The big find of the week came the next day, when I stopped at the local Salvation Army on the way home from work. I needed a new wallet, and the only one I’d seen lately that I even remotely liked was a better-than-average knockoff I saw there last week. After picking it up, I took a quick cruise of the knick-knack aisle, and look who was nestled next to the Christmas decorations:
A pretty darn nice dark-faced variation of the Breyer Black Bear! When I picked her up, it appeared that she had some white housepaint speckled on her - something I see on a not-infrequent basis. A quick bath in hot soapy water and a gentle rubdown with a washcloth usually takes care of the problem.
After her bath, however, I discovered that some of those opaque white "paint flecks" weren’t paint flecks. They were rubs and chips down to the opaque white plastic. Such as this small gouge on the bottom of a rear paw:
She’s a White Plastic Chalky! Awesome!
I hadn’t heard of any Chalky Bears before; seeing as they have a dark, full-body paint job, they wouldn’t be immediately obvious to most hobbyists unless some damage - such as rubs or chips - happens to reveal it. They were within the realm of possibility, though, since the Black Bears were in production throughout the entire "Chalky Era", not being discontinued until the end of 1976.
That she’s a White Plastic Chalky is also somewhat typical of Nonhorse Chalkies - not all are, but a bigger-than-average percentage of them seem to be. I don’t know if it was a conscious decision on Breyer’s part, but it makes sense if it does. Getting good paint coverage for a basecoat on roughly textured molds like the Buffalo or the Bear would have been a major pain in the behind.
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