Breyer's Canadian Connections

Although it might not be obvious at first glance, the Breyer Molding Company and Breyer/Reeves have considerable Canadian connections.

Consider this: One of the earliest Breyer horse and rider sets was the Canadian Mountie and Prancer (1955-1959). When it comes to Canadians and horses, no image is more iconic than the Mountie on his horse.  But the RCMP horse was not the only equine to represent the Great White North in Breyer-land.

 Advantage Chrysler (signed on the belly by rider Linda Southern-Heathcott)

Notable Canadian horses who later got the Breyer treatment include the famous rodeo bronc Midnight (1996-1997), show jumpers Big Ben (1996-2004/2010), Advantage Chrysler (2000) and Hickstead (2012-2015), race horse and noted race horse sire Northern Dancer (2012-2014), champion Canadian Horse (breed) Cherry Creek Fonzie Merit (2016-2017), and finally another tribute to the Mounties with the RCMP Musical Ride ornament (2015) and the RCMP Musical Ride horse (2014-2015). 

(In late-breaking news, we just learned that another Canadian horse, Jonathan Field's Hal, will be honoured with a portrait model at Breyerfest 2019).

The RCMP Musical Ride horse, painted on the Big Ben mold, is just dripping in Canadiana, being a tribute to an iconic Canadian horse, painted on a horse that was originally sculpted as a portrait of a famous Canadian horse, with a maple leaf pattern on both hips.

The most Canadian Breyer ever?

While I'm not always pleased by the choice of molds Breyer used for some of their Canadian models (neither Northern Dancer on John Henry nor Hickstead on the Trakehner seem to me to have caught the essence of those horses), I consider Kathleen Moody's Big Ben to be something of a triumph in that it really caught Big Ben's character -- although Moody herself recently confessed that she wasn't entirely pleased with the way the mold turned out, as she revealed in a recent episode of Mares in Black.

It may be reaching a little, but there are a couple of other Breyer products with possible ties to Canada, including the Mini Whinnies Canadian Rockies Show Jumping play set, the companion animal Labrador dog along with the Pocket Box Labrador, Newfoundland, and Toller dogs, the decorator buffalo Banff, and, perhaps even Sugarmaple (I mean, he's covered in maple leaves, for goodness sake).

And Breyer's Canadian connections reach beyond portrait models.  Just off the top of my head, I know that Breyer has enlisted the help of collector Ann Johnson for the design of the 2010 Collector's Choice Cloud Nine, artist Tammi Palmarchuk for the Emerson paint prototype, and sculptor Rayvin Maddock for the Justify resin. 

That's not a bad showing for us Canucks with an All-American toy company (whose toys are now being made largely in China ... but that's another story).