(Breyer History Diva, 2010.)

Clearly, there was some sort of relationship between Robbins Metal Craft and Breyer, beyond that of buyer and supplier: Breyer was not only manufacturing models specifically for the company, they were providing them photographs for their sales brochure.

But here’s the funny thing: there’s no mention of the word Breyer in the brochure. There was no mention of Breyer in the packaging either, or at least in the one complete Weathervane I purchased off of eBay several years ago:


Yep, the Simmental Bull, Mint in Box. It cost me a pretty penny - way more than I usually spend - but it was shortly after I had sold one of those early AQHA Ideal Quarter Horses, also MIB, for an almost equally absurd sum, so it worked out for me. (Remember the astronomical sums people were paying for them, not that long ago? Ah, the mysterious economy of eBay!) Here's a better shot of the assembly instructions:


I think I got the better deal, of course - how many MIB Breyer Weathervanes are out there, anyway - and a special run, to boot? But, I digress.

So how do we classify these things? My first tendency is to classify all of them - even the "Regular Run" items - as Special Runs, but with the eternal caveat: only if you’ve got the evidence or provenance to prove it. Just like the fakesters out there glossing up run-of-the-mill regular run critters, anybody could - theoretically - drill a hole through any given model and claim it’s a Weathervane SR.

The kind of evidence you’d need would be something like the original box, the original weathervane it was mounted on, or the visible evidence that it was factory painted after - not before - being drilled. (A fully assembled and mounted weathervane in a showring? Now that’d be a sight to behold!)

Just how rare are these things, anyway? It’s hard to tell. If you do a little Internet snooping, you can even see that Robbins is still in business, and still has a few Breyer weathervanes in stock:

http://www.robbinslightning.com/full_bodied.php

http://www.xpressweb.com/linton/fwv/ (click on "full-bodied" link)

It’s hard to judge which models were made, in what quantity, and over what period of time. It’s conceivable that the SRs might have been better sellers than the "regular run" items, or that many of the items listed in the brochure were never made at all - or if so, only in limited quantities. It’s yet another topic that merits much further research. For what it’s worth, the contents of my Simmental’s box were wrapped in a local Missouri newspaper, ca. 1985 (the company is based in Missouri, so I’m assuming it was original) so the SR Bulls were made, or were available, at least that long.

Another complication is the fact that, while mighty durable, Breyers don’t make ideal weathervane ornaments. If a few years of continuous exposure to the elements didn’t do most of them in, the lightning strikes certainly would have.

So, what’s the relationship between the weathervane SRs and the plain old undrilled SRs? Did Robbins sell the undrilled SRs, or were they available to other retailers and mail-order companies?

Anecdotal evidence documented in Nancy Young’s Breyer Molds & Modelsmentions an order form with numbers identical to the ones seen in the brochure, seen by a hobbyist lucky enough to find the (undrilled) livestock SRs for sale at a flea market back in 1985. Whether that order list was from Robbins, or another supplier, is unknown. (I’d like to think so, but I’d prefer to know so.)

Another wrinkle in this story is something from the brochure I didn’t show you last time:


Does that mean Desk Trophies = Presentation Collection? The photo is in black and white, and too murky to make out the base in any detail. I don’t think anyone has ever established who was responsible for mounting the Presentation pieces - I had always assumed someone more local to the factory, like the Riegseckers.

It truly leaves me at a loss for words. Was Robbins involved in the manufacture of the original Presentation Collection? Was it a continuation of the old program, or something new? Does that mean that the Presentation Collection may have led to the creation of the Weathervane SRs? If these models were a continuation of the Presentation program somehow, how do we classify them?

Breyer Poodle

(Breyer History Diva, 2010.)

I have most of the Traditional Breyer Dogs - not all, but most. Of all of them, I think I have the most of the Large Poodle - not sure why, I just do. It might be one of those regional things - they seem to show up in the markets here more frequently than the other more "common" Breyer canines, like the Boxer the Bassett Hound.

There’s also a multitude of subtle variations on the earliest Poodles - the Black and the White - that have fueled my previously unrecognized obsession. My favorites are the "Blue Collar" Poodles, especially my Black one:


We’re not entirely sure when the Large Poodle debuted; we know it was in production by 1957, since it’s seen in an ad for both the Black and the White in the June 1957 issue of Western Horseman, and in the 1957 Sears Wishbook (the infamous "French Poodle Sewing Kits.") I suspect that 1957 was the introduction date, but I don’t have any additional data to back it up my suspicion.

We’re pretty sure that the "Blue Collar" variations are the earliest, though. All of the reference photos of the Poodle prior to 1963 are in black and white, so all the evidence comes from the Poodles themselves. All Blue Collar Poodles I’ve seen lack the mold stamp - put on the mold ca. 1960 - and my MIB White Poodle with the Illustrated Shipper box (allegedly from the collection of an early Sales Rep) has a handpainted Blue Collar.

They are also relatively scarce, compared to the Red- and Pink-collared ones. The White Poodle is far easier to come by than the Black in the Blue Collar variation; I’ve had at least a half dozen Blue Collar Whites pass through my hands, but only one Blue Collar Black. Oh, I’ve tried: my Blue Collar Black is in much rough shape than he appears, and I’ve been trying to upgrade him for years. No luck: either I’m a little too late, or a little too short on the cash whenever a better one appears. Lucky for me he’s molded of solid black acetate, so his scuffs are not too noticeable.

So, why the disparity in the numbers? There are two possible theories. One, it could have been by design: maybe the Black Poodles were originally intended to come with Red Collars all along, and the Blues were a very brief anomaly. I prefer the second theory: I think the Black Poodle debuted slightly later than the White Poodle - maybe just by a few months, even - and by that time, they were already starting to phase out the blue paint in favor of the red, likely as a cost-cutting measure. (One less step in the painting process: just use the tongue paint as the collar paint!) Hence, the relative scarcity of the Blue Collar Blacks.

In Between Mare

(Breyer History Diva, 2010.)

What is the exact relationship of the In-Between Mare to the Family Arabian Mare? It’s generally been assumed that they were two separate and distinct molds, but Dumpy’s Delicate Condition - and what it reveals - points towards a more complex situation:


It’s a little hard to see (mostly because of my subpar photography skills) but there’s an extra mold seam line on her posterior, right where the tail comes closest to the rump. It intersects with the other seam line running down her right hind leg, creating an elongated "bubble" shape.

It’s most peculiar, because there’s no reason for it to be there that I know of. While the area itself is a little on the tight side, it’s not so tight that it would require special gating to get it to mold properly.

My first thought was that it was a repair. There’s an irregular seam line on the inside of the left hind leg that’s obviously the result of a crack or some similar damage; maybe this little "bubble" is evidence of another repair?

A repair - or a remodel?

Now is a good time to revisit the FAM/IBM/PAM tail comparison: here’s the handy little illustration I created to help clear the inexplicable confusion between these three old ladies:


Notice how the tail of the In-Between Mare touches her rump, then swings back out? The point of contact for the tail is in the same position as the bubble seam on the Family Arabian Mare.

Well, isn’t that … interesting.

Does that mean that the Family Arabian Mare mold is actually the In-Between Mare mold - just heavily remodeled, a la Halla/Bolya? Or did Hess take an In-Between Mare (either the original sculpt, or a casting from the original mold) and continue reworking it until they settled on the Family Arabian Mare’s design, and cast a new mold from that?

The smoothness and regularity of the bubble seam suggests a mold remodel, rather than a resculpt, as the more likely scenario. The tail was pulled away from her rump and resculpted, and the hole that was created in the process had to be plugged - and in the process, created another seam. The direct remodel of the mold would also go a long way towards explaining the FAM’s rather odd proportions: there’s only so much you can do to remedy a mold, once it’s been cast.

According to Marney’s book, the In-Between Mare mold still existed as a separate and independent mold, at least until the early 1990s. I’m not so sure it did. As I’ve pointed out several times before, Marney is not the most reliable or trustworthy source: the IBM and the FAM are remarkably similar at first glance, and I can see how she could have confused the two.

The truth could be very, very different. I don’t have direct access to the molds - and I didn’t have the knowledge or the foresight to ask way back when I (very briefly) did - so what we have here is another case built on thin evidence and speculation.

As long-time readers know, this is about par for the course, when it comes Breyer history.

Restoration and Clean-up

(Breyer History Diva, 2010.)

I take a pretty conservative approach to conservation and restoration: most of my models don’t get "restored" beyond degreasing, cleaning and unyellowing. Even my repairs to broken pieces tend to be temporary and removable: white glue only. I’ve found that this approach leaves less to explain should I ever have to sell or upgrade the model in question.

I wrote an entire booklet on the subject restoration and conservation (out of print, for the time being) but honestly, 90 to 95% of models don’t need much more than a basic cleaning to bring them back to their former glory. And most of that can be with a few basic supplies: a good quality dish soap, Lestoil, cotton swabs, toothpicks, paintbrushes, that sort of thing.

I’ll occasionally use bleach for unyellowing, or substitute some other degreasing agent for Lestoil, but that’s about it. Oh, I’ve experimented with other stuff, believe me: that’s why I’m rarely hesitant to pick up the icky-sticky bodies everyone else leaves behind. If you’re lucky, you can make a bad model better - and if not, into to the body box it goes!

In most cases, everyone gets the same treatment: a light rinse with warm water, a gentle rubdown with either dish soap or Lestoil, undiluted, and a full body dunk in a bucket or sink of hot (but not boiling) water for a half an hour or so. Add more soap or Lestoil to the water, as necessary (a couple of capfuls is usually sufficient.) Dark marks and particularly dirty nooks and crannies will get worked over with cotton swabs or brushes dipped in soap or Lestoil, and very gently scrubbed while still wet. Rinse and repeat as necessary.

Models with labels or stickers, of course, wouldn’t get the full body dunk - in those cases, I use cotton swabs or pads for spot cleaning to keep the fluids away from those critical areas.

I’ll use toothpicks to pick away any odd bits of glue, house paint, or any other foreign substance that happens to find itself attached to the model in question, though your fingernail will work in a pinch. Both are soft enough that a little slip won’t lead to the kind of scratch that’s likely to happen with a knife blade.

And that’s about it. It might take a day or two to clean a really sorry looking specimen (like my Polo Pony) but most of your finds can be shelf, show or saleslist ready in an afternoon or less.

There are two popular cleaning techniques I will recommend you avoid: toothpaste and hairspray. Both are used as spot cleaners to remove dark marks; toothpaste is used as a slightly abrasive scrub, and hairspray as a mild solvent. They both "work" in the sense that they do remove the marks in question, but they also have a tendency to remove the paint, especially if you haven’t had a lot of practice with either.

Both of them also leave residue behind that’s almost as hard to remove as the offending marks. (The toothpaste, believe it or not, is the harder of the two to remove!) Sometimes I’ll use one or the other if nothing else will work, but only if I follow up with rubdown and full body dunk.

More About Chalkies

(Breyer History Diva, 2010.)

One of the things I did find was a not-bad Chalky Palomino Rearing Stallion. Two Chalkies in the space of a month - excellent! I was just going to toss him into my sales stash, but when I gave him his standard dunk-and-scrub job, I noticed that he was a "White Plastic" Chalky, not a "Basecoat" Chalky. White Plastic Chalkies are considerably scarcer than their Basecoat cousins; out of the twenty plus Chalkies I have in my collection, I only have two White Plastics. I wouldn’t mind have a few more.

At first glance, White Plastics and Basecoats look virtually identical. Both have that slightly glossy, opaque "dipped in white housepaint" look. Basecoat Chalkies were actually painted with a rather thick coat of white paint, probably the same stuff they used to overpaint the white markings on Woodgrains. It was used to cover the less-than-white nature of the molded plastic, which was either colored, or extensively contaminated with nonwhite regrind. White Plastic Chalkies, on the other hand, were models that were molded out of opaque white plastic instead of the standard, slightly translucent stuff.

There are several subtle visual clues that help distinguish the two. The simplest and most obvious method: look at the bottom of the hooves. A Basecoat Chalky usually has a rough finish and puddling, as seen here on my othewise spiffy Black Morgan:


A White Plastic Chalky, on the other hand, has neat, clean hoof bottoms, as observed on the flea market-fresh Rearing Stallion:


The problem with this technique is that it’s not 100% foolproof. I’ve seen examples Basecoat Chalkies where the hoof bottoms were either very clean, or were apparently so rough and puddled that they cleaned or ground down at the factory before the final detailing.

Another clue: checking the transitional areas of the paint job, at the edges of airbrushed bald faces and stockings. On White Plastic Chalkies, the paint comes off in tiny flakes, and gives the paint job a scrubbed or patchy look. If the paint flakes off of a Basecoat Chalky, it’ll flake off anywhere, will come off in bigger flakes or chunks, and often reveals the funky color of the plastic beneath.

Mold detail is another: the thick white paint on Basecoat Chalkies fills in some of the finer details of the mold. On White Plastic Chalkies, those finer details are retained. The best, quickest test for mold detail is to flip and check the copyright horseshoe: the crisper and sharper the detail there, the more likely it’s a White Plastic version. If the lettering is blurry or infilled, it’s probably a Basecoat.

For some models, it’s hard to tell one way or another. The Clydesdale Foal I found a couple of weeks ago is a mystery: she has virtually no condition issues that would clue me in to her true nature. Her hooves are really clean and her mold detail is pretty sharp, so I’m leaning towards White Plastic. For most hobbyists, however, it’s a moot point: they’re all good!

Sham

(Breyer History Diva, 2010.)

Most mold and paint changes occur early on in a model’s run, but we don’t really become away of some of these changes, or value them, until later releases of the same mold or color come out.

The Kansas City Shams are a good object lesson. At least one was lost that way, because it was assumed that the batch available at that show were production run Shams - or were going to be. Both Mr. Rudish, and hobbyists in general, were a little miffed when the Sham debuted in 1984 in a flat Red Bay, and not the "Golden Bay" described in loving detail in the book. It was assumed that the color correction was made, and the Red Bays were going to be the variation, not the standard.

Unfortunately, that was not to be. Rumors floated around that they had given the remainder of the Golden Bays they had produced to Sears for their 1984 Wishbook orders. Imagine what a nice surprise that would have been on Christmas Day!

Alas, there was little truth in the rumor. The paint job on the Sham did vary widely throughout its run - ranging from neon orange, bright red, to darkest mahogany - so it’s possible that a few of those early Sears Wishbook Shams could have been some shade of Golden Bay. But they were not the true Golden Bays from Chris Nandell’s Heart of America show.

Another complicating factor is that Breyer evidently did struggle with getting the Sham’s color just right: there are a lot of Bay test pieces floating around, and most that I’ve seen appear authentic, or at least not obviously faked. I even have one myself; if you look at him closely, you’ll notice that his mane and tail are hand-airbrushed, not masked like the production run piece:


(I purchased him from the estate of a man who had worked for Breyer in Chicago. He was not listed as a test color, but all the clues were there.)

There are a lot of dubious Kansas City Shams floating around. He’s so desirable - and potentially lucrative - a thing that many sellers start throwing around the "Kansas City" claim the moment they set eyes on a slightly lighter than average Bay. If every model claimed to be one on eBay were authentic, he’d be more common than most of the Special Runs of the early 1980s - ones measures in the hundreds of pieces, not in the dozens.

If you’re ever offered a Kansas City Sham, make sure the seller shows you the paperwork: the provenance, chain of ownership, receipts, whatever. And if they don’t, give ‘em the old stink eye and walk away.

Plastics Used by Breyer

(Breyer History Diva, 2010.)

Breyers haven’t always been made of Tenite Acetate. I’m not talking about the Stablemates and Little Bit/Paddock Pals, both of whom made the transition to ABS (acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene) some time ago. There have been a couple of times in the past when Breyer used other types of Cellulose Acetate.

The first known incidence of this is from the early to mid-1970s: the Chalky Era. Since Tenite was expensive, and in short supply, Breyer went overseas to purchase the off-brand Cellulose Acetate they needed to continue production. It might not have been "Tenite," but it was still the same stuff chemically - more or less. It’s not the color this stuff came in that made the difference: the pigments used to color Cellulose Acetate have little effect on the plastic’s basic properties. It’s the formula itself: every manufacturer has their own, subtly different recipe for Cellulose Acetate.

Because each brand of Cellulose Acetate is slightly different chemically, it’s generally not a good idea to start mixing them together - just like it’s not a good idea to mix different brands of the same kind of paint together. So the brittleness some Chalkies are known for may not just be a result of a different "recipe," it could also be the result of a slightly incompatible regrind mix.

In the late 1970s, Breyer again was forced, due to cost, to switch to a different type of Cellulose Acetate. This time it was Cellulose Acetate Propionate (CAP.) CAP is most definitely not compatible with plain old Cellulose Acetate: the literature from the Eastman Chemical makes it very clear that mixing the two is a very bad idea. (Oddly, it can be mixed, to some degree, with the third form of Tenite - Cellulose Acetate Butyrate, or CAB.)

The "B" mold mark was added to molds during this time period - ca. 1979-1982 - to help distinguish the Propionate-molded models from the Acetate-molded ones, and prevent regrinding accidents. It’s assumed that the "B" mark was added to most Breyer molds in production during that time period - but we don’t know for certain. I’ve been casually keeping track of that data point just to confirm or verify. And who knows? Maybe a surprise or two will show up. (I keep track of all sorts of crazy data points. It’s a wonder I get anything done at all!)

But why did they use a "B" mark - shouldn’t it have been "P" for Propionate, instead? I wonder if they originally decided to go with the Butyrate form of Tenite instead, and only switched to the Propionate at the last minute. The molding properties of the Butyrate form of Tenite are more similar to the Acetate than the Propionate.

It’s probably only a coincidence - maybe it was just a "B for Breyer" thing, or a random mold stamp they picked up. Or maybe it was just an artifact of their internal production process: they may have simplified things for the workers by referring to the two different plastics by letter, rather than by name. If Acetate was "Plastic A," then Propionate could have become "Plastic B." No clue.

In general, both Propionate and Butyrate are more dimensionally stable, and can hold detail better than Acetate. However, these properties come at a price: less flexibility. That lack of flexibility results in this sort of thing happening more often:


A lot could have been done to manipulate Propionate and Butyrate to behave more like Acetate - either by changing the plastic formula (adding or subtracting plasticizers) or recalibrating the molding process (manipulating the heat, the pressure, or the injection speed.) It must have been too much of a hassle: they opted to go back to Acetate once it was feasible to do so.

While most molds had the B mold mark removed by 1982, it lingered on for years afterwards on a small number of molds, most notably the Rearing Stallion. Some molds seem to be more rare than others with the B mark, but I don’t know of many hobbyists who collect them the way, say, Chalkies are collected.

As far as I know, Traditional-scale Breyers are still made from Cellulose Acetate - though I am unsure if it is specifically the Tenite brand. I haven’t seen the word "Tenite" in any of the promotional literature lately, but that doesn’t necessarily mean anything. As the saying goes, the absence of evidence isn’t evidence of absence.

Mildewed Models

(Breyer History Diva, 2010.)

Speaking of condition issues, the Foal was found in a rather large collection of horses, mostly dating from the 1980s. They were a reasonably decent lot, quality wise, except for one thing: most of them were mildew dappled. It was a shame, since some of them had beautiful paint jobs. The prices were reasonable, so I picked out a few of the choicer items, and left the rest behind.

Mildew dappling is most often seen on models with matte-finished bay, chestnut or palomino paint jobs, usually from the 1970s or 1980s. The mildew attacks and eats at the topmost surface of the paint, creating an effect not unlike resist dapples. Whenever I see a listing on eBay or MHSP that mentions dappling on a vintage model that’s not supposed to be, I almost always assume mildew is at fault. There are a few genuine vintage test colors of dappled non-grays, but they’re pretty rare and fairly distinctive.

Why models of that time period are prone to mildew is unknown. By that time, the clear topcoat that was sprayed over most matte-finished models had been discontinued, and I suspect that that’s what was preventing the mildew from forming before. It "sealed" the plastic from direct exposure to the mildew spores. That might explain the absence of widespread mildew damage on Alabasters and Dapple Grays: they continued to get this topcoat for some time after it was discontinued elsewhere.

There’s not a lot that can be done to reverse mildew damage. I’ve found that a quick, modestly strong bleach bath helps. It doesn’t eliminate much of the dappling, but it does kill off the mildew and keep it from spreading.

Fakes or the Real Deal?

(Breyer History Diva, 2010.)

One of the items I picked up this past Sunday was a passable Black Bucking Bronco. He was nothing special - a later piece with some paint skips and flaws. He was cheap, he needed rescuing, and I harbor a strong fondness for the mold, simple as that. (So strong a fondness that once upon a time, when the prospect was presented to me, I asked for a test color Wedgewood Blue Bucking Bronco. I didn’t get it, though: it’s another one of My Long Stories.)

As I was cleaning him up, some of his paint flaked off. Since he was already in not-collectible shape, it wasn’t a big deal. Some black paint jobs from the 1970s have a tendency to do that; I tend to chalk it up as either the consequence of poor prepping and cleaning, or the heavy-handed application of the paint, both common occurrences back then. I wouldn’t rule out the possibility of a bad batch of paint, too.

He is genuinely OF - fake black paint jobs used to be as common as fake gloss jobs are now, but there was nothing here to indicate anything amiss. No weirdness going on over or under the paint. Just bad paint, period.

I’ve seen enough model horses in my time that I hesitate to dismiss anything except the most obvious of fakes, as fakes, especially if the only evidence I have is a low resolution JPEG on the Internet. I’ve seen genuine OF models with flaked paint, handpainted details, acetone touchups, bad trim jobs, smudges, drips and fingerprints - all the usual giveaways of fakeness. My SR Solid Black Mustang has a gigantic drip, and I bought him straight off the Bentley Sales Discontinued List!


(He was one of the last ones they had, so I couldn’t get a replacement. I prefer to think of it as a beauty mark.)
It wasn’t the runs, drips and errors seen on some of the models involved in the (still ongoing) Gloss Nokota business that made them dubious in my eyes. I’ve seen those kinds of flaws on genuine OF models, and it’s not the "tell" everyone thinks it is. I’ve gotten a lot of good models by taking long second looks.

A greater indicator of fakeness is the behavior of the seller involved. If it looks like, walks like, and smells like a con job, it’s a con job. After all that’s happened, the minor involved in that deal still has Internet access and is still attempting to wheel and deal. Whether the models involved are real or were somehow legitimately obtained is irrelevant.

The fact that some hobbyists are still debating whether or not she’s even worth dealing with is the strangest, saddest part. Is the prospect of a Gloss that no one else has or has even heard of so tempting that some hobbyists are willing to throw common sense out the window?

If any good comes out of all of this, it’ll be to cool off the overheated Gloss market, and maybe - just maybe - have Reeves reconsider the whole Glossy Prize Model idea in the first place. While it’s mostly hobbyists to blame in this whole mess, Reeves really ought to be stepping up to the plate - to make their Glosses a little less easy to fake, at the very least. (A decal, signature or numbering?)

Other Companies & Knock-offs

(From Breyer History Diva, 2010.)



Lido wasn’t exclusively a model horse manufacturer; model horses were just something they added to their toy line in the 1950s. Most of the secondary manufacturers from the 1950s and 1960s were like that: Westerns were "hot," and it made good business sense to add a few horse and/or cowboy pieces to their toy lines.

What made Lido a little bit different from the others is that the other companies were, by and large, copying Breyer and Hartland. Lido was one of the few who was forging ahead with original molds and concepts.

Most of these secondary lines of horses died out by the end of the 1960s, and so did Hartland, before it was revived a short time later (and later, and later again.) Breyer almost gave up the ghost itself around that time too, but fortunately for us they did not.

Other known manufacturers from that time period included Pressman, Ohio Plastics, and Kroll. They turn up from time to time, usually as unidentified knockoffs. Like this odd, but not bad Pressman version of the Stretched Morgan, in Alabaster:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&Item=160481717242&Category=35999&_trkparms=algo%3DLVI%26its%3DI%26otn%3D2

That one’s managed to fool me more than once, at the flea market! He has probably played a part in those "Alabaster Stretched Morgan" rumors that crop up from time to time. The actual existence of a few true Alabaster Stretched Morgans does, too:


(Marney’s album, again.)

Among my favorites are the "textured tack" horses by an otherwise unidentified maker, an example of which is seen here on, of all things, a knockoff of the original Breyer Western Horse Clock!


They’re referred to as "textured tack" models because the Western Horse and Pony copies that they made have an odd, wire mesh texture to their tack. They’re otherwise remarkably good reproductions. They even "feel" right: they’re either made of some type of Cellulose Acetate, or a similarly sturdy plastic.

Oddly enough, the clock case and the base seem to be made of a different type of plastic; it feels like ABS (Styrene) to me. (BTW, the plumber’s chain reins are original, but the saddle probably isn’t.)

The fact that the entire Breyer Clock was knocked off - not just the horse, but all the "trimmings" - fascinates me. Was the original Breyer Clock itself so popular that it inspired its own knockoff? Who was this third company that made these horses - and what happened to them? Why did they decide to go with Cellulose Acetate, when many of the other secondary manufacturers didn’t? Did they have bigger plans?

What a different landscape we could be living in, if only we had a third serious contender in the model horse market back then!

Davy Crockett

(From Breyer History Diva, 2010.)

There’s never been any doubt that the Davy Crockett was a Breyer release, but outside of the box the occasional set turns up in, there’s no official company document that specifically says so. The set appears in mail-order catalogs in 1955, but no mention of the manufacturer is made in the catalog description.

We have a 1956 sheet that mentions the Kit Carson - basically the same mold, with a new paint job and accessories - and Kit is also shown in the 1958 materials (Dealer Catalog, and Pricelist.) But poor old Davy is conspicuously absent. It’s almost as if he didn’t exist - except for the fact that he rather obviously does.

I finally found the "evidence:" the original announcement, in the "New Toys on Parade" section of the August 1955 issue of Toys and Novelties:


The August 1955 date is interesting. Most of the announcements I’ve found for Breyer’s new releases have been in the January through March range - right around Toy Fair time. Now it’s possible that the magazine might have had a backlog of pieces to run in the "New Toys on Parade" section, but I rather doubt there was a five or six month delay in this case. I think Davy really was a Mid-year release, and a rushed one, at that!

It had been long assumed - but not proven, until now - that Breyer’s Davy Crockett was a part of the onslaught of merchandise marketed during the infamous Davy Crockett fad of 1955. Here’s a pretty good summary of this brief, intense mania that caught everyone - even Disney, himself! - by surprise:

http://mercurie.blogspot.com/2010/03/davy-crockett-televisions-first-fad.html

(Warning: it’s gray text against a black background, and may be a bit hard on the eyes.)

Seeing the huge profits the "first responders" were making, just about every toy manufacturer rushed their own Davy Crockett-themed merchandise to the market. Licensing wasn’t really an issue - as an historical figure, Davy was essentially in the public domain. As long as you didn’t use anything specific to the Disney show itself - like the theme song, or Fess Parker’s likeness - you were free to make whatever Davy Crockett merchandise you saw fit. Such as this rather creepy vinyl doll, from the same page the Breyer Davy appeared:


The fad was well underway by February, when the third episode of Davy Crockett aired on ABC’s Disneyland. If Breyer’s announcement was printed in August, it had to have been sent in by July, and photographed by June - which means that it took them four months, five months tops, to get their Davy Crockett from concept to execution. Impressive!

If you needed anymore proof of the awesomeness of Breyer’s primary sculptor and moldmaker Chris Hess, there it is.

The Davy Crockett fad was pretty much dead by Christmas 1955. And so was, I believe, the production of Breyer’s Davy Crockett. I’ll discuss that, and a whole lot more, in my next post.

Kit Carson & Rider Sets

(From Breyer Diva History, 2010.)

As I demonstrated in my last post, we’ve finally determined that Breyer’s Davy Crockett was a 1955 release, and was probably a part of the fad spawned by Disney’s Davy Crockett episodes on Disneyland. Now comes the question: what happened after that?

Disney had come up with a couple of new Davy episodes by the fall of 1955, and would re-air all the Davy Crockett episodes for some time to come, but the fad was pretty much over by the end of 1955. Crockett-themed merchandise was still selling - but not at the insane pace it was at the height of the craze, and not enough to justify continued production.

That probably included Breyer’s Davy Crockett, too.

It’s certainly possible that Breyer continued production of the Davy Crockett somewhat into 1956 to fill late Christmas 1955 catalog orders, but by the spring of 1956, the Davy Crockett mold has already been rebranded - repainted, retooled, with a new horse and accessories - as Kit Carson:


So while we can’t determine when Davy was discontinued with absolute certainty, it appears that he was almost exclusively a 1955 release. The Kit Carson set remained in production considerably longer, through at least 1958; he appears in both the Pricelist, and the Dealer’s Catalog from that year.

In spite of the longer production run, the Kit Carson is a harder set to find than the Davy Crockett. It’s not so odd, when you give it more than a moment’s thought: Breyer’s Davy Crockett was released at the height of the fad. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if all of Breyer’s resources, for the summer of 1955, were dedicated exclusively to meeting the demand.

There’s some tangential evidence of that: the 1956 Breyer line. Breyer released not one or two, but at least five new molds in 1956:

• Brahma Bull
• Horned Hereford Bull
• Lassie
• Rin Tin Tin
• Robin Hood

The money to make and market all of these molds had to come from somewhere, and the most obvious source is the windfall from the Davy Crockett.

What about the MasterCrafters Davy Crockett Clocks - where do they fit in? I’m not sure. The theory that they might have engineered another models for mold tradeoff, just like the Western Horse, is still a viable one. It would have been much quicker - and neater - to simply make the necessary arrangements between each other, rather than get the banks involved in the first place.

If that’s the case, then it would mean that the Clocks and the freestanding Davy Crockett figurines could have been released simultaneously, allowing both of them to cash in. And in Breyer’s case, cash in enough to significantly expand the business.

Ah, if only I had more evidence!