Hello and welcome to the inaugural edition of the (again) revamped Featured series! Having concluded my look back at old issues of JAH (for now, anyway), I decided to take a look back at the old Breyerfests of yore! Starting with 1990, of course, because that was the first Breyerfest. Read on for more 1990 highlights!
Breyerfest 1990
July 28-29, 1990 (a bit later than modern Breyerfests)
Celebration Horse: Dr. Peaches
Number of Celebration Models produced: 1,026 (according to IDYB)
Attendees: I thought only about 1,000 people attended (the 1990 page in the commemorative program states 1,026, the same as the number of Celebration Models produced - which seems suspect), but a later Breyerfest blog post states the number as 10,000 (seems like way too many). I'm going to assume the number of attendees was closer to 1,000 than 10,000. Edit: This may be incorrect. See down below for the addendum! Anyway, here's the aforementioned page from the 2014 commemorative program:
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The real Dr. Peaches was an eventing champion owned and ridden by Bruce Davidson, who now has his own statue outside of Rolex Stadium at the KHP. Bruce and Dr. Peaches won the Kentucky Three-Day Event (sponsored by Rolex at the time and Defender now) three times. Dr. Peaches was not present at the first Breyerfest, according to
Breyerhorseref and the commemorative program. Instead, Misty II was the first Breyerfest guest horse.
Being the first Breyerfest, there were a lot of differences between it and the Breyerfests we know of today. Dr. Peaches was the only special run model produced for the event, aside from one raffle model which I'll cover later. The Celebration Models were handed out at Saturday's dinner (which was held in the old tobacco barn), which is why earlier Celebration Models are sometimes referred to as "dinner models." The above photo comes from a Breyer
blog post about that early Breyerfest and features the reservation form that had to be submitted in advance to attend the dinner and get your model.
The above image is a scan of a 2019 Vintage Club booklet from
Breyerhorseref. The only raffle held in 1990 was for the legendary gold florentine Misty model pictured above. 20 models were raffled off (I believe this raffle was held in a parking lot at the KHP?), while one more was sold at the live auction and four were presented to members of Misty's human family, according to Breyerhorseref (the commemorative program says only that four models were mounted on presentation bases).
Despite the differences between old Breyerfests and new, some things clearly haven't changed, based on the following illustrations by Sue Sudekum that appeared in the now-defunct Hobby Horse News magazine and were later posted by Andrea Gurdon (RIP) on her Breyer History Diva blog:
Page 1Page 2 Page 3And here's a flier for Breyerfest 1990, from another Breyer History Diva blog post:
That's it for this week. Check back next week (hopefully) for Breyerfest 1991!
Edited to add: Sheesh, clearly I should have read a bit more of that Breyer blog post I got the Dr. Peaches/Old Kentucky Nights reservation form. Check this out:
On the left is a scan of a page from the Feb/March issue of JAH. On the right is a scan of the Breyerfest recap from the Sept/Oct 1990 issue. It clearly says there were 10,000 attendees! I guess my assumptions were way, way off. I stand corrected!
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