Featured Model - 9/11/2021, Avalon

 Hello and welcome to another edition of Featured Model, the weekly blog event where I pick a model I don't own but would like to, give some stats on it and provide commentary about it. This week's model is...Avalon! 

This handsome guy, technically a resin, was an edition of 125. He's item #711138 and was a new sculpture, used for the first and (so far) only time at Breyerfest 2011. IDYB doesn't have a record of who sculpted him, but to my untrained eye he sort of looks like a Sifton piece. 

While I wasn't terribly crazy about any of the three new resins introduced at that year's Breyerfest, Avalon is probably the only one of the three I'd add to my collection if he were released in plastic. Prince Charming's proportions just look goofy to me and Sorceror's Apprentice is just...nah. That's a handsome shade of chestnut on Avalon too, and I like that his tail isn't banged. That's one sporthorse trend I wish would just go away already. 

So, since Prince Charming has made his debut as a Stablemate, will Avalon and Sorceror's Apprentice follow along soon? And why haven't any of them been produced in a larger scale? Did Breyer have some kind of agreement with those artists as well? Seems a bit odd to go to the trouble of making those molds to only use them once. I wouldn't mind getting Avalon in any scale, though I suppose I'd prefer him as a Traditional. But if Breyer wants to shrink him into a Stablemate, I wouldn't complain about that either! Just don't make him a bunch of rare and super-rare chase models right off the bat, like they did with Prince Charming! 

Resin to Plastic

One of the things I like to contemplate from time to time is the conversion of resin sculptures to plastic for mass release. This is how all Breyer molds are made, but as you all know, there's a healthy market in artist resins produced by hobby sculptors. This market is a large part of how Breyer finds its sculptors - either to sculpt for them, or to sell the rights to a given resin to Breyer so it can be produced in plastic.

So, one of the things I like to think about is which artist resins out there I'd like to see in plastic. Of course, sometimes Breyer gets beaten to the punch and somebody else gets the rights to a resin first. I'm talking about Kitty Cantrell's Wahoo resin that was released a few years ago. Stone acquired the rights to it fairly recently, to use it as a new Pebbles release (albeit with a changed front leg). I view this as one of Breyer's biggest missed opportunities of the last few years - it's been almost 20 years since we last got a rearing Traditional mold, and Kitty's sculpts tend to be popular with collectors. And since I don't have the money to collect resins, I really wanted to see Wahoo produced in plastic! But I guess that's just how it goes sometimes.

Wahoo isn't the only resin I wanted produced in plastic, though. Here's a quick list of some others:

Infinity by Kathleen Moody

Minuet by Kathleen Moody

Esplendida by Brigitte Eberl

Almanzor by Brigitte Eberl

Independence by Sarah Rose

Heritage by Emilia Kurila

Extreme Justice by Sommer Prosser

Elnathan by Tabatha Pack

Those are all I can think of for now, though my memory is like Swiss cheese these days, so I could be forgetting some. Which resin sculpts would you like to see in plastic (by Breyer, Stone or anyone else)? Let me know in the comments!