I wouldn't normally have a second CollectA order so soon on the heels of the previous one, but with supply issues the way they are this year, I thought I might not get another chance at these releases til next year if I left it too long, and grabbed some of the very first batch to reach this country - by the time I did my daily check to see if they were in stock yet, it was already down to three of each left!
First, one of my favourites from the 2021s, the Chincoteague pony. A great little pose with spirit and attitude, and a well done colour with shading and crisp edges. I've named her Harecroft Summer Breeze.
As with all CollectA horses these days, there's the inevitable chunky legs, but on these small tough pony breeds it doesn't matter too much, as they still feel in proportion and not TOO thick. I love the look on her face, big eyes full of expression despite being painted plain gloss black, they catch a shiny sparkle from the natural light.
For a pony breed, it is quite a large model, and probably wouldn't work strictly to scale if you needed to have the right height difference between the Chincoteague and some other breed in your collection. She stands well above the older CollectA sculpts of pony breeds - I held her beside a Dartmoor and a Morgan from the same brand, cos I happened to have those two to hand, and she was only millimetres off matching the Morgan in height, but utterly dwarfing the Dartmoor pony which in real life would only measure an inch or two smaller at the withers!
This is their second adult domestic donkey, the older one was a very sullen-looking chunky creature which went out of production (or at least out of stock on model horsey websites) a while before I got into CollectA, so it's about time they brought out a replacement.
I mean, it's not bad. If it was terrible, I just wouldn't have bought it, I'm not a completist collector who finds huge satisfaction in getting everything whether they like it or not, so the fact I even have one proves that I thought it was still worth the money, and that it's good enough for me to happily have it for my shelf, and to give my donkey foal a mum to stand next to.
But the sculpt just doesn't feel perfect to me : the anatomy of the head shape is off, and the feet are too big. And it wouldn't be fair to just pretend I love it and not point out the flaws, that's not what reviewing's about and I'm writing here to share my honest opinion.
Here is the Paso Fino mare, who I've named Harecroft La Pluma. I think it's a slightly odd choice to go for dark palomino when the Peruvian Paso was done in a very pale chestnut, and as two breeds which people very often get mixed up or confused in their minds anyway, I'd have made an effort to make them look as different as possible!
Again, and perhaps most noticeable here out of all the figures I'm sharing today, the legs are huge and thick, which really does detract from the overall look of the horse. If you take a look at a real example of the breed, you can see the impression is of a chunky horse on very fine legs.
If you ignore the thickness of the legs, their pose is actually nicely done, capturing one of the distinctive gaits of the breed, which can best be described as a sort of running walk on fast forward, they move very quickly with tiny short steps.
The tail is also a distinctive trait of the breed, curling into a J shape naturally in many horses. Sadly some have it emphasised or created artificially with surgery by people value the look, and the prizes, over the welfare of the horse (you get a small percentage of awful unethical people involved with many showring breeds), but that's a minority and in general if you see a paso horse gaiting with a kinked out tail, it's because he holds it that way himself.
Finally, Konik ponies! I've been looking forward to this one since they were first announced, as a herd of semi-feral Konik ponies live on a conservation project near me, and I've been lucky enough to visit and photograph them a few times.
This brighter light shows the sculpt better, but washes her colour out a bit - the first shot is the better match for the paintwork. She reminds me a lot of CollectA's earlier Camargue pony sculpt, which makes sense as they're a similar type with a similar outdoors natural lifestyle, though the more primitive Konik is much heavier in the head and less well-built in the shoulder - which is correct conformation for their breeds, rather than an insult!
I love the way they've done her mane, instead of plain black there's streaks of brown in there too, and the windswept look suits her very much. And look at the fluff inside those ears!
I'd already received the Konik foal in my previous CollectA order, but saved him up til I'd got the mare as well, so now he gets to join the photoshoot.
His colour looks very watered down at first glance, but many of the real Konik babies are born very pale, and gradually come into their dark points as they shed their baby fur at the end of their first summer, so it's perfectly accurate that they gave the foal a much lighter colouration than his matching mum.
They make a really nice pair together; I've named them Wichura (gale) and Huragan (hurricane) because they arrived on the day of a really rough storm, all howling winds and rain whipping in sideways, and it suits their blue dun colouring, like dark grey stormy skies.
I'm not sure how CollectA decide which models get a foal and which don't, but I'm glad they decided to go for it this time. It isn't as simple as releasing babies if their adult example of the breed is a mare, because we have single stallions (Friesian, Fjord, Tennessee Walking Horse) who've had matching foals made, and plenty of mares (Akhal-Teke, Arabian, Missouri Fox Trotter, Russian Don, Belgian and Dutch drafters, British Spotted Pony, and Percheron) who haven't. Who knows!
Here's a couple more shots of them together to end with...
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