Porcelain to Plastic: Addendum

A few months ago, I wrote a post about Breyer's fondness for introducing new porcelain molds that are later released in plastic, and the likelihood (or lack thereof) that any of the old porcelains from the '90s would ever be released in plastic.

Well, the other day I was reading through some of my old issues of JAH, and stumbled across this little gem.

So, if this little blurb is accurate, it explains (kind of) why we haven't seen any of those old porcelains released in plastic: "Something something too hard to do, something something." Or, the porcelain molds have more detail than a plastic mold would, therefore never going to happen? But they make new molds from resin sculptures all the time, and we all know how detailed resins are. But I do remember reading an article by Sarah Mink about sculpting for Breyer, and the sculpt in question had to be able to cleanly pull the finished plastic out of the mold without catching on anything - maybe that would be an issue with the old porcelain molds.

Or, a simpler explanation would be that Breyer doesn't think there would be enough of a market for these old molds to justify the expense of converting them to plastic. Surely the technology has advanced in the last 23 years to make it possible, right? But if Breyer doesn't think the demand is there, they aren't going to spend the money on it.

Which is unfortunate, because I'd really like to see the Spanish Barb and the Sarah Rose Hambletonian in plastic, but it doesn't look like that will ever happen (though the Hambletonian is a bit newer, so might actually happen). But I can always hope!