Breyer special runs - Traditional and Stablemates

I'm going to catch up and share all my Breyer arrivals from the last four months in one big post - I didn't mean to neglect the blog quite so much, and want them to be here in 2023's posts, rather than spilling over into the wrong year!

This handsome horse was a Brick And Mortar special run - meaning you could only buy him from stockists with physical shops, not online shops and not internationally. 2500 were made, which sounds like a huge amount, but maybe not when you consider that's spread across somewhere as big as the USA, and a lot more types of shop carry Breyer over there, too, not just specialist toy and model sellers like we're used to using in Europe.

His mould is an interesting one, originally sculpted as the Marwari but that limited the amount of releases Breyer could use it for without repeating the same breed more often than they'd like, so they reworked him as this adapted version with the curled ears replaced with standard ones, and a longer thicker mane and tail too. Now he can be different breeds too (although personally I'd love to see another regular run Marwari - I mean, it's been ten whole years since the only one we ever had!)

This 2019 release of the normal-ears version was sold as a Barb stallion. Barb as in Berber, the original North African breed, not the US breed also known as the Spanish Barb. Their ancestry is truly ancient, unlike a lot of the created European breeds which only date back a century or two, but interestingly they're very varied for such an old breed, with some Barbs having noticeable similarity to the PRE in the body type and head shape, some looking more like a light-framed leggy Arabian cross, and some looking much more coarse and heavy. So while this model doesn't immediately jump out as a typical Barb, due to the long lean limbs and thin upright neck, he's not massively outside the realms of possibility either, so I'm content to leave him as his allocated breed when filing his picture on my collection website.

Here's his other side, cos he's got nice sabino markings on his coat and I thought I better get a photo of this one too!

The second purchase back in September was also a bargain special run, but I bought him more from sympathy than for his rarity or price!

Sometimes when I'm browsing Ebay for Breyers, I'll spot rather intriguing listings. Horses which sold once already, will pop back up later, either from the same seller or someone different, at a much reduced price. Sometimes the reason is right there in the description, 'relisted due to non-paying bidder' or 'paintwork damaged in the post, selling as someone might be able to fix him up'. But sometimes the listing's photo speaks for itself - first time round this horse looked perfectly fine, on his relisted page there was an obvious new problem : he had no tail!

I investigated a little more through the feedback pages, and it turns out the seller had shipped him in totally inappropriate packing, he'd arrived broken, and been sent back when Paypal stepped in to give the buyer a refund. Now back up for sale, listed cheaply as a body with the tail included, I decided to take the risk to save the horse - too handsome and unusual to just become a custom body and lose his original identity!

Here he is on the day he arrived - the tail is all in one piece and the break is clean and crisp, and aside from the obvious he's in decent condition, just a couple of rubs on ears and tail tips. He's also missing the little plastic disc which attaches to one foot and helps him stand upright, but they're such ridiculously brittle fragile things it's not at all uncommon for this mould to have lost the base even if the model's been carefully looked after, those things are a design flaw from day one!

First task was to reattach the tail, it's a surprisingly heavy chunk of solid plastic so I wasn't sure if superglue alone was going to be up to the task, but it was worth a try cos the alternative of using a drill to hollow out a hole in both halves then filling the space with a wire pin and milliput was a LOT of work! And luckily, the glue worked on the second attempt, after dropping apart when I didn't hold it together long enough first time. Second try was more determined, I held it very firmly in place with both hands for a good five minutes, then when it seemed firm enough to let go, wedged the horse head-down between two cushions so gravity was helping while the glue had even more time to become fully solid right through!

Once the tail was back on, it was time to disguise the join. Because the plastic is white inside and the horse is a fairly dark colour, the repair showed as a hairline crack, but by mixing a colour-matched paint and carefully rubbing it into the tiny space, so the original paint isn't covered but the giveaway white line was. I also touched up the tiny rubs to the end of the tail and the tops of the ears, so now he looks almost good as new!

Can you spot the join? I can, just, but only cos I know it's there - on the shelf he'll look just fine!

And here he is! He's a Breyerfest special run, from 2001 - the days when you could only attend the event in person, with no online alternative way to buy the models. Atlantis Bey was a son of Huckleberry Bey, the very horse this mould was sculpted as. So he got to be made in the same mould as his father - but it's also a really good match for the horse himself, see this real photo here. He's slightly metallic, but not in the plasticky, unrealistic way I always complain about when they make models too silvery or pearlised, this is much more like the real-life coppery sheen so many chestnuts do have.

It might look as if he stands up just fine without his base, but there's a little trickery involved here - there's actually a wooden kebab stick propping him up in both these photos! With the grass base slightly tilted, the model naturally wants to tip toward the backdrop, so his own weight presses the pointy end of the stick into the fake grass, which grips it, and he stays balanced. The secret is to place the prop in line with the upright front leg, so it's totally hidden from view - check out the shadow when you're setting up, too, sometimes that will give away that there's something weird going on behind the model, but as you can see here the shadow of the prop is absorbed into the outline shadow of the horse himself.

Unfortunately it does limit the camera angles you can use, so there's less pictures of this one. But I'm really pleased to have added him to my collection, and to have mended him after his misfortune!

Another very pleasant and unexpected buy came my way last month, and it's one of the big models from Breyerfest in 2021, when the theme of the event was 'A Horse of a Different Colour', and they made a lot of interesting and unusual colours!

This is a fun arrival for me, not just a pretty model, but I was aware of the horse before she was announced as a Breyer!
Having read a LOT of information sites and blog posts about horse colour over the years, this mare had come up several times as an example to be discussed. So when I saw the reveals for that year's Breyerfest included Queen Of Hearts aka Josie, I immediately thought 'I know that horse!'

At the time, I couldn't get her - shipping and the inevitable customs and handling fees would've put her total cost at around four times the usual price of a Breyer - but I did kind of hope that eventually some would turn up on the second hand market over here.

The first few went for high prices, as an in-demand and interesting model - even recently I've seen one for sale at over £100. But I was very lucky when bidding on this one, and got her for just £42 - that's quite a bit less than a brand new regular run in this country (£55-65 seemed to be the average RRP for the last releases the UK was able to get, just to give a rough idea to the international collectors out there!)

Another angle, as well as the eye-catching colour which is her main talking point, it's also a really beautiful sculpt, dynamic and very elegant!

A closer look at her fascinating markings. Here's the real horse, and another photo here.

There's two theories on how she manages to be one horse but two colours.

The one Breyer give as if it's certain, is that she's a chimera - two embryos of different colour twin horses, which fuse together at an early stage and develop as one horse with two sets of DNA. This can and does happen, the majority of the time the colour patches are less marbled together but occasionally it's more of a brindled pattern. There's one major flaw to this theory, though - Josie was born with the white colour streaks, where a grey horse will be born dark and turn white with age. so if she was a chimera of bay and grey, you'd expect her white bits to have faded in gradually over the years.

The second theory, which I personally find more likely, is a somatic mutation where the pigmentation of cells just didn't develop equally all over. When the embryo is growing, growth of skin cells starts along the line of the spine and spreads down on either side, onto what will become the neck and flanks of the horse. The trails of white look to follow these usually-invisible lines on the body, known as blaschko lines. The dark pigmentation just failed in those specific streaks, and so they grew white hair right from the gestation period, and the foal was born with them. Just for interest, here is a very similar phenomenon on a couple of human examples!

Here's her other side, a very handsome but much plainer solid dark bay - it's obvious which way I'll want this one on my shelf!

I never really know how to handle a jumping model for photos, cos they're either jumping mid-air over nothing, or I put in a log or hedge to create logic for the pose, and then that just looks weird cos a horse wouldn't be jumping plaited with no tack on.

I've considered if it's worth making a nice neat-looking realistic jump wing and some poles at this scale, now I have three of this sculpt and four of the jumping pony, but that still wouldn't explain why they're jumping 'naked' - even a loose-schooling horse will usually have a bridle, halter, or lunge cavesson on it's head.

So I just took pictures of her jumping nothing anyway!

Now, on to the Stablemates...

I don't usually make much effort to collect the Breyerfest minis on the second hand market, they're always an awful lot of money for such a small size of horse, so I tend to accept them as the ones I admire but don't intend to own. But this year there was one in a set of four which stood out as EXACTLY the kind of model I really wanted for my collection, and from when I first saw the photos I kind of hoped that sooner or later one might turn up on UK Ebay. 

I got outbid on the first one which did appear here, but was the only bidder on the second!

A blagdon cob! He reminds me very much of a lovely natured and very handsome cob who lived over the fence from my pony field for a few years, he was such a gentle and polite chap, and both me and my horse missed him when he went off to a new home! Breyer very rarely tackle this sort of pattern on their mini scale models, and I think they've managed it very very well considering how small and intricate the masking is.

The mould is a scaled down version of the Traditional 1:9 scale sculpt, I've got a couple of others this size already (one spotted, one silver bay...oh, and a whole handful of piebald and skewbald custom repaints!), I think he looks just as good in miniature. The flying feathering on the legs and the huge mane and tail really do look dramatic, and he looks like he's having a great time playing out in the field.

The other side, just as detailed. 'Blagdon' is the traditional name for the colour between cob owners and riders, especially in the traveller community, we all know them as that when they're a jumbled up scrambly roany colour with big splashes of white too - but genetically it'd be more accurately described as an extensive sabino pattern.

I'm really happy to have bought him, even though he cost quite a bit, but I did cover my boss's saturday while he was away so in theory I can say I paid for this model with that extra work morning of sitting about doing not much, and that's a much better way to think about it than in cash!

I've named him Harum-Scarum, cos I've already got cobs called Helter-Skelter and Hurly-Burly, so these fun rhyming words seemed a good theme to carry on with!

The last few to add here are some more of this year's Breyerfest Stablemates - released as a set of five, four of them were being sold together on Ebay. I'm assuming the seller got the set for just the fifth model which they kept, and funnily enough that's the one I'd have wanted least as it was a glossy. Highly collectable in the hobby, but I've never liked the thick smooth gloss coating - it makes them look like china ornaments rather than the more realistic sheen of a standard model, which matches what you see on a real horse's coat.

Here's the four I bought...

The Missouri Fox Trotter in a red dun pinto, I'd already thought of painting one of my duplicates from the blind bags in this colour and pattern, before this model was announced, so Breyer had the same idea as me, hahah! I think it suits the mould well, and it's good to have a pinto after the solid grey and palomino regular runs, he's my easily favourite from the three I've got.

The other side, this mould can display facing either way as it's walking on a straight line, but I think I prefer the side with the mane showing

The second one from the set is this great little Mustang, the first on the scaled-down mini version of the 1:9 scale 'Fireheart' mould. I love how well he matches with the bay overo on the G4 Mustang mould, even though they're different sculptors the style is compatible and the chunkier type with a bit of heel feather is a perfect match - you could imagine them as father and son in a little herd running free.

It amuses me that I've ended up with a relatively rare special run on this mould first, rather than having to wait for a regular run as usual. Breyer don't seem to like issuing the most recent moulds in any accessible way - after the initial club-only runs to fairly reward the people who've paid into that system, the new moulds still seem to be set aside for things which can't be bought outside the US, and then in a few colourful/glittery unicorn sets, and finally allowed out to the poor regular run collectors many years later when they're not even exciting any more, hah.

Cos it's a new mould, an extra photo! This autumnal backdrop was fitting for the time the models arrived, it just took me ages to get them as far as my blog as well.

The Driving Horse mould in a really pretty and detailed appaloosa pattern, I initially put this one on the Sugarbush Draft page of my site but she's not really quite heavy-built enough in the body even though the legs are thick and the hooves large - I swapped her to be a draft cross instead.

I think the Breyerfest models often get a little bit more attention to detail in their colour designs than the regular runs, which have to be made in much greater numbers - they're simplified for speed and ease of painting on the production line when the run is going to be huge.

I've saved my favourite SM for last, this gorgeous little rose grey on the Magnolia mould! Definitely the stand-out of the set for me, even though it's never been one of my top moulds it's just so lovely in this well-painted colour, with so much shading and even soft dappling!

The sculpt isn't issued with an official breed, though many people have them as Arabian mares I've always felt they were a bit too long-legged and not deep'n'round enough for a true typey Arabian, mine are usually some sort of partbred (National Show Horse, which is Arab x Saddlebred), or one of the older breeds which derived from Arabian stallions crossed with a mixture of Anglo and local mares. Tersk horses are often grey, so that's what I've gone with for this pretty mare.

Another angle, what lovely markings she has - the striped hooves are especially nice!

And that's it, I'm all caught up on posting my original-finish Breyers, just in time for the end of the year.

Breyer 2021 Stablemates

Back when I reviewed Breyer's 2021 regular runs, one release which went straight onto my wishlist was the Palominos and Pintos Stablemates set, and they did in fact end up being the first of this year's models I ordered.

Here's all the horses together - often the sets seem to include some horses I really admire, and others I'm not mad about, and occasionally one terrible paintjob I actively dislike, but this contains four good mould & colour combinations and all of them nicely done.

Let's have a closer look at them individually...

The chunky trotting warmblood, or 'driving' mould, in sooty palomino pinto. The patch markings are really neatly outlined, it's a shame the mane masking wasn't so carefully done, with quite a lot of the body colour overlapping the ends of the hair. It's the sort of thing to look out for if you get chance to pick your set in person, rather than shopping online - just be aware that's an area with varied quality control, and have a quick check of several boxes to pick the nicest one!

Darley in golden palomino - the metallic aspect of his paintjob isn't over-done, just enough that he looks like the palominos who carry a gold sheen on their summer coats, and the best thing is, it's only in the palomino colour paint, they didn't use a pearly base-coat to include his mane, tail, socks, and hooves in the metallic finish, as inflicted on some other unfortunate models!

This one looks like he has a strange mane masking glitch - below the obvious chunk of hair there appears to be a phantom outline of some extra mane, but if you look closely, there is a 3D layer of thin hair flat against the shoulder in the sculpt!

There he is from the other side, do you see what I mean about looking more like an American gaited cross than a pure old world arabian? Our arabs in Europe, both Britain and the continental mainland, tend to be short-coupled and deep and rounded, with an action more floaty than high and flashy. Darley may be a prime example of an arabian for the US show ring, and American Breyer fans might love it for that, but as a British horse fan and collector, I just can't take this mould as the arabian strains I'm familiar with, so I show all mine as National Show Horses (arab x saddlebred), and think them a very nice model of this breed instead!

In all the years I've been collecting Breyer Stablemates, I've never seen them do a really pale palomino before! This quarter horse mare is described as an Isabella palomino on the box, and her colour is very delicately done, with areas sprayed lightly or heavily to vary the shading, and a grey nose to make sure the creamy tone with white mane and tail doesn't misread as cremello.

One of my favourites done on this mould, there's a certain something about it when the paintwork suits the model and just works.

The last of the four, while at a glance he might look like a chestnut, he's actually described as a chocolate palomino, which I always thought was just a term for a really dark sooty palomino, but I've read recently that it's the result of a liver chestnut base plus a cream gene. Maybe a liver chestnut with sooty AND cream gets you this shade!

Whatever his fictional plastic genetics, he's a really adorable little model, the Darwin mould sculpted as a lipizzaner but suiting a wide range of colours. Pinto was found in the historical ancestors of today's modern lipizzaner breed, as seen in glorious 17th and 18th century oil paintings and engravings, so there's the option to show him as a historic model, or you could go with a partbred, or pick something else entirely. I'm currently constructing a 'Historical' page on my website for all the obsolete colours and customs painted from old artworks, so he'll find his home there shortly.

Another 2021 addition to the Stablemates range was a Horse Foal Surprise - not just strange grammar which I can't quite make a sensible sentence from in my mind, but a strange combination of re-release and brand new model. In each box you got the same adult and foal as last year's Stable Surprise set, plus one new adult to complete the family. But the new horses aren't available seperately, so you have three options : buy the set and end up with duplicates in you bought last year's batch; miss out on the new ones; or hope that someone might split sets and sell the models singly. Luckily, Chestnut Ridge do exactly that, selling out-of-box/bag models individually, so you can pick exactly which you like and leave those you don't need.

Of course, I picked out the three new horses for my herd.

The good old G3 mustang mould in a simple but effective chestnut, I like his snip and the fade out of his tail to flaxen. This one was paired with the dark bay tobiano paint horse mare from last year.

These paintjobs are nice enough that they'd sell as singles, but probably not exciting enough to go ahead and buy the whole set of three if you only lack the new horse from each family.

This quarter horse mare was paired with the...wait a minute, I think I've spotted a mistake, Breyer.

The dun warmblood mare. And these two females have somehow produced a foal. 

I wonder if this is linked to the fact the warmblood was initially named as the Warmblood Stallion mould on IdentifyYourBreyer - maybe a collector tip-off corrected that site's mistake, but Breyer themselves were still under the impression it's a stallion when compiling this family group? Oops!

Anyway, I do like this mare a lot, her faintly shaded black looks sleek and striking, and I just love the big chunky white snip on her nose, that design choice gives her so much character and was why I wanted her so much, I'm glad to be able to buy these singly.

The G3 warmblood in a nice mahogany bay, paired with the palomino walking TB, makes up the third and final set. For some reason, 2020's roan Icelandic wasn't re-used, and it can't be cos they only have one mould of that breed, as they rarely match breeds together in the mystery foal type sets anyway - last time the Icelandic was crossed with an Appaloosa!

And to finish on, a couple more of the 70th Anniversary Stablemates blind bags, each mould a mini version of a Traditional scale sculpt. These aren't 2021 releases but having taken a year to reach the UK stockists, they may as well be! 

The missouri fox trotter, not a mould I like enough to have ever bought a Trad size one, but the mini is a very sweet little horse indeed, and I can see myself ending up with several of these if they release them in more colours down the years.

I think I got a fairly dark variation here, a lot of the fox trotters have been a paler shade of grey with a lot less shading on the mane, but I really like this one's darker look, even if he was a bit of heavy-handed spraying compared to others!

And mini Emma, also known as the Fell Pony mould, though fells never come in chestnut so she'll have to be allocated something else in my collection!

She's an adorable little chunky pony, not far off the G3 Highland for size, she's so neat and small and light she feels like a half-size Stablemate in hand! It's unusual to see such a cobby type as a smaller model, but she makes a great addition to the range, I'd like to see them release her in black like the original large scale Fell Pony, but also in piebald and skewbald as the 'pony cobs' which are rapidly gaining popularity in the UK.

This mean there's only one 70th Anniversary model left for me to collect, excluding the chase pieces (I'm not into decorators to seek those out, though I'd keep them as colourful oddities if I happened on them by chance, like the copper filigree Django I got from the first series of blind bags). And I haven't painted any of these new mini moulds yet, so I'm not ruling out ordering another batch pot-luck or pick'n'mix at some point : Stablemates are addictive!

Tales from the Body Box - four skewbalds and a grey

Today's batch contains a bit of a catch-up from all October so far, as the weather's not been co-operative in getting the pictures taken.

First up, a chestnut overo on my favourite of all the Stablemate foal moulds. Not only is it a fun playful pose, with a sweet face, but it's the most steady on those little feet, less likely to topple over and damage paintwork or set off a domino trail along the shelf!

I've named her Harecroft Red Horizon, here's a couple more shots of this very photogenic little one!

Next to be completed, the final G2 paso fino in my body box - this mould I never really clicked with, knowing very little about the breed (not to be confused with the peruvian paso), til I read up more about their history and watched some Youtube videos of their unusual running-walk gait. Do look them up if you've only ever seen still photos, it's quite something to see in action!
Despite not being one of my favourite moulds, in certain colours I do really like it, and luckily I struck on a colour I'm very happy with, here. She looks a very soft and gentle mare, so I've named her Pachamama, after the mother earth goddess of the Inca.

Something much much more familiar, next, my own local 'native breed' in the form of a coloured traditional cob. Ever since I got this body (as a free gift with an order from the much-missed Utterly Horses online model shop), I've had a skewbald cob in mind, and at long last I fished him from the body box and got painting! He turned out pretty much exactly as I'd planned, with a typical tobiano pattern and fluffily feathered edges to contrast with the sharper style I usually use.

I didn't have to wait long to think of a fitting name for him, while I was still finishing off his paintwork I happened to hear mention of the pirate Calico Jack on tv, and it seemed perfect - a calico cat is one with a tri-coloured patchy coat, and another of my recent cob customs was named Pirate, so this suits him very nicely indeed.

Here's another colour idea which has been hovering in the back of my mind for years rather than days before actually happening on a model! She's inspired by a couple of grey skewbalds I've seen out on the cross country course, horses which would have started out dark with white markings, but the greying process has taken away their colour little by little, til they're left as a pale or fleabitten grey with markings almost lost as white on white at first glance. When they're clipped, the grey stands out a little more, as the contrast of black skin or pink can be seen clearly - especially after they've been through the water jump! I've named this one Bluebird, and with those chunky legs and dinnerplate feet, I imagine her as a partbred heavy horse with the feather clipped off!

And here's the last of this batch, Valparaiso, one more mini Alborozo for my herd. He was from the unicorn suncatchers paint set, but once the horn's carved away and the clear plastic is painted over, you'd never know - it's quite a handy and good-value way to get hold of four nice newish moulds to customise!

I'd been trying to pin down colours for my last two Alborozos for a while - being a harder-to-get mould, it does take careful consideration to make the most of the bodies which come my way. Having done a bay, a dark rose grey, and a mulberry grey, a pure pale white-grey seemed tempting next, or perhaps fleabites or some faint dappling for a little more interest than a plain one? Then I turned the page of my calendar to see a fleabitten, faintly dappley grey with a blonde-and-grey mixed mane, and ah, there was my colour.

It was only after finishing him that I realised how much he reminded me of this grey version of Napoleon Crossing the Alps - mine has shorter socks but the likeness is there, especially in this sidelong lighting!