Featured Model - 6/9/2018, American Pharoah

Woooo! Congratulations to Justify, the 13th winner of the Triple Crown! I'm sure there are plenty of people frantically shouting into phones over at Breyer headquarters. (Psst: put him on Lonesome Glory Carrick!) In honor of Justify's win, for this week's Featured Model I present...American Pharoah!

This illustrious model was obviously produced to honor American Pharoah, the first Triple Crown winner in 37 years. He's item #1757 on the Ruffian mold sculpted by Sue Sifton.

This model marked the first time Ruffian had been used with an alternate tail, to portray the real Pharoah's shortened tail. Since then the short-tailed Ruffian has appeared as 2016's Poltergeist and will appear at Breyerfest later this year as Dead Heat.

When Pharoah first won his Triple Crown, we of course didn't know which mold would be used as his portrait model, and we indeed didn't even have confirmation of it right away, so there was a lot of speculation as to which mold it would be, or whether he would get his own new mold. So when this test model appeared during that year's Breyerfest auction countdown, there was a lot of speculation that it was a test for American Pharoah:

When I looked at the model in person, though, it clearly had facial markings, so the jury's still out on that one.

Anyway, eventually the American Pharoah model was confirmed to be on Ruffian, which brings us to today. I wonder which mold Justify will get? I'm hoping for Lonesome Glory, but it could just as easily be Smarty Jones or...hmm. Ruffian and Cigar are already in the regular run line as Pharoah and California Chrome. That doesn't really leave a whole lot of options from newer molds. But someone on the Internet suggested using True North, which I suppose I could get behind, considering he's being used as Icabad Crane at this year's Breyerfest. If they do use True North I wouldn't buy it, but at least he'd be a pretty new mold for the new Triple Crown winner.

EDIT: I forgot about Carrick! I would totally be down with Breyer using him, since he hasn't been done in chestnut yet. Definitely rooting for Carrick over here! Hopefully we hear something soon.