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!

A mixed box of Schleich, Safari and Papo, plus shetland ponies!

Somewhere between Stablemate and Classic scale, you'll find a lot of medium sized brands - CollectA, Schleich, Safari, Papo, Bullyland, Mojo Fun and WIA. I think of these under the totally made up umbrella term 'mid scale plastics' in my herd, and tag them as such on here - original finish and custom finish found on separate tags.

Recently, I've had a few arrivals which can all be grouped together as this type, so they can all share one post.

Probably the most exciting of the batch for me, the Safari Tinker stallion from a few years ago. Their models went to a weirdly stylised, smooth sculpting style a few years back, and at first I was put off and didn't order any more, but later started to regret not getting at least this guy for my herd of cobs. But by the time I went looking for him, all the ebay listings were really high-priced, more than twice or three times I'd ever paid for Safari in the past, and I decided against getting him several times over as I failed to find an affordable listing. Then he popped up on my friend's sales list, and I got him at long last!

I think I might name him Ace of Hearts, cos he's got a little heart-shaped white marking in one of his patches.

Although I still wouldn't say I love the sculpting style (it reminds me of 3d computer modelling, not physical clay moulded by hand), I find he's a very endearing horse, with a lovely attitude - ears back, but not grumpy or ill-tempered, just not on full alert forwards like most models are posed.

He's got an enormous amount of feather on his legs (wouldn't want the job of keeping that clean and detangled if he was real, the cob I used to take to shows had half as much and I was always glad we only competed in jumping and mounted games cos I'd NEVER have got her legs clean enough for actual showing in a traditional cob or coloured class, haha!)

Along with him came the current-mould Schleich donkey foal, but in brown instead of grey - this one was a special edition, found only in the Farm Life advent calendar. It looks like he only has one ear in this shot!

He's very cute, I like the normal grey one a lot so it's nice to have the extra colour version, even if he doesn't have a matching mum. I really should name him something chocolate-themed, as that's the more usual kind of advent calendar contents!

Next up, Papo donks! I don't generally think much to their horse range, there's only been a few moulds I've liked enough to get (pinto cobs for my herd, the sleeping foal), so I haven't really followed what they release, and had totally missed that these donkeys existed til I spotted them on the sales photo.

Quite a decent sculpt, compared to their horses! Whether it's from the same sculptor, who just does a far better job on donkeys, or whether they had someone else do these (cos I've noticed they have some good and truly awesome sculpting in the wildlife ranges!), I don't know, but they're really rather nice.

They've also got a well done paintjob for mass produced models, with thin grey paint which gathers in the dimples of the hair texture and gives them a two tone effect, and properly donkey-detailed pale noses, eye-rings, and ear-fluff! Because these are described as Provence donkeys from France, I've named her in her native language : Cailloux, which means 'pebbles'.

And here's the baby, who I've called Pascal, in a fun running pose, with all the same appreciated detail as the mum.

Note the quagga background being repurposed as old fashioned stableyard scenery already!

The two together - I seem to have a lot of family pairs of donkeys, toy brands really like releasing matching babies!

The Safari buckskin mustang mare, one of the older-style sculpting from when I really liked what Safari were doing. I have a scuffed palomino on this same mould in my repaint pile, but I like this colour much better and am keeping her for my original finish herd.

And the Safari przewalski's horse. I've been tempted by this one ever since they released him, but couldn't find a new one affordably. They're one of those brands which seem to be mainstream and readily available in mainland European countries, but aside from Toobs they're not really stocked here - I have the choice of hoping the ones I want ever reach ebay, catching second hand ones from other collectors, or buying in from overseas (or probably Amazon, but I boycott them so I don't know!)

He's very cute, but without losing the typical build and look of the takhi, the sculpt isn't overly stylised. He's kind of the halfway point between the old Safari style I loved (Icelandic, Shire, that kind of era), and the newer ones which I'm less keen on. But I am thinking the Fjord would go well enough with him and the rest of my herd that I might have to get that at some point!

 

I named him Zerleg Salkhi, 'wild wind' in Mongolian. Plus one extra picture, because doesn't he look adorable from the front!

And finally, some resculpted shetland ponies. These are a little bit bigger, but can still share the post, as they came from the same home and still fit in with the toy-type theme - they started out as a toy brand called Gee Gee Friends. They're hard hollow plastic and come in packs with accessories, aimed at small children, and often spoilt with painted-on hearts and flowers and bows. Here's one in box. But my hobby friend likes to rescue them from pink pastel purgatory and change them into proper little ponies, in real colours. They've both had their bodies extensively resculpted, heads repositioned, and new manes and tails.

I just had to have two instead of picking only my favourite, so it wouldn't be a lonely only pony in my collection!

This one's sooty palomino, the same colour as my own real shetland, I can't call it after mine, though, cos I already have four portrait models of her (CollectA, Magpie, Julip, Stablemate) and am running out of variations on her name!

And here's her friend again, he almost got a soaking cos it started to rain heavily while I was doing his photos, I think I got him inside my jacket before any spots landed on him!