Featured Breyerfest - 2011

 Hello and welcome to another edition of Featured Breyerfest! Next up is Breyerfest 2011, so let's get going! 

Notable events of 2011:

• Prince William marries Kate Middleton
• An EF5 tornado strikes Joplin, Missouri, and kills 158 people
• The NASA space shuttle program ends with the completion of STS-135 with the shuttle Atlantis
• The video game Minecraft is released, and eventually becomes the best-selling video game of all time (I've never played it)

And in Kentucky, Breyerfest 2011 happened! 

Dates: July 15-17, 2011
Theme: FairyTails
Celebration Horse: Pecos
Number of Celebration Models produced: 4,400

Here's the first 2011 page from the commemorative program:

The real Pecos is an Andalusian owned by Matt McLaughlin. As the program states, Pecos does dressage and is a descendant of Legionario III - if he's still alive; the website says he was born in 1996 and doesn't look like it's been updated lately, so he'd be 30 years old if still alive. Anyway, other equine guests that year were Sato, TS Black Tie Affaire, Kripton Seni II, Kong, and Grand Central (son of Prince Jester). 

The number of single-day Stablemates increased to four this year, and that's where it's stayed ever since. The surprise model was brought back as the "Spun Gold Surprise" this year, and this was the first year that everything about it was a surprise. At the event it was revealed to be three standard colors on the Ethereal mold, with a rare variant (29 distributed in the special run line and one sold in the live auction). Other special runs included Aurora the porcelain, Gruff the goat, Hansel and Gretel (New molds! And this might be the last time a Classic has appeared in the special run line rather than as a store special/Limited Edition), Jasmine, Once Upon a Time, Under the Sea and Wish on a Star. Store specials were Dusty and the three resins - Avalon, Prince Charming and Sorcerer's Apprentice. I seem to remember that those three were announced at the last minute, and then when Breyerfest actually took place, they were all stocked in the store on the first day and sold out pretty much immediately, much to the consternation of people that couldn't get there in time (I wasn't there, so anything I've heard is secondhand). Those resins are still a bit of a mystery - I don't think it was ever announced who sculpted them, what the story was behind them (if any) and Prince Charming is the only mold that's been used since then, as a Stablemate. Sorcerer's Apprentice is still a pretty hot commodity on the secondary market. 

On the third page we can see some prize models, including Tom Thumb. Be still, my heart. 

Here's page 1 of the JAH recap:

And page 2:

On to page 3:

And page 4:

And here are more on-the-ground photos, courtesy of Lea R.! 

Pecos with a smol friend.

TS Black Tie Affaire in his stall

Sato

Now, let's look at some auction models! 

This legendary Esprit was one of the most expensive models sold that day, but it's not hard to see why; his color is beautiful. The color made an appearance as Arosa on the MFT later on.

I love the color on this Zebra! I wish they'd use the Zebra for a wider release, although I guess they did use it for Breyerfest 2024. We need another one, though! 

Here we have the PAM and PAF in the Appaloosa Performance Horse color scheme, which begs the question; is there a matching PAS? I'm reasonably sure there's a photo of one on the Breyer History Diva blog, but I'm not going to search through every post to find it. But it looks nice on this set! They were the high sellers of the auction at $5,000. 

I wish I had a better photo of this one, but it represents a missed opportunity (in my opinion). I always thought Swirling Sky (one of the last Connoisseur releases) should have been on the Weather Girl, since it was 2011 and she was going back into the "Breyer Vault" at the end of the year. And it's not like they couldn't have done it, since this auction model exists! Sheesh. It would have made that Connoisseur release way more desirable than it was (the reaction to him was pretty ho-hum at the time, though prices seem to have recovered since then). So it just seems like a huge missed opportunity to me. Oh well. 

That's it for this week! Check back next week for Breyerfest 2012!