A Breyer parcel from Germany - Zorah Belle, and some 2023 Stablemates

UK Breyer collectors recently received the bad news that this year's models wouldn't be coming in June as expected - the company which used to import and distribute them emailed all the sellers to say their orders were cancelled and no stock was coming.

It's possible another import company will take on the brand in future, but right now all British Breyer fans are left with the choice of patiently waiting in hope they eventually end up on the market here again, or ordering in from overseas.

I decided that I just couldn't wait and risk missing out on the must-have model from this year's releases, the Fjord I absolutely HAD to add to my collection after many years of being a fan of the breed, and much excitement back when they announced we were getting a regular run on this gorgeous new mould!
And if I was ordering that horse, it was the ideal time to get some WIA models I'd had on my wishlist too - I gave them a post to themselves, here. And then I may as well put the 2023 Stablemates on the order as well, cos they might never reach this country directly either (or be as elusive and fleetingly in stock as the last batch were!), so in the end I had a nice big parcel on the way from Germany.

By the way, if anyone else in the UK is considering buying from overseas during this time of Breyer drought and uncertainty, I can happily recommend Modellpferdeversand as an option. They're amazingly quick and efficient, I've been buying my WIA models from there for a while now and in my experience parcels arrive almost as quickly as ones bought from companies over here (maybe one day longer, for the extra sorting and travel which happens between the ports)

There's no customs and import fees like we get hit with if buying from the USA, and postage is €11, dropping to just €5 if you spend over a certain amount, so it's not excessive.
The site works in English, and Paypal automatically converts currency for you when you go through the checkout, so no need to worry about how to pay in Euros.
And be aware that the prices you see on the website will CHANGE after you log in - something to do with VAT tax rates, we pay less per model than other countries. For example, my Traditional scale buy is marked up at €49.65 on the site, but drops to €41.72 if I log in with my UK-addressed account.

Ok, so international buying option thoroughly covered, here's what was in my parcel!

The NORWEGIAN FJORD! Hurrah! As I said, I wanted this one so badly from the moment I saw it, out of all this year's new models this was the one which jumped out, and I'm so glad to have managed to get hold of her.

She's a portrait model of a real mare, Sweetwater's Zorah Belle, who's been successful at sport driving in the USA. The photo on the box shows her with a clipped off coat, but the model hasn't been given the paler body and 'edge' lines where the clip ends, so this must be her natural unclipped summer-coated look. I've called mine Harecroft Astrilde, after a Norse goddess (using an alternate variation of the name, because Breyer used the more common 'Astrid' for another Fjord release!)

Her colour's nicely chosen, not too bright and orangey, but not too pale and wishy-washy either, and the dark points are done well, with the black down the middle of the mane and a straight neat dorsal stripe, the shading on her legs is especially subtle, and the black nostrils faded gently into a pale nose are just right!

Breyer packaged her facing this way in the box, but I prefer how she looks from the other side - a combination of the leg position looking more balanced, and the ear being visible rather than swamped in her forelock!

She's a nice sculpt, a good representation of the modern breed, which is slightly lighter and more like a native riding pony type, than the small-draft-horse ancestry they come from.

I wonder what other colour Fjords we might see in future, I doubt we'll ever have a regular run grey dun (grulla) because they used that for a Breyerfest special, and that only leaves a couple of other shades even found in the breed. Perhaps they'll just use the alternate untrimmed mane version of the mould to bring out other breeds on this sculpt.

Now, on to the Stablemates!

This is the Darley mould, sculpted as an Arabian but so much the American show-ring type, with the long-limbed action both high-stepping AND stretched, that it doesn't resemble the old-world Arabian as I know it. So I show all mine as the National Show Horse breed, created as a cross between the Arabian and the Saddlebred for exhibitors who wanted something part way between the two, flamboyant movement combined with Arabian posture and prettiness. I think this mould does a great job of that!

This is my third Darley, and the first one to have serious balance problems. He just did not stand up, straight out of the packaging, and even after the hot water treatment he's leaning very much to one side - I had to tilt the fake grass base at quite an angle to keep him upright for a photo, and now he's standing with a thick coin under his front foot to level him up on the shelf.

The black paintjob is plain but the perfect point between matte and glossy, so it looks like the sheen on a clean and healthy horse coat, rather than too plasticky. I wish the sock had masking rather than that fade-out (leaving it off entirely would've been more realistic than such a blurry edge!) but the face marking is nice enough.

Next out of the box was this Quarter Horse on the mini Smart Chic Olena mould. And guess what - he didn't stand up either. The standing front leg is shorter than the others, meaning he dramatically lurches to one side every time you try to let go of him, and ends up flat on the ground. Great, that's two out of the packaging, and two out of two don't stand up?! Where is Breyer's quality control these days?
I couldn't do much with the hot water, pushing the foreleg slightly outwards while trying to adjust the horse's stance and balance by bending the opposite hindleg up bit to lift that foot and let him lean back in the right direction, but even after all that I still had to use a tilted base board, a small bit of grit from the path under his front foot, AND take my photo really quickly before a breath of breeze had him falling on his face for the hundredth time, hah. Like the black horse before him, he's currently got a coin under his foot, and is going to have to keep it when he moves to his final display position on the shelf later on.

Aside from his inability to stand up, the model is actually really nice - a light and bright colour with plenty of variation in shade given by the thickness of paint application, and chestnut is perfect for the breed. The mould is named after real stallion Smart Chic Olena, and many of his offspring and later descendants are the same colour, I've met some of them at a stud over here, and every one was chestnut in one shade or another!

Now, one which stands just fine on her own four feet! It's quite funny cos this mould has been released in solid chestnut, chestnut roan, and now a chestnut based appaloosa with roaning, so it's like they add a little bit more detail each time they want a regular run colour!

The spots are done by hand, with deliberate placement rather than random paint-spatter, and while this means they look less like, well, spattered paint, they do look amusing from above, where you can clearly see the painter had got a method going - four symmetrical and evenly spaced big spots, then a series of equally symmetrical and evenly spaced small ones to fit around them. From the side, it doesn't look so mathematical!

One of the older moulds in this batch, the Stock Horse Mare dates back to when Stablemates were still released in generations, she's a G3 sculpt, which were all done by the same artist (who also did the very best era of Safari horses!), and have distinctive chiselled faces as well as chunky legs with big joints and feet. A little too chunky for the Appaloosa breed, so I show my spotted ones on this mould as Colorado Ranger Horse instead.

Annnd another one whose sculpt doesn't match his official breed, but at least he does stand up, hah! This one's sold as a Clydesdale, but they're a tall, rangy and rather narrow heavy horse, quite athletic and leggy for a draft, not bulky little balls of muscle like this chap! I remember discussing the exact same model with another collector, and I think my eventual best guesses for a more accurate breed were the Breton (which is more famously chestnut, but does come in bay), and the Rhenish German Coldblood, which is suddenly a popular breed allocation in the hobby thanks to Breyer bringing one out for Breyerfest the other year! I haven't decided which yet, so I don't know if I need to name him in German or French!

This one stands up! And looks like the breed it's meant to be! Hurrah!
The colour's nicely done, a deep and rich shade of palomino with the true white mane and tail done with neat masking. I especially like the fine zig zag at the end of the mane where the edge has to interpret where the sculpted detail blends into the coat, but does it without looking blocky or misaligned. The shading on the face is also nicely done, sometimes palominos don't get given the dark noses they need to reflect the fact they have dark skin which shows wherever the coat is very fine.

he final single horse in this year's batch, the mustang, in grey pinto. The little flash of white is quite small, I'd maybe have preferred to see a bit more across the body or neck of the horse just for the sake of being more striking to look at, but he's not at all bad, a perfectly good colour for the breed, and the sculpt is dramatic and energetic - and yes, it stands up!

I've tweaked his breed from just 'Mustang' to Spanish Mustang, because this mould was originally released as an Andalusian, so even in a mustang colour, it carries all the conformation of the Spanish ancestors and can join my website's page of that breed instead.

As well as the individual horses packed on cards, this year saw the release of another 4-piece set. This time, rather than being grouped by breed type or colour/pattern, the theme is 'Poetry in Motion', which is a bit vague - I suppose the link is that all the moulds are moving rather than standing?

One of my favourites, despite not normally being overly keen on the mould (all that mane and tail is a bit too much for my taste!), the colour just works here. Morgans can be roan, and I like the application of the white spray, so fine it captures the speckly look you see if you inspect a roan coat up close, but from a distance it blends into smooth pale colour. They also remembered to leave the darker head, and if you look at the very end of his nose, he's got a hint of more gingery shading there, like a lot of bays have in real life.

Here's a sculpt which wasn't released as any official breed - she's known as the Running Mare! In this set, she's described as a Mustang, which...is ok, I suppose? It's a very middling sort of mould, no strong conformational traits in any direction, quite shallow through the body with barely any withers, and a small angular rump. I've got one other, which I allocated as a Brumby, another feral breed without selective breeding to improve type or maintain good conformation, so I'll put this one as a Brumby as well, just so I'm keeping two of a mould together rather than cos I think she can't stay what she was sold as.

Another one I was keen to get, this was my deciding factor on whether or not I really needed that set on my order! As I said on the previous page, I've been collecting this G2 Warmblood mould specifically for a really long time now, so any regular runs jump out as something I really ought to tick off the wishlist, even though I know I can't get EVERY release on a mould these days, with too many inaccessible exclusives out there.

This stallion is the colour known as dunskin, what happens when a buckskin horse also gets the dun gene. A lovely creamy pale shade, with frosting along the mane and at the top of the tail, and barring on the legs - an impressive level of detail to bother with for a regular run! Sold as an American Warmblood, where there's a lot more variety in the colours than the majority of older European warmbloods, so I'm happy with keeping that as his breed allocation.

The final one from the Poetry In Motion set, and it's the Stablemates portrait of Valegro in grey. We've already had the mould in fleabitten grey with dark points, fairly recently, so I'm surprised they've gone for another so soon, but then they've also done him in dark bay more than once, so I don't think they worry too much about repeating colours! These are supposed to be dapples, but I always think they look more like heavy Tetrarch/Chubari spotting.

He's got a handsome head, and (apart from the tiny feet!) it's a nice well observed little mould, capturing the dressage movement where the horse trots as close to on-the-spot as possible - you can see the concentration on his face.

By this point I was pretty close to reaching the half price postage point, so I thought ok, I'll add another little horse, and had a look back through the Stablemates section, thinking I'd probably put in a duplicate of one of the 2023 singles, whichever I've painted least of already. But in amongst them was a 2021 model I didn't have, one of the blind bag releases which I'm pretty sure was only sold in the USA? I can't find that info on Identify Your Breyer, but as a US-based site they probably wouldn't realise that not all countries got all those Stablemates, and didn't know it was a thing which needed noting!

Here he is, one more of those missing G2 Warmbloods to tick off! I don't know if he was ever sold as a certain breed, or even whether his colour's intended as a very light bay or a golden buckskin, but either way he's a handsome addition, and I'm pleased I spotted him when I was compiling my order!

But I looked across at the total, and oh, it was still a tiny bit below the cut-off point for half price postage - for the sake of spending about 30p more, I'd save myself €5, so I HAD to go back and choose one : it was practically a free horse! I decided to stick on one of the 'Handful of Horses' blind bags, I still haven't managed to get the Icelandic from that set, so there was a one in six chance I'd end up with the one I wanted, and if not then I'd be happy enough with a duplicate to repaint.

So I left that til last, when unpacking my parcel, a random surprise which would either be the Icelandic, or one for the body box...right?

Wrong - as soon as I split the packet I knew I'd got something totally different after all, the silver foil inside was reflecting BRIGHT blue, and out came the one-in-96 'chase' piece!

I don't actively collect decorators, but I do find it amusing when the cool colours come to me by chance - especially as this was such a last minute 'oh I'll have a blind bag' moment just to push the order up by a few pence, I very nearly didn't ever own this horse, and now I do, so I'm quite happy for him to have a shelf space, and can appreciate him for the perfectly mad and visually striking little thing that he is! The metallic blue is very vibrant and more my taste than neon pink or multicolour or see-through-and-glittery, I think in general the 'filigree' pattern is one of the most tasteful designs used for decorator releases. And the other one I got from a previous set of blind bags was similar (the copper filigree Django) so at least he'll have someone to stand with on display!