned one or seen plenty.
But I've never seen one of these paint-by-numbers kits before, either completed as per the instructions, or by another hobbyist going off-piste and doing their own thing with it. Probably because of those carved lines - small children getting creative painting toy sets might not care about them, but in the model hobby they'd be a deal-breaker - we wouldn't want to photograph and display or show a horse with that much spoiling it's looks and ruining it's realism. But once they're gone, it's a very pretty little thing indeed!

This one reminds me of all those ponies who run away when their owner wants to catch them, high-tailing it off down the field as if to say 'I know I'm faster than you!'

I've named her Harecroft Aderyn Tân, Welsh for 'firebird' (using just the 'bird' part, Aderyn, for short)

Has anyone else tried the Breyer painting kits? They do produce quite a few using standard sculpts without the lines and numbering, and a variety of Stablemates in packs or singly, so there's a lot which can be painted without all the prep work this one had to go through to look decent.
I have had a few of the SM kits, mostly unicorns to snip the horns off and turn back into horses in moulds which are otherwise hard to get hold of - but I always use my own paints, cos I can't get on with other brands (not to mention some of the hideous pastel colour choices they pack them with!)