Woodgrain Bloodhound #2

In addition to the Mortens Dalmatian that I found at Sell It Here yesterday, I also found my second woodgrain Breyer Bloodhound. And he was a bargain price, too!

 Breyer Woodgrain Bloodhound, #325, 1966 - 1968, $5, Sell It Here, Lafayette, Indiana

Breyer Basset Hound

(Breyer History Diva, 2009.)

As promised, here’s another mystery that needs extra sets of eyes…

As time goes on, it has become increasingly apparent that most early Breyer were not original creations, but adaptations of pre-existing designs. The Old Mold Arabians are a notoriously well-known example, as are the Large Poodle, Boxer, and the Horned Hereford Bull. Could the Basset Hound "Jolly Cholly" be one, too?

The initial evidence for this hypothesis comes from an examination of the model itself. Like the Poodle and the Boxer, the Basset Hound is out of scale with both the horses and each other. Another troubling feature is the mold’s exaggerated and comical nature: whatever the anatomic merits or demerits of the early Breyer molds, they are at least nominally "realistic" in style. Both of these features suggest that the inspiration for this model was … another model.

Where the trouble comes in searching for this original inspiration is that there’s a lot of inspiration to choose from. There’s a surprisingly large number of comically styled bloodhound/basset hound figurines from the period immediately preceding the mold’s introduction in 1966 (in brown, as the Bloodhound. Who IS NOT woodgrain!) The adoption of the Basset Hound as the mascot/spokesdog of the Hush Puppies brand shoes in the late 1950s probably had a little to do with that.

While all of these models share similar exaggerations - oversized domed head, severely foreshortened body, and deep symmetrical facial wrinkles - they are not identical. What this suggests to me is an even earlier model on which all of these other pieces took their design cues from.

I might have found him - on a hobbyist web site, of all places: the Animal Figurines Gallery web site. On the page dedicated to Robert Simmons figurines, there’s a piece that’s startlingly similar to the Basset Hound. Here’s the link. Scroll down to Hounds and see for yourself. He’s hard to miss!

Robert Simmons was a California Pottery company based in Los Angeles. They made relatively inexpensive copies of figurines from other contemporary companies, like Royal Doulton. Allegedly the company went out of business by the early 1960s, which means if this guy is for real, he would predate the Breyer mold. And if that’s the case, the question then becomes - what mold, and what company did Simmons appropriate him from?

My china documentation is pretty weak, though, so I may literally be barking up the wrong tree here - heck, maybe it’s even a case of Simmons copying Breyer, for all I know! It’s another one of those Breyer mysteries that sits patiently in my archives, waiting for the right lead or the right moment. If anyone else can provide better or more specific data on this it would be much appreciated.

Post Production Runs?

(Breyer History Diva, 2009.)


I’ve created the term "Post Production Runs" to cover cases of regular run models being put back into production after they were officially discontinued from the catalog. These models were more common in the 1960s, when Breyer was more accommodating to its customers and not as attentive about sending out updated price lists.

I came across this phenomenon when I purchased an unusual Breyer Bloodhound. There’s some controversy over the actual discontinuation date of this guy, but the records do seem to agree that he was gone before 1970, when most Breyer molds (but not all) received the USA mark. Theoretically, no Breyer Bloodhound should have the USA mark.


This one does.

I also have in my possession a mail order catalog from 1970 that features the Bloodhound. It’s not listed as a special or exclusive item - it’s just another one of many Breyer items listed for sale. I could have just chalked this up as a case of overstock being sold - except for the existence of my odd little fellow.

A Post-Production Run model would be, in most cases, indistinguishable from a regular run item; the only ways we could tell would be if there was (a) some documentation or (b) a change in the mold actually happened. Like this Bloodhound (possibly.)

As I hinted above, these probably happened more often in the 1960s, when Breyer wasn’t necessarily communicating with its customers on a timely basis. If a customer happened to order an item that just happened to be discontinued, I’m sure they just painted up the required batch per the order, provided they had the bodies available or the mold wasn’t already mothballed.

Most of the Ranchcraft lamp Woodgrains may fall into this category - although most of the Woodgrains used were regular run items, a lot of them appear to have been produced in the late 1960s, after the original discontinuation date. The most telling clue in the Ranchcraft case is the existence of Woodgrain Running Mare and Foal lamps with USA marks: in their original release, the Woodgrain Mare and Foal were discontinued at the end of 1965 - five years before the molds received the USA mark!

(Some of the Ranchcraft Woodgrains, though, are true special runs. And there’s some question as to whether all the lamps are classifiable as true special runs. I’ll get to that another time, though.)

There may have been a Wal-Mart post production run of the Matte Gray Appaloosa Family Arabians, too. It was a persistent rumor I heard in the 1980s, though I was never able to prove or disprove it. I did think it was interesting that the Matte Gray Appaloosa Family Arabians with USA marks seemed a little more common than they should have been. It leads me to think that some of the ones that were distributed through Bentley Sales might have been the cast offs of an aborted special run. (Don’t take it as gospel truth, though!)

In the 1970s, Breyer did bring back some discontinued items after a year or so, but I tend to classify them as regular runs, since they appear in the official catalogs. (The scuttlebutt I heard was that they had excess stock of these items in the warehouse, and putting them back in the catalog was a way of generating enough orders to move them out. I’m not sure if I believe the explanation, but that’s what I heard.)

I’ve called these items "Post production specials" before - a slightly different distinction that upon further reflection I’m not entirely comfortable with. Calling them "special runs" is not completely incorrect - they meet two of the three criteria I’ve set - but most of these items are intentionally indistinguishable from their regular run cohorts. I wouldn’t doubt that most serious collectors have at least one or two hidden in their collection, right now.

You’ll never know, of course, unless you can find that little difference that makes all the difference. Like in the case of my Bloodhound.