Today's subject is was one of the things I found in my first day back on the project: my Gray Plastic El Pastor!
Gray Plastic Chalkies are just one of the many different subcategories of Chalkies. Gray Plastic Chalkies are models that were molded in a light to medium gray-colored Tenite, and not basecoated with white prior to painting. I sometimes call them Semi-Chalkies because they were nonwhite plastic models made during the Chalky Era (ca. 1973-1976): Breyer just skipped the basecoating step. The most common Gray Plastic Chalkies are Elephants and Donkeys; here's a particularly lovely near-black variation of the Donkey:
The Gray Plastic Chalky Elephant and Donkey are easy to distinguish from the earlier Donkey and Elephant (ca. Late 1950s – early 1960s) that were also molded out of gray plastic. One, the color is different: the earlier ones were a glossier and more battleship gray color, while the Chalky Era ones are more of a mop-water gray. Second, the paint jobs were completely different. The earlier versions only had their eyes painted; on the later ones, additional gray paint is used to enhance the color.
Breyer also used the gray plastic on the Spanish Fighting Bull and the Walking Polled Black Angus Bull to good effect. I actually prefer the Fighting Bull in its gray plastic version: I think the gray plastic horns are less stark-looking than the white ones he usually comes with.
Breyer attempted to go with the unpainted gray plastic on some of their horses, but with less success. With solid colors, or black-painted horses, it wasn't too much of a problem: I have a gray plastic Black Stretch Morgan who's quite handsome. (Haven't unearthed him yet, sorry.) With models like El Pastor, where having a white surface is essential to the proper execution of the design, the gray plastic just makes them look dingy and oversprayed.
Maybe Breyer thought they could get away with it for a batch or two. This was the era of the fuzzy overspray: clean, sharp markings were the exception, not the rule. (Whenever I see someone carping nowadays about a miniscule amount of overspray on an otherwise flawless horse, I'm not sure if I want to laugh at them or call them out on it. Back in the day, we bought Stablemates with untrimmed flashing on them, and we were okay with that! Well, not entirely okay with it, but certainly a lot less whiney.)
The Gray Plastic Chalky horses are less common than the nonhorses, probably because while our standards were lower than they are today, they weren't nonexistent. Did they really think we'd buy a #97 Chestnut Appaloosa Gelding with a gray hip blanket?
(Yeah, really, they made Gray Plastic Appaloosa Geldings. I don't have one – yet.)
