I have been up to my eyeballs working on a couple of major writing projects for the last several months, and unfortunately, that means I have been neglecting this blog. (I have actually been doing a bit of writing here and there on several different posts, but all of them are proving to be more convoluted and research-heavy that I anticipated.) I am hoping June will be a bit more chill for me (hahaha), and I am going to try to get a couple of posts finished up before BreyerFest. Fingers crossed!
Anyway, on to the subject of today's post! When it comes to vintage Breyer rarities, sometimes it's a piece of ephemera like a box or a hang tag or an accessory that is the truly rare feature of a model rather than the actual horse (or animal) itself. Such is the case with the very hard to find red plastic saddle blankets that are occasionally found with Fury Prancers.
A few years ago, I was surfing eBay and stumbled across an auction lot of about a dozen miscellaneous Hartland and Breyer horses, riders, and accessories from the 1950s and 1960s. I had been keeping an eye out for some time for the aforementioned elusive red saddle blanket, and lo and behold, I finally spotted one in that lot. I won the auction for a very reasonable price and was thrilled when my lucky find arrived.
As you can see, the red plastic saddle blanket is meant to be paired with the English saddle that was also used on the old #36 Racehorse mold and the #P440 Canadian Mountie set. The blanket is identical to the one that came with the Mountie except that it is red instead of the usual blue. The red saddle blanket also has gold trim around the edge while the Mountie's blanket has yellow trim.
This set also has the rare Drewry Beer stickers on the saddle blanket.
Not many of these red saddle blanket sets have turned up, and to the best of my knowledge, it seems they were likely only available for a year or so. The only evidence I know of for them is a partial Breyer dealer catalog that probably dates to 1956. The catalog describes the white Fury Prancer as wearing a "gay red saddle blanket" although weirdly the picture appears to show a horse with a dark colored blanket. (ETA: Fellow Fury fiend Robin R let me know that the IDYB page is just a dark scan. Her copy of the page does show a red saddle blanket.)
The price list from the same catalog indicates that retailers could order riderless Fury Prancers in a variety of colors and could specify either Western or English saddles for the models. Given the scarcity of the red saddle blankets that came with the English saddles and the text on the price list, it would seem that Western saddles were shipped by default if the retailer didn't specifically ask for a particular style of saddle. Perhaps few retailers asked for English saddles since TV and movie Westerns were hugely popular at the time, and they thought the Western saddles would be more appealing to their customers..
Whatever the reason, the option for English saddles was no longer listed in the 1958 dealer catalog or price list. (If a 1957 catalog exists, it has not yet come to light.) At least one collector has found a white Fury Prancer with the red saddle blanket and English saddle paired with a Canadian Mountie rider. Perhaps leftover red saddle blankets from the riderless offerings were occasionally sold with Mounties instead of the usual blue?
Which brings me to the mysterious white Fury Prancer music box. As I wrote in my blog post about music boxes, at least one example of this most elusive of Fury Prancers was spotted in an online auction sporting a red saddle blanket and English saddle combo. Based on extant catalogs and what we know about the palomino and pinto Fury music boxes, the white one was possibly made in 1955 or 1956 for Simpsons-Sears in Canada, and it may have had a Canadian Mountie rider. Until a collector finds another one and can identify the tune it plays, this may remain a mystery.
The red saddle blankets can therefore only date to late 1955 at the earliest as that's when the Fury Prancer models first became available just in time for holiday catalog orders. The one known Breyer dealer catalog that lists them is probably from 1956 based on the models listed in it, and they could have been available as late as 1957. Until a catalog or price list from that year turns up, we can't say for sure. But given how very scarce these little blankets are, I would guess they were only available for a short time in 1956 and were probably discontinued partway through the year due to lack of orders. We may never know the exact details of their production, but the red saddle blankets continue to be very desirable to vintage collectors.
I hope you all have great weekends! Thanks for reading!
When I was a kid growing up in the '80s, my best friend lived across the street from me. As avowed horse girls, we hit it off right away when my family moved to Georgia in 1985 (ironically for this particular post, from Toledo, OH). We went to the same school, rode the same bus, took riding lessons at the same barn for several years, and we both collected and played with Breyers. At some point around 1986 or 1987, my friend was given a paint-by-numbers kit, but it wasn't just your standard 2D wall art. No indeed! It was a 3D model of an Arabian horse! I was vaguely aware at that time that adult model horse collectors resculpted and repainted their Breyers, but the notion of customizing one of my beloved carpet herd members horrified me. So this horse painting kit with a model deliberately made to be painted was about the coolest thing I'd ever seen. It came with the usual snap-lid paint tubs in several shades of black, white, and grey, plus some red for the halter. There was also a little brush, a tiny blending sponge, and some instructions on how to paint a dapple grey.
That afternoon, we sat at a picnic table under the giant, ancient live oak tree in her front yard and chatted about our lesson horses while she painted her model. She tried for a grey to begin with, but eventually went with solid black like the opinionated little mare she often rode in her lessons.
I did eventually get over my aversion to repainting perfectly good Breyers,
but I never forgot my friend's nifty painting kit horse. A few months after
she got her model, I was tagging along with my mom on a shopping trip to K-mart when I
spotted the same Arabian kit my friend had along with several other breeds including a walking
Thoroughbred and a standing Quarter Horse. I remember stopping to look
at them briefly, but we weren't in the store that day for toys or
crafts, so I had to hustle and catch up with Mom. I looked for them on subsequent trips to K-mart, but never saw them again.
Many years later, I finally stumbled across the Arabian kit again while idly cruising eBay, and I was delighted to finally
know the company name, Craft House of Toledo, OH. I was interested to see that
they had made a variety of breeds besides the three I knew of---there
was also a Clydesdale, a Pony of the Americas, a Shetland, a foal, and a
unicorn. I have seen examples of all of them now except the foal and
unicorn. (If anyone has photos of these, especially the foal or unicorn, please feel free to email me! I'd love to add them to this post.)
I
acquired a Clydesdale in a body lot ages ago, but I'm not sure if I
still have him somewhere. I did however deliberately buy an Arabian just
for the sake of nostalgia. I had planned to prep it properly and paint it a more realistic dapple grey, but I'm ridiculously sentimental, and I couldn't bring myself to do so. I'm sure a young horse girl somewhere spent many hours working on this (rather creditable) paint job, so I'm going to leave him be.
I've been wanting to acquire one of these kits new in the box for ages now so I could write up a proper post about them here, but the timing, the price, or the box condition was never quite right until just recently. I scooped up this nice Thoroughbred kit a week ago on eBay, and other than a missing paint brush, it's complete.
The horse is about the size of a Breyer Classic scale model, and it's molded from some sort of heavy plastic or resin. It's textured to supposedly suggest a wood carving, but it really just looks more like hair texture to me. Nonetheless, the horse kits came with both paint for a realistic color or several colors of stain in case you wanted to finish it like a wood carving.
Interestingly, the horse's belly is screwed to a cardboard tab attached to the back panel of the box, presumably to keep the horses in place in shipping. They are fairly heavy, and they would definitely tear through the flimsy cellophane on the front of the box with any rough handling.
The painting instructions are surprisingly detailed.
The instructions are copyrighted 1985 which coincides with when I saw the models in my local K-mart, and other collectors have corroborated seeing them in stores in the mid-to-late 1980s as well. They're a bit hard to find, so I suspect that they were only made for a few years. I see the Arabian, Quarter Horse, and Thoroughbred most often on eBay, and it makes sense that some of the most popular breeds in this country would also be the most appealing in model form. The Clydesdale, POA, Shetland, foal, and unicorn are much less common. Unfortunately, the models are not marked in any way, so if they're no longer in the original box, it can be hard to come up with the right search parameters to find them on online auction sites.
A Craft House Quarter Horse I spotted in a Nebraska antique mall a few years ago. (I should have bought him.)
According to the back panel of my Thoroughbred box, the horse is a "reproduction of a wood carving by nationally known wildlife sculptor Ed Dietz." Dietz is listed as the sculpting artist for the Arabian, Thoroughbred, and Quarter Horse, and while I don't have pictures of the back panels of the boxes for the other breeds, I would guess he sculpted those as well. The side panels of the boxes have pretty accurate renderings of the other models.
Though
Craft House only seems to have made model horses in the 1980s, the
company's relevant history really began in 1950 when Max Klein, owner of
the Palmer Paint Company in Detroit, MI, hired freelance commercial
artist Dan Robbins to "[devise] a hobby kit that would promote the sale
of Klein’s paint products. Robbins based his concept on Leonardo da
Vinci’s practice of numbering sections of his canvases for apprentices
to complete. After trial and error, Robbins’ painting kits became
arguably the most loved—and most vilified—hobby of the 'new leisure
class' of 1950s Americans." [1] The idea of a
paint-by-number kit was first patented in 1923, but the Palmer Paint
Company brought the concept to life in the 1950s by the sheer volume of
kits they designed and produced.
In 1956, brothers John and A. M.
Donofrio bought the company and moved it to Toledo, OH, renaming the
company Craft House. [2] In addition to
their traditional 2D paint-by-number kits and eventually paint-your-own model horse kits, the
company also sold bisque figures to paint or glaze, stain glass
lampshade kits, model dogs and duck decoy painting kits, and so much
more. You can flip through the pages of one of their catalogs from circa
1975 here:
Craft
House products were originally made in the USA, but like so many
companies, they eventually had to outsource some of their production to
Hong Kong. In 2006, they were bought out by a company called Chartpak,
and they now operate out of a Craft House satellite office in
Massachusetts. They still make paint-by-number kits and other arts and
crafts kits for children.
My Craft House kit still has the original K-mart price tag---it retailed for $4.97 in the mid-1980s. These days, they sell for around $20 new in the box on eBay. Did anyone reading this have a Craft House horse kit back in the day? Did you paint it? If you're willing to share pictures of them, painted or otherwise, with or without boxes, I would love to see them! You can email me at mumtazmahal (at) gmail (dot) com
The vast majority of Stablemate models are reasonably common. Most were issued as long-lived regular runs or fairly large special runs through various holiday catalogs and retailers. But the rare ones? They tend to be *really* rare. I've covered a few on my blog like the 25th anniversary silver G1 Saddlebred and the gold G2 Clydesdales, so while I'm slowly putting together some more in depth posts, this feels like a good time to make a quick post about another elusive oddity, the gold G2 Scrambling Foal.
Unlike the aforementioned Saddlebreds and Clydesdales, this gold foal is painted rather than electroplated, but it seems to be just about as hard to find as its mini decorator predecessors. We know they were part of the Mystery Foal Surprise sets that were announced by Breyer for their 2013 mid-year line. The
sets featured a visible mare and stallion as well as a surprise foal
hidden behind a cardboard stall door as seen below. To the best of my knowledge, the gold foals turned up in this particular Tennessee Walker and Arabian paired set along with a "normal" palomino foal on the same mold.
Photo from eBay
Photo from eBay
Though the packaging doesn't
mention the possibility of a special foal, the description on Breyer's website at the time of the release said, "sometimes a
golden foal will appear!" And when collectors found the first few foals, it was expected that they would turn up with a reasonable amount of regularity, much like the chase pieces in blind bags these days. Very quickly however, it became clear that golden foals were far more rare than anticipated, and to my knowledge, very few have ever been found, probably around a dozen at most. (I'm sure there are more in the hands of non-collectors, landfills, etc, but they remain quite scarce in hobby circles.)
Which begs the question---was the scarcity deliberate? Or did something go wrong in production and the golden foals were cancelled? The text on Breyer's website, "sometimes a golden foal will appear," suggests to me that they were intended to be reasonably common. Otherwise, if only a small handful were intended to be released, I would have expected a word like "rarely" to be used and perhaps some hype from Breyer à la Willy Wonka's golden tickets. Breyer has never addressed the scarcity of the golden foals as far as I know, so they remain a bit of a mystery.
If a reader has heard the scoop on why these babies are so hard to find, please feel free to leave a comment below. I would love to know more!
Occasionally, it seems like the universe is nudging me to write about a certain subject, and apparently the racehorse Noor is clamoring to have his story told. The first little push I got came with the passing of the Aga Khan (IV) a few weeks ago whose horses I have followed for many years. I was sitting on my bed reading the news, musing on what a sad loss it was for the racing world, and wondering if any of his family would take over his world-famous breeding and racing operations when my eyes happened to land on the little Grand Wood Carving model of (what I thought was) Noor on my shelf. Noor was bred by the late Aga Khan's grandfather (III) who held the same hereditary title and was the founder of one of the greatest breeding dynasties in horse racing.
The subject of Noor then came up again tangentially in another project I recently finished, and I was reminded of the fact that Noor was the first of only two horses to ever defeat two Triple Crown winners.* His story is quite an interesting one, but the universe does like its little jokes, and so I wrote this whole long post about Noor thinking I had a model of him. I don't. I have a model of Needles, the first Florida-bred horse to win the Kentucky Derby.
In my defense, the names both start with N and Noor was black while Needles was bay. I have no idea why Grand Wood Carving made their Needles models black instead of brown. (They also played fast and loose with white markings on all of their horse models.) Anyway, I spent a lot of time writing this, so by golly, I'm going to share it. Noor was an incredible talent who never really got the accolades he deserved, and perhaps this post will someday inspire an OF run in his likeness. (Don't mind me innocently looking in the direction of New Jersey, Indiana, and Tennessee.)
Plot twist! This is not Noor...
So, back to the Aga Khan III. Ever since I can remember, I have been obsessed with two of the greatest horses of the British turf, The Tetrarch and his fleet grey daughter Mumtaz Mahal. Neither were bred by the Aga Khan, but when he began to seriously acquire horses in the 1920s, his purchase of Mumtaz Mahal at auction ended up being one of those flukes of history that changes everything.
Mumtaz Mahal was a sensational racehorse, so much so that she is still considered one of the fastest horses of all time. She also proved to be a hugely influential broodmare---while her offspring were middling for the most part as racehorses, as producers, they were quite literally superstars. Mumty's daughters produced, among others, the Epsom Derby winner and top sire Mahmoud, Arc winner Migoli, champion sprinter Abernant, and most important of all, the super-sire Nasrullah. (Mumty's tail-female line also gave us Petite Etoile, Royal Charger, Shergar, Octagonal, and Zarkava, to name just a few, but that's a story for another day.)
This tale begins with Nasrullah, a son of Nearco out of Mumtaz Begum (Blenheim x Mumtaz Mahal), who was bred in Ireland by the Aga Khan and foaled in 1940. His racing career was somewhat chaotic coming as it did in the midst of World War II and because Nasrullah himself was a temperamental horse who had a tendency to loaf when he made the lead in a race. Nonetheless, when he felt like running, he proved to be sensational enough to be considered the top two year-old in England in 1942, and he won the prestigious Champion Stakes and finished a good third in the Epsom Derby as a three year-old the following year.
While Nasrullah was assuredly a talented runner, his true greatness came in the breeding shed. He found immediate success in his first six seasons at stud in Ireland and England, getting winners of the Epsom Derby, the 1000 and 2000 Guineas, the St. Leger, the Irish Derby, the Champion Stakes, and more. Just as his stud career was really taking off, Nasrullah was purchased by Claiborne Farm in 1950. He was imported to the USA where he became one of the most influential stallions of the 20th century---not just a great sire, but a sire of sires. His sons include the likes of Bold Ruler (sire of Secretariat), Never Bend (sire of Mill Reef), Red God (sire of Blushing Groom), and the great champion Nashua to name but a few.
Following the example of Bull Hancock at Claiborne Farm who, in addition to Nasrullah, had imported European-bred stallions like Sir Gallahad (sire of Gallant Fox), Blenheim (sire of Mahmoud through whose daughters descend Northern Dancer and Sunday Silence), and Princequillo (whose daughters made an ideal nick with Nasrullah), a number of other American owners were on the look-out for the next great stallion prospect from Europe. One of these was Charles Howard who had raced Seabiscuit to much acclaim during the Great Depression. Howard's champion had died in 1947, and he hoped to find a new potential champion to race for a year or two before setting him up as a stallion. He was also in failing health due to a degenerative heart condition and was looking for a last taste of greatness.
In 1948, he purchased two sons of Nasrullah from the Aga Khan, Nathoo and Noor. Nathoo had won the Irish Derby and Noor's best performance had been a solid third place finish in the Epsom Derby. Nathoo ultimately never took to dirt racing and was a flop at stud for Howard. Noor on the other hand was destined for greatness.
Noor in 1950
The word "noor" means "light" in Arabic, a rather ironic name for a
coal black horse. His dam, Queen of Baghdad, had already produced a
stakes winner, and she was a tail-female descendant of the great filly
Sceptre who won four of the five English classics, a feat no other horse
has ever duplicated.** So it's not surprising that a horse with a
pedigree like Noor's turned out to be something out of the ordinary.
Travel
from England was hard on Noor, and he arrived in California too thin
and suffering from osselets. Howard and his trainer Burley Parke decided
to let the colt rest and recuperate for nearly a year before slowly
bringing him back to racing form. Their patience paid off, and Noor
began to exhibit some talent when he took to the dirt for the first time at Bay Meadows in
October of 1949. Noor was a closer, so he started off with a late rushing win by a nose followed by several hard charging close second and third place finishes. He showed enough promise that he was moved into stakes company where he continued to run well, so much so that Howard and Parke decided to run him in the San Antonio Handicap at Santa Anita in February 1950.
Noor faced Citation, the 1948 Triple Crown winner, for the first time in the San Antonio. Like Noor, Citation had spent most of 1949 recovering from osselets, but rather than being sent to stud, his owner, Warren Wright, Sr., of Calumet Farm, had sent him back to the track in hopes of making him the first horse to win one million dollars. Also in the field was Calumet's 1949 Kentucky Derby winner Ponder whom Noor has bested in their mutual previous start though Noor had carried 13 pounds less than Ponder (and both horses were beaten by a longshot called Solidarity). In the San Antonio, Ponder turned the tables, winning by a length over his stablemate Citation with Noor closing fast to finish third by half a length. It would be the only time Citation finished ahead of him.
Noor's connections were so pleased with his performance that they entered him in "the Hundred Grander," the Santa Anita Handicap that Seabiscuit had so famously won for Howard in 1940. Calumet Farm sent out Citation, Ponder, and their champion filly Two Lea. Also in the field were But Why Not, another champion filly, Solidarity, and Miche, the horse that had broken Citation's famous 16 race winning streak. The two fillies set the pace for much of the race, and as the field swept into the homestretch, Citation and Ponder both began their closing runs. Noor (carrying 22 pounds less than Citation) found another gear and swept past all three Calumet horses, wining by a length and a quarter over Citation and breaking the old track record for a mile and quarter set by Seabiscuit 10 years earlier. It was the last race Howard would attend in person.
Noor and Citation faced off again a little over a week later in the mile and three quarter San Juan Capistrano. Noor once again received a weight break of 13 pounds from Citation. Noor closed from well-back as usual, and he and Citation dueled all the way down the stretch with Noor finally prevailing by a nose at the wire. He set a new American record for the distance, and technically Citation broke the old record as well.
After 10 tough races, Noor was given a break for several months during which Charles Howard passed away after suffering a heart attack. He left his racing stable to his beloved wife Marcella and his sons. They dispersed most of the horses but kept Noor to finish out the year as a tribute to Howard.
Noor and Citation met once again in Noor's first start back in June 1950, the mile and an eighth Forty Niner Handicap, and this time, Noor carried only five pounds less than Citation. Noor stalked the pace from behind while Citation was more forwardly placed. At the top of them stretch, Citation took command from the leaders and looked home free. But Noor kicked in the afterburners and closed quickly, collaring his rival and battling him stride for stride to the wire. Noor prevailed by a neck and broke the world record for the distance in the process. Once again, Citation also broke the record in defeat.
The two champions faced off for the last time a week later in the Golden Gate Handicap where Noor was finally given a higher impost than Citation---he carried 127 pounds to Citation's 126. Noor's naysayers claimed that only uneven weights had allowed him to best Citation, but Noor put that story to rest when he walloped Citation by three lengths in the mile and a quarter race in which he once again set a world record.
In his next start, the American Handicap, Noor won carrying 32 pounds more than the second place finisher. He was then shipped east to Belmont Park against his trainer's better judgement, but Marcella and the Howard boys wanted to try him against the best east coast runners. As ever, Noor was a poor shipper and didn't handle the travel well. He ran second in all three starts at Belmont which included the prestigious Manhattan Handicap and the Jockey Club Gold Cup, the traditional year-ending championship race in the years before the Breeders Cup. In the latter, he was defeated by Hill Prince, that year's Preakness winner who was ultimately named three year-old champion and Horse of the Year.
Upon returning to California, Noor was rested for almost two months before being entered in an allowance race as a freshener. He won by an easy seven lengths, defeating the good stakes winner Palestinian and the 1946 Triple Crown winner Assault. Noor closed out the year and his career with a scintillating win over Palestinian, Hill Prince, and Assault in the Hollywood Gold Cup. Had the Horse of the Year award been determined at the end of the year instead of after the Jockey Club Gold Cup in October, Noor might have earned that title after getting his revenge on Hill Prince. He was at least awarded the title of champion handicap male horse (now the champion older male Eclipse).
Many great horses who ran in California in the 1940s and
1950s like Seabiscuit, Swaps, Citation, Terrang, Kelso, and Silky
Sullivan were immortalized by the Hagen-Renaker company and later
produced by Breyer. Despite his record-breaking season in 1950, Noor was
seemingly overlooked.
At this point, I had planned to tell a bit of the history of the Grand Wood Carving company and the racehorses they produced, but that's a moot point as far as this post is concerned, so I'll tackle it another day.
In 1951, Citation did finally top one million dollars in earnings, making him the first horse to do so. Noor by that time had been retired to stud at Howard's Ridgewood Ranch, and once that property was sold, he
moved to several other California farms. He was largely a failure at
stud, but he did produce the stakes placed filly Noor's Image who is
best known as the dam of Dancer's Image, the first horse to be disqualified from a Kentucky Derby win.
Noor spent the last 10 years of his life at Loma Rica Ranch in Grass Valley, CA. He died at the ripe old age of 29 in late 1974 and was interred in the infield of the little training track on the ranch. Loma Rica eventually became an organic farm, and finally in 2010, it was slated to become a housing development, the sad fate of so many old horse farms. Intrepid racing fans stepped in and located Noor's remains, and they were eventually conveyed to Old Friends near Lexington, KY, where he was reburied beside fellow legends like Springsteel and Skip Away.
One could argue that Assault and Citation were past their prime when they faced Noor, and in the case of the former, that is likely true. Assault was retired to stud after his four year-old season, but proved to be infertile and was returned to training. He never quite regained his top form, and he faced Noor in his final season as a seven year-old. Citation on the other hand was only narrowly beaten by pushing Noor to set multiple speed records. Citation was still a world beater even in defeat, and it only goes to show just how talented Noor really was.
Not Noor and his not-rival Citation hang out in model form on my shelf. I'm bummed that my model is not Noor after all, but he resembles that great horse more than Needles, so I'm just going to pretend he's Noor for a while. I hope you enjoyed this post even though it doesn't really have any model tie-ins. Maybe someday, it will.
* Noor defeated Assault and Citation, the 1946 and 1948 Triple Crown winners respectively. The only other horse to accomplish that feat was Exceller who beat Seattle Slew (1977 TC winner) and Affirmed (1978) in the 1978 Jockey Club Gold Cup.
** In 1902, Sceptre won the 1000 Guineas, the 2000 Guineas, the Epsom Oaks, the St. Leger, and ran a good fourth in the Epsom Derby despite a foot bruise. This would be akin to a filly in the USA winning the Triple Tiara, the Preakness, the Belmont, and running fourth in the Kentucky Derby. Granted, the St. Leger is run in the fall, so it's not an exact comparison, but it's an absolutely insane achievement.
A little over a year ago while looking for various things on eBay, I stumbled across a remarkably well-preserved piece of model horse history, and in my inimitable slow fashion, I am finally making time to write about it. Regular readers of this blog will recall my surmise that the plastic Hartland Victor and Breyer Western Horse clocks made for the Mastercrafters Clock and Radio Company were very likely inspired by a metal horse standing over a clock produced by Dodge, Incorporated, a company that specialized in trophies, cutlery, metal serving dishes, figurines, and more. The horse was sculpted by noted artist Gladys Brown Edwards in 1947, and Dodge produced them in various sizes, with and without clocks and bases.
A Dodge, Inc, clock, circa late 1940s (photo from eBay)
I intend to write a post about Gladys herself in the near future, but the story of Dodge, Inc, needs to be told first. It's really rather fascinating in my opinion---I confess I'm always a little amused when our weird niche hobby has ties to the
wider world, especially to fame and celebrity, and this is definitely one of those stories. Dodge, Inc, was founded by Ray Edgar Dodge, a native of Woodburn, OR, in the Willamette Valley just south of Portland. Born in 1900, Dodge was the son of a successful department store owner, but he didn't immediately follow in his father's entrepreneurial footsteps. In college, Dodge joined the track team and was so talented as a middle-distance runner that he not only participated in the 1924 Paris Olympics, but he also spent the next few years winning championships on an international stage. [1]
He returned to the United States in 1927 and went into business for himself with his Olympic teammates as his primary stockholders. He opened stores in Chicago and Los Angeles selling high quality class rings, medals, and trophies. By 1935, his booming business expanded to New York and began to include items like flatware and figurines. During World War II, like so many other American businesses, his company switched gears to produce metal goods for the war effort.
While Dodge did manufacture affordable trophies that could be ordered by groups like horse show associations and the like, the company is most famous for producing the Oscar trophies for the Academy Awards as well as those for the Emmy Awards, the Rose Bowl, and the Orange Bowl. [2] It's pretty cool to think that these famous statuettes may have rubbed shoulders with GBE's parade horses at one time.
My eBay find of course was not an Oscar statuette nor even a Dodge horse clock, but it's something even better in my opinion. I stumbled across a perfectly preserved copy of the 1948 Dodge, Inc, catalog complete with a price list and additional product inserts. Paper ephemera from the 1940s and 1950s related---even tangentially---to the model horse hobby, is so rare. I'm sure most of it was produced with no thought of it being preserved for even a few years, let alone nearly 80 years. I feel incredibly lucky to be the current caretaker for this amazing piece of history, and I'm thrilled to be able to post about it here.
History is meant to be shared, so I will eventually get all of the
pages of this catalog uploaded to my Model Horse History website. In the
meantime though, I thought these pages were particularly interesting to model horse collectors.
The catalog opens with a nice piece about Gladys Brown Edwards and her sculptures for Dodge, beginning with the horses.
It also features some of her other animal sculptures, like dogs and wildlife.
When I bought the catalog, I had no idea what was inside other than a couple of random page views included in the auction listing. I gasped out loud when I found this gorgeous double page spread showing the Western parade horse in all of the various sizes and iterations.
I love having the original advertising for pieces in my collection. If I ever haul these heavy guys to a live show, I'll have the perfect provenance to display with them.
I hope you have enjoyed this little glimpse into the past as much as I have! I'm finally through the busiest part of the current academic year work-wise, so I should have more time for blogging again going forward. Next up will be more on the Chris Hess papers held in the Stone Horse company archives. That story also has some fun ties outside the world of model horses, and I'm looking forward to telling it soon!
The subject of Breyers with vinegar syndrome (aka shrinkies/oozies) comes up regularly on social media, and my post here on the subject is the second most viewed post I've ever written. The TL;DR version of it is that in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Breyer unknowingly used some bad plastic that is now spontaneously breaking down. It results in models that shrink, ooze, discolor, and slowly collapse. This problem seems to be akin to vinegar syndrome in old film. The vast majority of models affected by vinegar syndrome were made between about 1987 and 1992 although a handful of slightly earlier outliers have been found (from about 1984-1985, but they are very rare).
That said, Western Horse fans have been aware for a while now of some problematic models from the very beginning of Breyer's history. They are the early chalky plastic palomino and alabaster Western Horses with black hooves made from about 1950-1952. Thankfully, only a small percentage of these early models seem to be affected, but it's sad to see all the same.
I first encountered one of these problematic Western Horses about 10 or 15 years ago when my mom discovered that one of our palominos mounted beside a Mastercrafters clock had strange filmy, discolored paint where his hind legs connected to his body. The damaged area was about an inch wide and had deep grooves etched into the plastic. The horse had looked completely normal when we bought the clock some 15 year earlier, and we wondered if it had been touched up by the somewhat unscrupulous dealer from whom we had purchased it. My mom had planned to just throw the horse away since fixing him would be more trouble than it was worth, but I rescued him and took him home with some thoughts of customizing him. I put him in my body box and forgot about him for a while.
At some point, while rooting around in the box looking for another body, I realized that the cracks in one of the Western Horse's hind legs had gotten so deep that his leg had completely separated and fallen off. A few years later, the other hind leg fell off as well. Since then, the horse has developed the same weird filmy deposits where his front legs meet the body. They will undoubtedly fall off at some point, too.
The current state of the Western Horse. My sister dubbed him Pick Up Sticks.
This model has been out in the open since I brought him home years ago (the body box was not covered), so whatever ooze has leached from the plastic has evaporated quickly leaving behind the weird white-ish film. It's definitely become worse and more extensive over the years, but interestingly, the body, head, neck, and tail show no signs of shrinking or warping unlike the later shrinkies from the '80s and '90s. His lumpy back is (I think) partly a known mold flaw and partly the result of this horse having been intended to stand over a Mastercrafters clock when he was first made. He has the typical belly depression to accommodate the clock, but he must have been made just as Mastercrafters switched to horses standing beside clocks instead of over clocks. The depression on this one is deeper than on either of our Western Horses standing over clocks (which, knock on wood, do not seem to be vinegar syndrome victims). Interestingly, you can see the weird filmy dried ooze in his belly depression, too.
This photo shows the very opaque nature of chalky plastic.
For years, the hind legs showed no signs of disintegration except in the area between the rump and hocks where they ultimately split. Now, the detached hind legs feel powdery all over and have started developing pimples on the pasterns.
The front legs have warped inward as well as forward (see the first picture above for the latter). I imagine the front legs will fall apart at some point in the next
few years. I'll be curious to see what if anything happens to the body.
When I was visiting my family a few weeks ago, while going through boxes of show horses to photograph and inventory, I sadly found a second vinegar syndrome Western Horse victim, this time an alabaster. Only a few years ago, this model was absolutely pristine. He looked practically new from the factory despite being almost 75 years old. He was stored in a clear plastic bag, and as soon as I pulled him from the box, I saw that his formerly bright gold bridle and breastcollar had turned green, and the reins were corroded and rusty-looking. I wondered briefly if we'd accidentally gotten the model wet at some point, resulting in the unsightly tarnished paint and damaged metal reins. As soon as I pulled the horse from the bag though, I caught the tell-tale whiff of vinegar. I also quickly realized that the model was actively oozing from the bottom of his hind feet. Yuck!
Ooze in the bottom of the storage bag
Ooze leaking from the bottom of the feet. (I'm not sure if the seam split is new.)
You can see the hind legs starting to curl forward a bit and the faint discoloration beginning between the rump and hocks.
As with the palomino, the legs have warped together.
All of the gold paint has become badly tarnished.
The reins are now badly corroded.
The ooze from the horse has turned the old show tag into little more than tissue paper, and all of the ink has been eaten away.
The hind legs on this model are just starting to show signs of discoloration and pimpled plastic. It's harder to see the discoloration on a white model, but it's definitely there.
I'm pretty bummed this formerly lovely old Western Horse is doomed to disintegrate. Needless to say, my sister and I went through all of the rest of our early black-hooved Western Horses to check them, and thankfully they all seem to be fine. Fingers crossed they stay that way!
Sadly, early Breyers do not seem to be the only models affected. Collectors on Facebook have reported two models by other manufacturers that seem to have suffered a similar fate. One was a brown Superior Plastics horse whose legs fell off but the rest of the body was otherwise apparently unaffected. And the other was an early palomino Hartland Champ with the peg hole saddle that shrunk as well as disintegrated. (The Hartland may be a separate aberration.) All of these models date to the early 1950s, and all three companies may have sourced their problematic plastic from the same manufacturer (quite possibly Tenite from Eastman Kodak). It was early days for the plastic toy industry, so it's not entirely surprising that some of the kinks had not been worked out.
The good news is that so far, these non-typical shrinkies (disintegraties?) are not common. I've only seen a few examples of black-hooved Western Horses that are falling apart; the vast majority of them seem to be unaffected. Sarah and I have about a dozen of them between us---on clocks, on lamps, and freestanding---and only the two shown in this post have become problematic. I'm hoping that if any of the rest of our early Western Horses were made of problematic plastic that they would be showing signs by now. Only time will tell.
Reentry into work and life in general after a long holiday break is always a challenge, especially when your break was more of a working vacation. But that work involved playing with our model horse collections, so at least it was very enjoyable! Over the holidays, I visited my family in Georgia, and my sister Sarah and I put in some long hours organizing our giant herd. Much of it is boxed up at the moment---you know that last scene from Raiders of the Last Ark? It's kind of like that. We worked hard to put together an accurate inventory and photograph a number of our models for this blog. It's an ongoing project, but a fun one!
Taking stock of the collection has led to some interesting surprises and discoveries. We already knew we had duplicates of a number of models---Sarah and I both have our own distinct herds, and because we have similar taste in models (vintage and weird), we often both have examples of the same rare models in our collections.
These perfectly matched Woodgrain Belgians came from the same estate sale. Somebody had good taste!
We discovered we have three (and sometimes four or even more) of a number of models as well, the result of purchasing upgrades or finding bargains in antique malls over the last 30+ years or being unable to resist fun color variations (looks askance at seven all very different woodgrain Fighting Stallions). Doh! These duplicate models will hopefully make for excellent trade fodder down the road. We generally think of ourselves as black hole collectors (things go in but never go out), but realistically, we will have to let some models go (if only to exchange them for new ones, mwahaha).
Part of the goal of our inventory work over the last year has been to find a few cherished models to put back out on display. My sister's favorite Pacer, the stunning 1984 Riegsecker's special run in dapple grey, had disappeared after being stashed in a random box several years ago in the wake of a small leak that had compromised his original storage box. Happily, while working our way through boxes and adding or correcting the labels on them, we found him!
I was also delighted to find one of my favorite models, the 1979 mail order special run dapple grey Clydesdale Mare. Naturally, she was literally in the very last box in a big stack of 40+ boxes that we knew she had to be in. My girl came from Marney Walerius' collection, so not only is she lovely, she's a treasured part of my herd.
We did find a few new shrinkies in the process, one of whom is destined to be the subject of a post here eventually, but for the most part, I think we've managed to eradicate most of those poor sad models from the herd. We did also find a couple of stripped chalkies that have begun to crack and shatter. It's so sad because they were so very cool. (We bought them stripped before we knew what could happen.)
Even the plastic on her legs is cracking and crumbling away
Now that we finally have a pretty solid handle on our Breyer collection inventory, we'll tackle our much smaller Hartland, Stone, and china herds in the
coming year. Which segues more or less well into discussing that fun end of old year/beginning of the new year topic---what we did and what we hope to do going forward.
An enjoyable trend on Facebook and Instagram in recent years has been for collectors to share their favorite acquisitions of the previous year.
For me, 2024 was a very lean year---my disposable income was mostly
non-existent---but I was happily able to add a few really cool models to
my collection for pretty bargain prices.
I'm delighted to finally own Gladys Brown Edwards' large metal parade horse sculpture made by Dodge. His one hind leg needs a repair and he's missing his reins, but I couldn't pass him up for $40. This is very likely the piece that inspired Mastercrafters, Hartland, and Breyer back in the late 1940s.
My Breyer Money Manager was another thrilling $40 find. I'm so happy to finally have this goofy bit of Breyer history in my collection.
At the beginning of the year, I paid off a Hartland holy grail that had been on long time payments with an amazingly kind friend, and it's just too awesome to not include. I have wanted a Hartland Champ clock for at least 20 years, but they're so hard to find. Two slipped through my fingers over the years, so I'm elated to finally have this very rare piece in my collection at long last.
My only big expenditure of the year was my Young Ferseyn from Hagen-Renaker Tennessee. I socked away money for him for months beforehand knowing I would never be able to afford him on the secondary market, and he arrived just in time for my birthday which was a really nice treat.
In terms of less tangible things, though I haven't been able to blog every week as I would like, I've been better about posting a couple of times a month at least, and I'm hoping to keep that momentum going in 2025. I have so much I want to write about! I have now had the opportunity to take a bunch of the photos I've been needing for planned posts, and with our new inventory system, my darling sister can easily find things to photograph for me when she visits my parents every few weeks if I need more.
The weather here in Chicago is of course ugly cold---in the single digits or teens lately with subzero windchills---which means it's much too cold to paint, primer, or spray fixative. I am anxious to get back to work on customs, but for the next few weeks, I'm going to take advantage of the crappy weather and get some writing and website work done. I am also hoping to get started on organizing and culling some of my Chicago herd, both OFs as well as bodies I'm just never going to get around to painting.
I have some plans to do a spring sale of customs, probably more minis, very likely with Jane Austen and bad Regency-pun names because what is spring without a good thunderstorm and Northanger Abbey? Or a pond-soaked Mr. Darcy pining for Lizzie Bennet's fine eyes?
This little mare may be part of that sale---she is clamoring to be finished, but I'm not sure I'll be able to part with her. I just love this mold so much!
And speaking of irresistible sculptures by Maggie Jenner-Bennett, I think my only real OF acquisition goal for the coming year is to buy a Stone mule. I'd love to get one of the fun stripey ones like The Squad or Charade eventually. In the meantime, I have a trad mule body I acquired at Stone Horses Country Fair, and I should really decide on a color to paint it! Stripes? Unicorn horn? Realistic? Too many choices!
So anyway, hopefully 2025 will be a year of productivity, writing, and more organization. Losing myself in creative outlets is also going to be important for a number of reasons, and my sister (who is also an artist) and I have challenged each other to do something frivolous and artistic every week. Paid work doesn't count, just fun art for ourselves, whether it's sketching, cross stitching, sculpting, or painting customs for our own collections. I may share some of that here depending on how rusty my drawing skills are!
