Breyerfest Closeups: Griffin

As I was pondering the mysteries of life, the universe and everything today, I realized I never did a closeup post about Griffin, the upcoming second Collector Club special run. So, here goes - Griffin!

 

I must say, he looks mighty orange in that photo, but it could just be something with my camera's settings that day. At first I thought he was a palomino, but he almost looks like a blond sorrel instead.

 

I do have to question why his hooves are all dark, though. Shouldn't they be white, since he has four white socks? Maybe we're supposed to think he's being shown with his hooves blacked, since this is the braided mane version. Or they're doing as much as they can to differentiate this horse from the palomino JCPenney special run from a few years ago.

 

He's definitely handsome, but nothing I need to buy.  As for when he'll be available to the masses, I'd guess sometime next month or in October - it looks like Gideon, last year's second collector club SR, didn't become available until almost Halloween, so we could be in for a long wait.

In other news, it appears that Duende's release has been delayed until September, according to a Breyer employee's post on the Premier Club forum on the website. It'd be nice if they could post that a few other places, but that's Breyer for you. But we're pretty close to September already - just a couple more weeks! Hopefully he comes out promptly! I'm waiting for him.

Featured Model - 8/19/2017, Bella

Hello, readers, and welcome to 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. This week's model is...Bella!

 

This pretty model was produced in 2013 as one half of the Bella and Mozart set, available only through the Breyer website. If I remember correctly, this set was released around Christmastime that year, back when Breyer had a promotion where you could get 20% off any order for the whole month of December, plus another free shipping promotion. So that was how I got these guys! Mozart is cute too; maybe I'll cover him next week.

So anyway, Bella was issued on the Haflinger Mare mold sculpted by Brigitte Eberl, and was item #711911. They came with matching sparkly pink blankets, which I incidentally just sold at Breyerfest about a month ago after scouring our place looking for random accessories I could bring along to sell.

I like this model because she's vaguely rainbowy and I have a major weakness for anything with rainbows on it. She's also a unicorn, and I love unicorns! It's a win-win. My only nitpit, not even necessarily with this model, is that most of the unicorns Breyer issues tend to be some variation of white; give us some other colors! They did the Lying Down Foal as a black unicorn once; let's see some more of that!

As for the Haflinger Mare, she's another one of those molds that I initially wasn't all that interested in, but it slowly grew on me - I think Bella may even have been the first model I owned on this mold. Most of the colors they've done on her have been pretty good, too; her initial Breyerfest release is beautiful. The Haflinger Mare (and foal) showed up on the Breyer website again as Fiona and Rory earlier this year, and as far as I know the set is still available. She's also in the regular Classics line in another iteration of bay pinto, so I doubt we'll see anything new on her for a while. But I'll be ready when they do use her again (hopefully)! 

Slow News Week...Again

I haven't had much new to post about lately, unfortunately. Although I should mention that some of the Breyerfest leftovers are now available to single-day ticket holders, including full sets of single-day Stablemates, but it sounds like those are sold out now. Plenty of merch left, though!

Breyer is also doing a "Celebrate Dog Days of Summer" promotion where you can get 25% off some dog-related products:





Not really my cup of tea, but if you're in the market for them, it might be a good deal.

Let's hope we get some exciting news next week!

My Fylkirs are here!

...and I got the two colors I'd ranked the lowest, naturally. Oh well! At least I got two different colors. Here they are!

 

The colors really aren't that bad - the other two are just flashier, I guess. Though, like I said before, the splash would have been fine if he were glossy, or had blue eyes (or both). There's a nice metallic/sparkly tint to the dunalino's color, too.

Quality-wise, the splash is mostly okay other than having sloppy eyes.

 

Unfortunately, the dunalino has a few booboos.

 

Nice splotch of paint on that hoof.



And two of his legs are warped inward.



 

And he's got a fingerprint on his shoulder, along with a few pinpoint black marks on his body. Kinda disappointing, all things considered. Maybe I'll ask for a replacement; I haven't decided yet.

That's all I've got for today, although I feel like I should mention today's latest controversy: apparently the image of Sugarmaple hadn't been authorized for release by Breyer yet, so they've been sending cease-and-desist letters to people. So, I took the photo down from yesterday's blog post - hopefully they get that figured out soon.

New special runs keep popping up!

So there are some new releases floating around on the Internet lately. I haven't seen an official announcement yet, but they're the TSC special runs for this year and another clearware special run for Back in the Saddle. I wonder if that's going to become a regular thing? Here's the clearware horse, Sugarmaple:


(image removed as apparently it wasn't authorized for release by Breyer)

This actually isn't the first time the Show Jumping Warmblood has been issued in clearware (apparently both Twilight Terror and Sunny are clearware). He's certainly interesting-looking. One of the alternate names for last year's Patriot was "Bomb Pop;" I wonder if this one should be called, "Camouflage," or something? Nevertheless, I ordered one, because it will be interesting to see what these look like in hand.

As for the Tractor Supply special runs, they're on Geronimo and the old Black Beauty mold:

 

They flipped the Geronimo's photo for the ad, which is kind of weird. But I'm going to have to pick one up - what I can see of that gray in the photo looks really nice! I won't need the Black Beauty, though, despite the fact that his color looks really nice. I'll definitely be haunting our local TSC stores until these beauties show up! 

Featured Model - 8/12/2017, Gemini

Hello, friends, and welcome to 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 featuring a Classics model with this week's...Gemini!

 

This model was produced in 2015 as part of Breyer's "Zodiac Series" issued on various Classic molds. No word on how many were produced, but it was probably considered a regular run...which they may have regretted not making a limited run, since most of the models in the series are still available on the website. There's also no word on who sculpted this model, oddly enough. Anyone out there able to shed some light on that?

This really wasn't too bad of a series from a color standpoint - I really like most of the colors, but none of them were issued on molds I collected. Here's a quick promo photo of the whole series.



When Marigold was revealed earlier this year, though, I decided I liked the Show Arabian well enough to add it to my collection. I do like the combination of colors here - yellow, a bit of green and even some blue in the mane and tail. Combine that with the silver hooves and we have a winner. Frankly, I might have ended up buying all of them if they'd been on molds I collect, because I like all of the colors. The only one that doesn't do a whole lot for me is the second from left on the bottom row...otherwise I could see myself buying all of those colors.

The other big improvement with this series compared to the Blossoms series from a few years ago is that they actually used more molds. The Blossoms had twelve models spread over...three molds. Which makes no sense, considering the number of molds Breyer has. Much better to spread it out and give some other molds a chance to shine.

As for the Show Arabian itself, I do like the releases it's been done in - even the weird original one with the mohair mane and tail and glass eyes. I named mine "Fluffy" because I'm a tad unoriginal when it comes to these things, but it did seem to be nicely done. We'll see how that mohair looks in 20 years, though.

Unfortunately, we already got new Classics this year, so I don't see much being done with this mold in the future. But who knows - maybe they'll use it for a surprise website special run, like last year's Sharpieloosa - oops, I mean Triton. I'm crossing my fingers!

Another test model on the Breyer website!

It's a new month, and that means a new test model on Breyer's website, apparently. Here he is:




Oh, I am definitely entering for this guy. He's still kind of ho-hum, like most of the other tests have been, but at least he's on a mold I collect!

From the email:

This particular test run was painted circa early 2000's. He's a very well done splatter roan chestnut with three small socks with character, and a unique lightning blaze. His tri-eyes sport a U-shaped brown iris and eyewhites in the back corners of his eyes. He's really nicely shaded on both the body and the mane and tail, with slightly darker lower legs and grey shading on the bottoms of his hooves.

He didn't look very roany at first, until I got to a computer and could see the photos more clearly. His roaning is definitely pretty subtle! He's definitely attractive, though, and I prefer the loose mane/tail SJW, anyway. He's definitely worth the price. Good luck to everyone who enters!