This week I had a little boxful of CollectA models to tick off my OF wishlist; some brand new to the range this year, and some older breeds which I just hadn't got round to buying yet.
The Camarillo White Horse, the last of the 2020 releases I still needed to tick off the to-buy list.
He's now named Harecroft Angelo, because I made a typo when saving this angled photograph, accidentally titled it 'CamarilloAngel' instead of 'CamarilloAngle', and this mistake seemed perfect to adapt into the Spanish-origin male name for him!
It's a nice sculpt, quite different to any of their other horses so far. I'd have liked to see a bit of the blond-ish shading on the tail as well as the mane; I'm really not quite sure why they'd have decided that a tail's any more likely to stay spotlessly clean when in real life it's quite the opposite and a shampooed horse's mane will usually stay far cleaner for longer than the tail does!
It's quite curious thinking that there's more CollectA Camarillo White Horses in the world than real-life individuals of this breed, they've always been a small population (a single herd, founded by one man and his stallion - read the history here) and even with efforts to keep them going, numbers rise very slowly. There must be a lot of endangered species where there's more models and toys with collectors and children, than living animals left in the world, but it must happen a lot less with breeds of domestic species.
Next up, the 2021 Hackney. He's a gorgeous colour - CollectA chestnuts in the past have tended to be rather flat and plain, but they've really given this one a vibrant deep colour, and I love that he's got sharp painted socks with defined edges, not faded-out airbrushing. His paintjob has to be one of their best chestnuts yet.
He's also got a great expression, pricked up ears and a general look of enthusiasm without being too wild and unbiddable!
I've named him Harecroft High Society, as my only other Hackney model is called Harecroft High and Mighty, and I like to do family naming themes when I can!
But the big down side to this model is those huge chunky legs.
On most of their other recent breeds, the thick legs don't bother me - when they're drafters or cobby horses, they're meant to have that much bone, when they're ponies, being short and chunky kind of fits with their proportions without standing out too badly.
But on the breeds which are very fine with neat long wiry limbs and sharply defined joints, thick legs just look so out of place they don't even resemble the breed they're meant to be. I'll still file this model as a Hackney on my website, but I don't think he looks much like one.
The only other adult horse release for CollectA's first half of the year is also my favourite - the Mongolian Horse. I've had an interest in this breed for many years, and although I've got a few roughly-the-right-build ponies which I've dressed in Mongolian-style halters for my collection already, it's brilliant to finally have a specially sculpted model on the market!
They've really captured the distinctive proportions of these horses, with large heads, thick necks, flat backs, and a certain narrow/shallowness to the shoulders and chest which it's hard to pinpoint or put into words, but easy to see when it looks 'right'.
His colour's nicely done too, with just a bit of shading and a very very fine airbrush speckling which doesn't really show up in the photos but in-hand makes it very clear he's sprayed all over rather than making use of bare coloured plastic with just the legs and mane'n'tail painted, like they've relied on for older bays. I'd have liked a little bit more muzzle shading, to include more of his nostrils, but it's not too disappointing that I don't enjoy him as he is.
The other side, I like the little tuft of mane left at the shoulders. These domestic Mongolian horses have a longer 'falling' mane like any other horse or pony if it's left to grow, rather than the stiff 'standing' mane of the Przewalski.
A lot of people assume the upright manes are a natural feature based on common ancestry or primitive genes, but it's just a tradition to cut or trim them in certain ways. Some you'll see with manes left long and tied in bunches for racing to keep out of the horses' faces, some are cut straight across the bottom to make a thick choppy edge, the most common cut is short with a few inches of bristle so they stand upright, like this model.
Mongolian horses aren't given names in the way other cultures do, with the same sort of distinct name words we'd expect people or pets to have - their horse-naming words are descriptive terms, instead. So the name a horse is called or referred to by might translate as 'small dark brown', 'dun with short tail' or 'chestnut pinto who belongs to [person's name]'. With this in mind, I've called my model Tsaivar Khüren, which simply means 'light brown'.
My final buy in this batch was my second attempt at getting the same pony!
When I first bought the bay Dartmoor stallion, he arrived and I was deeply disappointed with the paintjob - it was so bad, I couldn't stand keeping him as he was, so I repainted him. You can see the colour I got in this photo, but if anything mine was even worse, with the paint on the head, neck and mane (which was black in the promo pics) looking a sickly faded greyish purple, and the dapples being spots of greyish pink.
As time passed and I kept on buying CollectAs, this left my original finish line-up in the weird state of 'every release except the Dartmoor', which felt increasingly awkward the longer it went on!
I know models often change a little bit throughout the run, as paintwork's adjusted on purpose, or just evolves as the factory workers find little shortcuts and easier/better ways of doing things on the production line. My old Dartmoor dated to around 2013, so perhaps enough time had passed that the paintwork was better now, and I'd get one good enough to keep?
If not, I could always repaint it again, so it was worth the risk...
And look, he's fine!
Ok, so there's still the spot dapples, which he'd be even better without, but they're much closer to his coat colour now, so they don't stand out as stupid-looking pink dots, and best of all, the paint on the head and neck is black, not washed-out lilac!
I've named him Harecroft Ragged Robin, after a native wild flower which can be found in the national park this breed calls home. I think nature-based names work so well for native and feral ponies, and this one's perfect for a stallion cos if he was real he could be known as Robin for short, a typically male name instead of something which sounds too flowery and mare-like!
I did notice after taking the photos that his shading isn't the same on both sides - oops! But he's really a pretty little thing, this improved paintwork does justice to the quality sculpt underneath (and look : fine, slim and detailed limbs, cos this is an older model). I'll be more than happy to have him on my shelves, finally rounding out my complete CollectA collection up to this point.
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