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.
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