Featured Model - 7/1/2017, Gold Raven

Hello and welcome to yet another edition of Featured Model, the weekly blog event where I pick a model from my collection, give some stats on it and provide commentary about it. We're two weeks away from Breyerfest, people! If all goes well, two weeks from now I'll be sweltering in the mid-July heat and humidity, wondering why I thought going to Breyerfest again was a good idea. Ah, but who am I kidding...there's no place I'd rather be. But I digress. This week's model is....Gold Raven!

 

This lovely lady was produced in 2010 as a portrait of one of the competitors in that year's World Equestrian Games, which was taking place in the United States for the first time. Breyer produced lots of special runs for that event, but this was one of the ones I wanted the most. She's item #9112 on the controversial Make a Wish mold sculpted by Kathleen Moody, and a total of 500 models were produced.

I say "controversial" because, well, most of the Moody molds do have controversy around them - in this mold's case, that the head-down version has a double shoulder (true), and that her outstretched front leg looks flat (it does), or that she's a Moody sculpt which are rife with conformation issues (she is), but I like the mold anyway. Why? I'm not sure...though she does tend to have a lot more hair than the average Arabian. Especially the long-tail version!

I'm more of a fan of the head-down version of this mold (despite the double shoulder), for whatever reason. She just seems more personable or something. This is an interesting mold to analyze because we've seen so many mane, tail and head combinations - personally, I wish they'd use the tail on Gold Raven and Oasis a a bit more - the swish tail is okay but makes the models take up more space on the shelf, and the long tail is long (of course) but makes the model really long as well.

As for the mane options, I suppose the Gold Raven/Justadream/Furano one is my preference, because they actually attach it to the neck (or try to). The others are like Esprit's mane and don't touch the neck at all, which looks odd. Come to think of it, why haven't we seen Esprit with a different mane? I'm sure he's rigged up for that. Maybe someday they'll do the ol' switcheroo on him, too.

In the meantime, my Make a Wishes are a permanent part of my collection - now, if I can find the original Make a Wish (and perhaps Summer Love?) at Breyerfest this year, I'll be happy!