Model Horse Madness: Featured Breyerfest

Hello and welcome to another edition of Featured Breyerfest! We're covering 2012 today, so let's get going!

Notable events of 2012:

Costa Concordia runs aground off the coast of Italy, resulting in the deaths of 32 people
Elizabeth II celebrates her Diamond Jubilee (60 years on the throne)
Voyager 1 becomes the first man-made object to leave the solar system and enter interstellar space
"Gangnam Style" is released, and the video for it eventually becomes YouTube's most-watched video of all time

And in Kentucky, Breyerfest 2012 took place! This was the first year I was able to attend, after wanting to go since I was a kid. And it was a blast! Breyerfest became my happy place and quickly overtook Christmas as my favorite holiday.

Dates: July 20-22, 2012
Theme: British Invasion
Celebration Horse: Mariah's Boon
Number of Celebration Models produced: 4,400

Here's the first 2012 page from the commemorative program:

The real Mariah's Boon was an American Drum Horse who overcame major surgeries for a perforated stomach and went on to be a champion show horse and breeding stallion. He died in 2023, may he RIP. Other equine guests included Lil Ricky Rocker, Heartland High Tech, CH Sprinkles, and Taskin along with the Knights of Valour, Tommie Turvey with Odd Job Bob and Pokerjoe and Villa Vanners. The raffle models and store specials are pictured on this page as well - still sad I didn't win the mare and foal set. Interestingly, at one point Breyer ran out of Mariah's Boon models to hand out to three-day ticket holders, so they ended up giving out Taskin models instead. There was also a small quantity (about 250?) of Mariah's Boon models that were handed out in blue velvet bags rather than boxes (I don't remember exactly why - they ran out of time to box them up, I think).

The single-day Stablemates were (I thought) a clever idea, with all of them being draft molds named after various types of drinks, and they all had nice paint jobs, but they didn't seem to sell well for whatever reason. Plenty of them to be found in the Breyer store in 2013, which is when I got mine. Special runs included Prince of Chintz (which wasn't very well-received), Bowland, Killarney (the porcelain), the Stoneleigh Surprise on Flash, Cheerio, Aintree, Sixes and Sevens, Bees Knees and Tunbridge Wells. At this time, the special run line was still part of the Breyer Store on the concourse, so there were two lines going up into the store from the back of the Covered Arena. Celebration Models were handed out from the small ticket/office window on the opposite end of the Covered Arena, near where the Breyer Booth is located now (and the Breyer Booth was located on the concourse on the opposite side of the arena from the Breyer Store).

This was the first year the live auction was held in the Hall of Champions. Seems like it's been working out well since then, although the crowd is now starting to get too big (or was; I didn't go this year). We flew to Kentucky for the first time to get there (most of the subsequent years we drove), and I remember it was dark and stormy in Lexington when the plane landed. We didn't stay at the Clarion; our hotel was in Lexington a few minutes away from the KHP. It was my first year attending Breyerfest and doing all the activities I'd previously only read about, like shopping at the Clarion, going through the special run line, attending the live auction, participating in (but not winning) the raffles, and seeing people I'd been reading about in JAH for years, like Stephanie. It was great! We even did the costume contest, and saw some pretty amazing entries (didn't win that either, but that was another controversy). This was also prior to the evening Celebration of Horses being a thing - instead the costume contest took place prior to the BritBeat tribute band concert.

Here's the first page of the JAH recap/photo album: