My first thought on seeing this model is always, "Oooh, rainbow!" My weakness for rainbows strikes again. If only he were glossy to boot! Oh well. This release doesn't seem to have had an item number, but he was produced for QVC in 2002. I'm not sure if his quantity was ever released, either! What a mysterious guy.
The QVC stuff always really frustrated me, so I'm glad it's gone. Seems like it was always on in the middle of the night (which is bad when you're still in high school and have to go to bed), and the one time I actually tried to tune in, I'm not sure if the broadcast was canceled or if we read the schedule wrong, because it didn't come on that night. Plus there's the whole paying for things over the phone with a credit card thing, and I'd have had to borrow my parents' credit card, which they probably wouldn't let me do anyway, and...yeah. I'm glad that hassle is gone.
And when they released beautiful models like this one, that made the frustration even worse! Gah. But I finally managed to get my Alaric, a number of years after his original release, and he never fails to wow me. For a while I had the complete "family," with him, Alida and Elidor, but I ended up selling my Alida last year along with the rest of my Marabella models.
The Huck model used to be super-popular in the years immediately following his release - probably because he was among the first of the super-detailed molds that have since become the norm - but his popularity seems to have faded in more recent times. Has he been overshadowed by newer releases? Probably, and his inability to stand without the disc base - and the propensity for those bases to break - hasn't helped. I have a lot of Hucks, and even I get frustrated with those crappy bases, especially when the peg breaks off in the model's foot. I have a Huck that's been living on his side for close to two years now because I hate drilling those pegs out and the hot needle trick never seems to work...oh well.
Will we see a new Huck release anytime soon? He was last seen at Breyerfest 2015 as Giverny and as an auction model the same year, so I'd say he's due for something. He probably won't be a web special - or if he is, he'll probably show up later in the year, since I don't think Breyer would use two models that need a stand in a row. We haven't seen this year's Breyerfest show prize models yet, so maybe he'll show up there? Or as a mid-year release? Only time will tell.
Call me a cynic, but I suspect Breyer hasn't been using Huck because he's not good high-price SR fodder: he has already been released in a wide variety of patterns/colors, but isn't old enough to provoke nostalgia or qualify as vintage.
ReplyDeleteGood point!
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