Domingo!

 Greetings, readers! As promised, my replacement Domingo has finally arrived! Behold:

He's much, much better than the last one (although the masking around his medicine hat still isn't great)! 

I'll admit I haven't tried scratching him to see if his white paint scrapes off as easily as the last one's did - mainly because I don't want to turn this one into a body. I was extremely careful handling him because I don't know if the last one was a one-off or they're all like that - because it really shouldn't be that easy to scratch off the paint. 

Quality-wise he's pretty great, other than the so-so masking. His eyes are a little sloppy too, but nothing terrible. I might try live showing him later on. 

Which reminds me - I'm going to a live show on Saturday! I'll be at Bluegrass Live in Nicholasville, KY on Saturday. See if you can figure out which wild-eyed novice shower is me! I may even hand out free Stablemates to people mentioning the blog, if I can remember to bring the box they live in. This will be my first (real) show - I did a fun show last year that had about six participants - which was fun, but not nearly on the same level. I now have all my show models packed and documentation finished, so I'm just about ready for the show! Now I just have to contain my excitement until Saturday! 

Dastardly Domingo Discord

 Well, as some of you may have seen on Blab, my Domingo model came in, and I was super excited to open it! He was a super-handsome model...until I checked out the other side and saw this. 

It may be a little hard to see, but there's an oval area on his neck where the paint is rubbed off. Next to it is an area where (and I was dumbfounded to discover this) the paint was so fragile that I could scrape it off with my fingernails with very little effort. I have never, ever seen this happen before - not that I intentionally try to scrape off models' paint, but I was trying to figure out if the scrapes were actually scrapes or something stuck to his neck, and it scratched right off. I'm...reasonably sure the paint is supposed to bond with the plastic so that doesn't happen? Right? 

I've seen reports of other people having issues with yellow spots on the side of the models, but I haven't seen anything about the paint scratching off super-easily. So maybe it's just something with my model specifically? Some type of mold release agent not being fully washed off the model and keeping the paint from adhering properly? Who knows. 

At any rate, Domingo is now on his way back to New Jersey. Let's hope the replacement is better! Hopefully sans yellow spot, as well. 

Suddenly, some new releases!

 Well, I don't think anyone was expecting we'd get not one, but two new releases today - but we did! Behold, the second Stablemates Club release, Wallowa: 

This release is a matte/glossy split and is randomly shipped (naturally), so we won't know which finish we received until we open up the box. I'm hoping to sell mine - I don't collect the G1 molds and this one is particularly wonky-looking, so he'll be moving on. 

In more exciting news, we now have the answer to the Marguerite Henry clue in the Vintage Club welcome letter! Say hello to Domingo! 

He's a modern interpretation of the old San Domingo! And comes with a copy of Marguerite's San Domingo book, to boot. I'm not a member of the VC, but hoping I can snag one of these guys - San Domingo's color looks great on Fireheart! I'm kind of wondering why they didn't just call him San Domingo, since it's the same colorway...but I don't make the rules, I guess. Anyway, if you're also looking for one of these, there will be 1,000 of them out there, so don't pay inflated prices to get one - they'll likely settle closer to issue price later on.