Schleich parcel day

A little parcel of second-hand Schleich this morning!

I've always thought they did a better job with ponies than horses - the compact, cute sculpting style is a better fit with breeds which are, well, compact and cute! So quite a proportion of my Schleich herd are ponies, foals, and also donkeys which work nicely in their style.

Today's parcel adds a few more to the smaller end of the breed spectrum - starting with one of the tiniest breeds of all, the Falabella.

These two are both custom repaints, by my friend at Last Alliance Studios - although I bought them from a different friend, so they've had at least one home in between since they were painted.

I don't know what real Falabellas are like to know, but this one looks so cheeky, like it could easily be as much trouble as any Shetland pony!

I really like this little mould, I've got the original spotted release from way back when it was new - in fact, I'm pretty sure that was my first ever Schleich model. It looks really good in one-off colours as well as the familiar original finish paintwork; this fiery golden shade stands out very bright and pretty!

And the second one of the pair, in silver dapple - he looks a little bit more innocent, despite being the same sculpt - it must be the way their faces are painted!

You scratch my back, and I'll scratch yours! They're going to have to have matching names, I just haven't though of them yet.

After this Falabella stallion, Schleich released a mare of the same breed, I got her free when I bought some other models once! Today's parcel included a repaint on the same mould, this time by the seller they came from.

As well as the repaints, I'm now the proud owner of some rather sweet original finish Shetland ponies!

This is another surprisingly good quality sculpt, it catches the shetlandy build and character rather nicely, and I think I like it more than their older trotting one, which is something unusual for me - in general, I find the newer sculpts get less accurate and appealing, but here they've improved the face a lot, and not lost track of proportions or angles in the body.

Now, there ARE braids in the mane, which I know can be a 100% hard NO for a lot of collectors, and in general I'm totally with you on the grumbling about putting stupid bows and frills on everything - but these honestly aren't too bad.

Look at them again - they're simple three-strand plaits with neat elastic bands on the end. The exact kind of plait people would put in ponies' manes, if they were a plaiting kind of person. Now I've had my shetland nine years and never seen need to plait her, but I know some do it, for various reasons : I've seen owners using a row of plaits to keep a mane tamed and clean before a show or drive, and I've seen kids putting these sorts of plaits in their pet ponies just for fun.

It's not the ridiculously over-the-top impractical kind of looped and criss-crossed and beaded and bowed braiding Schleich like to inflict on horse figures, this time; it's reasonable, realistic plaits like ponies might put up with from their owners in real life, heh

The other side. I'm not entirely sure what colour they're aiming at here, it doesn't really match any of the true options for a creamy coloured coat :

Perlino is a cream body with darker mane and tail, but usually has darker legs too and would have pink skin not grey on the nose.

Cremello would have legs the same shade as the body colour, but the mane & tail would be white and the nose would be pink.

Pale palomino would have the grey nose, but also a blonde or white mane and tail, never darker than the body.

I think I'll just have to put 'cream' in her caption on my website, and pretend it doesn't bug me that my other models have accurate colour info and this one has a vague descriptive term instead!

The foal that comes with her is a very sweet little thing, it's got that fluffy teddybear look of small ponies in their first fluffy baby coats. Both the cream pony and this chestnut foal came from 2017's Horse Club advent calendar set.

This liver chestnut was from a Pony Agility set - every example of this mould seems to have been sold in sets or special editions, there was never a common single regular run release (which is a shame, as I'd like to collect more of them!)

Again, the braids really don't aggravate me, and the green elastics on this one are a little bit nicer than the pink ones!

Her colour is much more possible, a simple dark chestnut with a slightly lighter mane, she looks too shiny in this low outdoor light but inside she's fine and less plasticky!