Breyerfest special runs Mamacita y Chico

I have another Breyerfest release to introduce, and this one's a matching pair!

In 2016 the theme was 'carnival', so all the special run models were Latin American or Iberian breeds. The Andalusian Mare and Foal were sculpted by Brigitte Eberl, we've talked about her work on here before, and I'm a real fan of the style - the horses have a lot of life and character, and there's a rougher texture to the finish on muscles and skin creases, they're not crisp and smooth and stylised like some sculpts. Eberl horses seem to be handsome and naturalistic rather than pretty and idealised, and I rate that highly when picking my favourite moulds!

The mare Mamacita was described as a sooty buckskin, but I think she looks more like a bay. And I'm going to have her as a bay - so she can be an Altér Real rather than an Andalusian! I'm always up for adding a rarer breed to my collection, and it's nice to have another Portuguese breed rather than adding to the loads of Spanish ones I've got already.

Altér Real horses are always bay, but lots of different shades - here's a good picture of a herd where you can see some lighter, some darker, but all very similar looking.
Even though the mould was sculpted as an Andalusian, Altér Real are said to be generally a bit more solid and chunky than the main Portuguese Lusitano bloodlines, and that's because old Andalusian blood was crossed in to undo the influence of some bad cross breeding in the Napoleonic era, which diluted the classic Iberian type toward being a lighter cavalry horse - using the unaltered pure Andalusian helped revert them to their older style. So a model which was sculpted as an Andalusian makes a perfectly good example of an Altér Real, too, as long as it's bay!

I was struggling to catch the light before the sun went too far down (these were taken with the fake grass mat resting on the roof of my mum's car to get high enough, I'd used up too much time on the jumping horse in my previous post, and only had minutes left!) so only got two pictures rather than the usual full photoshoot, but I did at least remember to take one of the 'wrong' side this time!

Here's her matching foal Chico, again described as buckskin in the release text but I think he works fine as a bay - a lot of foals are very much lighter than their adult colour, including having pale points on the legs instead of the jet black they'll grow in as they shed into adult coats. Again, here's a herd photo, of some Altér Real mares and foals this time - those babies at the front look just as pale as my mini one!

He's an alert-looking little chap, and I also feel it's nice to have a foal sculpted as a distinctive breed type, with his Iberian head. Most of the foal moulds are rather generic light riding horse TB/sport-type or stock horses, so they can be paired with lots of different adults, so it's good to see the expense and attention being spent on creating a good Spanish/Portuguese foal, even though they only have one mare he could go with.

I've given them matching pair names, which are also seasonal! They were posted to me on the 21st of December, the winter solstice, so I looked up the Portuguese term for that and it's 'Solstício de inverno' - so I've named the mum Harecroft Solstício, and her baby is Harecroft Inverno.