Breyer's Tractor Supply Co Jesse

Another Traditional Breyer to share this week, this one was a special run for the Tractor Supply Company in the USA. Breyer make two or three of these exclusives for the company each year, to be sold only in their stores and not anywhere else or online - they must have some sort of promotional deal between them.

As with all the special runs produced for just one chain (Target, Walmart, JCPenney, probably more I can't think of right now!), it's unfortunate for all of us who live in countries which don't HAVE those shops, cos very few of them ever end up second hand on Ebay over here, and so I haven't got many in my collection.

They're not expensive higher-quality or super-rare releases where they're originally sold, but because the postage and customs import fees to have them sent over would double or triple the cost of the model, they end up way too pricey for me to buy in from the States, and I just keep an eye on UK Ebay and see what crops up. Sometimes, you can catch a bargain and get one of these rarer horses for normal regular run price, or even if you're lucky, cheaper.
That's exactly what happened with this one - he cost me about £5 less than a standard regular run is priced in my country!

I think he's a real stunner, I love the delicate shade of pale palomino with a hint of ashy sootiness in the cool tone and the greyer legs. My own pony goes this colour in winter, so I liked Jesse as soon as I first saw the promo pics, though I never thought I'd get chance to get hold of him here.

Sold as a palomino Quarter Horse, Jesse is a gelding on the 'gaming stock horse' mould - my other in this action sculpt is a mare, so the mould has two versions, letting Breyer make any portrait models match the sex of the real horse. It's a nice athletic build, quite lean but strong, which suits the pose perfectly - he looks like a barrel racer or fit working horse, rather than the plump and muscly show-QH types.

He comes with a good steady base, sculpted to look like a sand arena surface complete with hoofprints, and very strong metal pegs embedded in the hind legs which slot into it firmly, so there's nothing to crack or snap like those horrible clear disc bases used for Huck, Salinero, and Totilas. But when I take my photos I always hide the bases, by pushing the pegs through the 'grass' paper - the very last photo on this post has the base visible, if you want to see.

I've named him Steal My Sunshine, partly cos QHs often have snappy pop-culture names (it's a song title and lyric from one of those one-hit-wonder bands of the 1990s), but also because it's SO hard to catch a bit of sunshine in my garden at this time of year - between the shade of shed, wall, neighbour's roof, and trees, there's about fifteen minutes of daylight which tracks across one side of the lawn and the hedge, so model photography is a great challenge of timing and balancing tricks!

Another mould which looks great from either direction, the sculpt just doesn't have a bad side! I've got him facing this way on my mantelpiece at the moment, and when time comes to find him a shelf gap in the other room with the rest of my collection, it won't matter at all if he fits somewhere facing the other way instead.

All in all, a new addition I'm really pleased to add to my line-up of Breyer quarter horses!

Now, there is one thing I'd like to point out, which doesn't reflect badly on this release, but rather, another on the same mould.
One of the 2020 regular runs was the mare Stingray, who unlike Jesse, is a portrait of a real horse. The thing is, he's much, much closer to getting the colour right, than her own model was!
This is the real Stingray. She's very pale and golden, not at all reddish. It's perhaps even more noticeable in this comparison shot Breyer themselves used in the promotional material and her box packaging.

Here's my Jesse and Stingray together. The pale sooty palomino on the left would've looked perfect for Stingray, if they'd copied her distinctive markings and brand onto that paintjob it would've been a brilliant lookalike.

As it is, I list my own Stingray as a totally different colour (silver bay, to explain the red coat, brownish points, and grey mane and tail), and think she's probably one of Breyer's worst colour-matching fails in recent years. A nice model, yes; a very striking colour on a dynamic and appealing mould, but definitely not like the real horse.

Breyer 2020 Stingray

My birthday was earlier this week, and my present from my mum was one of the 2020 Breyers on my wishlist, Stingray - after a few days of rain and high winds, the weather finally settled enough to get pictures of her.

Getting her ready for her photo session wasn't too straightforward, though, as she arrived with a bit of an issue. Take a look at the shots below...

 

The metal pegs in her feet, and the slots in the base, just did not line up! If you aligned one peg with the slot, the other was a good half-a-hoof-width out of place. 

Luckily I've been in this collecting hobby for long enough to pick up the tips and tricks to solve a problem like this. A glass jug or mug of freshly boiled water does the job in minutes - just submerge the model to the hock in the hot water and it'll soften up and become flexible, then by pressing the hoof against the inside of the jug, you can gently bend the plastic. This is why glass is the best option, you can see exactly what you're doing and not over-correct or get the bend in the wrong part of the limb! I like to carefully slide the leg up and out of the water til it's touching just the rim of the jug, so you can keep the right amount of pressure on as the plastic cools, and it sets in the corrected position. 

The boiling water method works very nicely even for models who've been left with quite dramatically curved or wonky legs during the moulding process, but because Stingray didn't have an obvious mishapen leg to fix, I tweaked both back legs outwards just a fraction, just enough so the slots lined up.

Rather ironically, I then didn't have the correctly fitted base showing in any of her photos, so you'll just have to take my word that it is there, hidden under my sheet of fake grass!

First up, let's get it out of the way : the thing most people have noticed about this model, whether Breyer collectors or Stingray fans from the world of barrel racing - she doesn't match the real horse.

Stingray is a sooty palomino, and a quick google search of her name reveals she varies in colour through the year, from pale dusty grey-cream, to a more golden glossy tan in summer. I know this colour extremely well, because my own pony is the exact same shade of sooty palomino, and her ever-changing coat colour matches every single photograph I've found of Stingray, at various times of year. But they don't ever go red-brown. They don't go anything like this colour paint. 

I just don't understand what Breyer were doing here, to be honest - it's a horse with several different correct colours to choose from, and they design one it never is. And they've nailed several of those possible 'right' colours on other models, so it can't just be a pigment problem where they physically can't make paint that matches. A bizarre situation indeed!

But ignoring the fact the model doesn't look like the real horse, it's a nice colour. There's depth, there's shading, it's striking, and it suits the mould. And it goes without saying that I really like her, otherwise I wouldn't have wanted her so much!

Will I show mine as a sooty palomino? Probably not - I'm thinking silver bay would be more fitting for the reddish brown body colour, combined with a white/grey mane and tail, and brown instread of black legs, it'd work.

Here you can see the big brown patch on her side, copied from the real horse far more accurately than the coat colour! It's good to see these interesting and unsual markings cropping up in models now and then, we've had the occasional Bend Or spot (Flexible and Topsails Rien Maker both have them, if I remember rightly, though I didn't actually buy either of those models!) but nothing like this til now.

This is my first model on the Gaming Stock Horse mould, and actually my first time even seeing it in person, as I somehow never saw Babyflo on trade stands in previous years. It's a very detailed mould, neat and smooth, with no seam lines or flaws to note, a powerful muscular sporting horse with an expressive face, ears laid back in enthusiastic exertion as she leaps forward. 

Here's another handy tip - see how effective it looks to have those plastic bases hidden under the sheet of grass! Just by puncturing the paper with the metal hoof pegs and fitting the base underneath it, you can make the model look like it stands unsupported.

I've named mine Harecroft BlazeAway, a name that's been ticking over on my scribbled list for quite some time waiting for a horse to fit it, with her fiery colour and forward-going action pose she is that model to suit the name!