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!