This interesting model was produced in 2014 for Breyerfest's Silver Anniversary. Item #711189, he was a run of 350 produced on the Sir Buckingham/Stock Horse Gelding mold sculpted by Sommer Prosser. Though there was some speculation after the fact that there may have been more like 500 of these produced, because I remember Breyer finding a box of them in the warehouse and offering them in a purchase raffle through the website. All I really know is that it was worth getting up at 3am to get in line for this one!
I really like this model - he looks like a birthday cake, which I think was the intention here, and his Celebration Horse decals are colorful and fun. Though that would be a lot of edible paper printouts to apply, if it was a real cake. Humorously enough, there are some errors with his decals - I don't have mine on hand to look at right now, but if I remember right, Lady Phase appears twice despite having only been a Celebration Model once. One of the years might be incorrect, as well? I'll have to look at mine later and confirm that.
EDIT: I finally got a chance to look at this guy close up. Here are the errors: 1998's Celebration Model was Rejoice, but the 1998 on this model is a long-tail Lady Phase. The 2000 Celebration Model (Lady Phase, correctly used this time) appears with a Standing Stock Horse Foal (presumably this is supposed to be Leahs Fancy Breyer, but she wasn't technically the Celebration Model, and she was issued on Amber). That's all I could spot!
This was the first time the mold appeared in plastic, totally unexpected, after he debuted as the porcelain Sir Buckingham and then was used as the Connoisseur Tenacious. Interestingly, since his plastic debut, the mold has only appeared with a loose mane and tail, as opposed to the braided versions seen on Sir Buckingham and Tenacious. I wonder if that's a permanent change, or if we'll see the braided mane and tail in the future? Time will tell.
After his brief 2014 run, the mold was dormant until appearing as the 2015 Horse of the Year Liam, which seems to be Breyer's program for introducing new Classics molds. Since then he's been used for a plethora of things, though, including the current Chestnut Quarter Horse, Palomino "Morgan" and Foal set, and the website-only Black Beauty release. That's a pretty wide variety of breeds for something that started out as a Cob, but that's Breyer for you. I like this mold a lot and have been lucky enough to get all of his (plastic) releases other than the Live Show Benefit Glossy Liam - hopefully they use him again soon!
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