Chasing the Chesapeake Update and Speculation

Chasing the Chesapeake is only about a month away, and I'm starting to get excited! Our flight leaves late Friday morning for the event. Sadly, I wasn't able to rearrange my work schedule quite to the extent I wanted, so I'm going to have to work all night Thursday night and take a later flight to Philadelphia to the event - which means we're going to miss all or most of Friday's festivities. Our flight to Philadelphia isn't scheduled to arrive until 4:45 pm, which doesn't leave much time for the evening's events. Oh well! I'm sure Saturday will be a blast. We aren't doing the Halloween contest either, so we'll have to be content to be "flies on the wall" as it were.

On to speculation about the special run models! Since three-day eventing is the theme, I'm expecting to mostly see Thoroughbred or warmblood molds used for this event. So, I wouldn't be surprised to see Ruffian, Smarty Jones, Lonesome Glory, Valegro, Salinero, Carrick, Totilas and more make appearances here. Lonesome Glory, Carrick and Totilas might be slightly less likely to be used since they were all used for the 2014 Big Easy Bash, and Salinero has been used for these types of events twice before, so I don't know if he would show up again.

Other molds I could see them using, in no particular order: Big Ben, Show Jumping Warmblood, Bolya (ugh), Cigar, Flash, Gem Twist, Strapless, maybe some of the old Herrick molds (double ugh), Idocus, and possibly some of the less popular Hess molds (Hanoverian, Touch of Class, Trakehner).

Ruffian stays first on my list of possible molds here, because she fits the theme and has never been used for this type of event. I'll just have to hope she isn't the centerpiece model. Ideally she'll be this year's version of last year's Four Stars, but that might be too much to hope for. Valegro is also high on the list due to how he's been used so far: regular run release, then raffle model: i.e. very similar to how Totilas was used in 2013. Totilas then was used as the 12-piece run Zydeco at the Big Easy Bash, so I would not be surprised if Valegro shows up in the same capacity (maybe larger than a 12-piece run since the upper price range at the event is $185).

As for the ticket Stablemate we'll presumably all get with Chesapeake, I'm going to go with the safe option and say we'll probably get a G2 Thoroughbred or Warmblood, either of which would be fine with me.

To close, all I can say is that it's going to be a long month's wait to find out what we're getting. I hope they throw us a bone and reveal at least one of the SRs beforehand to tide us over.

Santana and Garrett have been revealed!

We finally know what this year's Tractor Supply special runs are: Garrett, a bay roan Smart Chic, and Santana, a bay pinto Silver! Photos courtesy of a Blabber (used with permission):

Garrett:


And Santana:


I'm glad we finally know what these are! The suspense was killing me. And I'm thrilled that one of them is on Silver! I've been hoping they would start to use him more again. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised, since they used him for Breyerfest and as a web special this year. It's very similar to what they did with all the Goffert runs in 2014 (BF celebration model, then web special Kashmir, then Halloween Horse, so not quite the same). His appearance does look a little more like the Treasure Hunt bay pinto than I would prefer, but it's not a deal-breaker by any means.

Garrett's color looks like buckskin from a distance, but the box describes him as bay roan, and if you look closely at the photo he does appear to have roaning.

So, I foresee a trip to our "local" TSC in the near future! I won't be buying Garrett since I don't collect SCO, but the Santana will definitely be coming home with me.

Featured Model - 9/9/2016, Brabant Mare

Welcome to another installment of Featured Model, where I pick a random model from my collection, give some stats and provide some commentary! This week's model is the Brabant Mare.

This pretty lady was a Mid-States special run waaaaay back in 2014. In those long-lost days of yore, our local Runnings store still had a cursory selection of Traditional models from the regular line, plus some Christmas horses and a smattering of Classics, Stablemates and sets and various accessories. Only at Christmastime, of course. You'd have to go back to 2011 to find a time when they had the full Traditional line available at Christmas, and even further to a time when they had the full line available all the time. I miss those days.

ANYway, this girl was issued in 2014. I'm not sure if run numbers were ever released for this model (not that they ever seem to be for Mid-States and Tractor Supply SRs). She is on the massive Wixom mold, sculpted by Donna Chaney and first released as Cedarfarm Wixom in 2001.

Let me start by saying I love the color on this model. This is another one I wouldn't mind seeing on a great many other Breyers.  This color is what tipped the scales and got me to decide to collect this mold (I only had a Kong before her). Now I have 5 on this mold and they're all great. I wish this mold was used more so I could get more of her! I did get the Versailles from Breyerfest last year. They also used the mold another time in 2014 as Demeter, the last Greek goddess - but I just wasn't a big fan of her color for some reason. If I can find one for a reasonable price I might try to snag one eventually, but I'm not going to pay out the nose for one.

The only real problem I have with this mold isn't really that much of a problem, really - she's just so huge! She's by far bigger than any other Breyer model I have. This is a problem when shelf space is fleeting and hard to come by. My husband was kind enough to build another shelf for my models earlier this year, which helped, but if I buy any more Wixoms I'll still have to do a lot of rearranging to accommodate them. I guess the best remedy for that is to have my husband build more shelves...wait, that's a good thing!

2016 Retired List

The 2016 Retired List has been posted on the website and is available (in PDF form) here.

Of the items on the list, I'm most excited about all of the Classics being retired - that means we get new ones next year! Hopefully there will be some on the small handful of molds I like. And I wonder if the 2017 Horse of the Year will be on another new mold?

Not much being retired on the Stablemate front, so I doubt we'll see much new there - although I wouldn't say no to a new shadowbox set.

It's odd that Harley D Zip is on the retired list - I could swear he was retired last fall. And I'm pretty sure the Black Caviar and Foal set are Classic molds - what are they doing in the Traditional list? Same with the NRHA Horse and Camila, who should be in a place by herself (possibly labeled "Failed Experiments"?).

This leaves so many possibilities for next year's releases! Hopefully the yearly JAH comes out at the end of this month like it did last year. I can't wait to see it!

New Breyer Web Special - Leandro!

Today's big news is that a new web special has been announced: Leandro, on the Silver mold!



He certainly is an interesting fellow. I have the other three Big Cats and I collect Silver, so I'll be entering for this one as well. No idea what the chances of being drawn will be - his piece count is lower, so more people will be entering. It seems Breyer finally got a clue that 350 is just too common for some people, hence the low secondary market prices we've been seeing for pretty much all of the recent web specials. At least the shipping is free.

I don't know if Silver would have been my first choice to portray a lion - I think a Nokota would have been better, since he has more wild mane than Silver does, and he seems a bit more bulky as well. On the other hand: I've been wishing they would use Silver for a few more things, as I missed most of his releases until I got out of college in 2010. By then, the mold had been given a temporary retirement because they had used it so much, and it hasn't been used a lot since then. So it's good that they're using him for something. I guess I have a lot of mixed opinions here.

My biggest question about this release is: why the name? I would have thought they'd use something more African, as it were.

A quick Google check shows the following results, though: "Leandro is the Portuguese, Italian, and Spanish variant of the English name Leander. A blend of two Latin words (Leo "lion" and Andro "man"), Leandro is a name that suggests its bearer has strength and power."

Ehh. I guess that makes sense, but they already used Leandro for this JCP resin a few years ago. If the ad copy for the release says the model is based on an African lion, I'd expect an African name. Oh well. Crossing my fingers that I get drawn!

Rosie and Bailey are now available!

The next releases in this year's Vintage Club, Rosie and Bailey, are available on the Breyer website now! If you're a member, head on over there and complete your purchase.

Lady Phase and the Action Stock Horse Foal are both molds that I once had examples of in my collection, only to lose interest later (and run out of shelf space). I don't really miss either of them, though I was a little sad to see my Silky Keno go. Ah, well.

As for this release, I'm a little perplexed that they would use the long-tailed Lady Phase, since, you know...there's nothing vintage about that tail. For a truly vintage release, I'd think you would want to use the original tail. Maybe they wanted to draw attention away from the mold's deteriorating face? Who knows. Seriously, though, Breyer, fix Lady Phase's face or retire the mold. It's just getting sad now.

I'm also really not a fan of the old-style red roan at all, so I'm not at all sad that I'm missing out on this release. There are far better things to save my money for...like Chasing the Chesapeake!

Featured Model - 9/2/2016, Gypsy Vanner

Hello and welcome to another installment of Featured Model! This week's model is the Gypsy Vanner on the Brishen mold:

The Brishen mold #723, sculpted by Kathleen Moody, was released back in 2012 through the Premier Club, and the bay pinto Gypsy Vanner iteration (#1497) came out as a regular run in 2013 and is still in the regular line as of this writing.

Brishen seems to be another one of those Moody molds that you either love or hate. For the record, I am on the "love" side. His floofy awesomeness endears him to me a lot, and this paint job looks really good on him. I love his fluffy white feet and tail, and he's just the right shade of bay to make him stand out. This is what the original Brishen paint job probably should have been (I'll admit that was subpar, other than the pearly mane and tail). The only thing that could make this particular individual better would be if he were metallic and had pearly whites. I love that effect! This model must be popular with somebody, however, as he's been a RR since 2013 with no sign of being discontinued yet.

This guy was a Christmas gift from my husband, so I named him "Holiday Road" because of the song's association with the Christmas Vacation movie. (Further research reveals this song was used in several Vacation movies, but not Christmas Vacation. Oh well, I'm not going to change the horse's name.) It's hard for me to pick names for models because they all end up sounding really stupid in my head, but if I can tie the name to the horse's color and/or circumstances surrounding how I got it, it's not so bad. (I also tend to pick one-word names so I can more easily remember them, but that's another story.)

I do also like this mold's "twin," the Laredo version of the mold. Yes, he has noodly legs. Does that make me like him any less? No. Novelisto is one of my favorite models - they really got the paint job right with that one. I wouldn't mind seeing every model in Breyer's lineup in that color. Realism of the sculpt doesn't matter to me so much as the mold just being aesthetically pleasing (to me). I expect that the Brishens and Laredos will have homes with me for many years to come.