The first time I really became aware of Hartlands was when I first visited a good friend of mine in Prince Edward Island. We'd been corresponding for a while and when the opportunity arose for me to take a trip to see both the island and my pen-pal, I leapt at the chance. Debbie had what seemed to me at the time to be a huge collection of model horses, and in addition to the Breyers I had started to collect, she had a number of Hartlands on her shelves.
It was through Debbie that I learned about a new Hartland distributor just starting up -- Paola Groeber and her Hartland Collectables. I brought this information back to the small circle of model horse fanciers I'd found back home in Manitoba, and a few of us put in orders for some of the new Hartland products. My first set was the 7" Arabian Family in a pretty rose grey.
Valentina, one of my first Hartlands and my first live show champion
It was love at first sight. I was delighted by the delicacy of the Hartland sculpts as compared to the chunkier Breyers. Paola's paint jobs seemed better than Breyer's too (this was around 1989, before most Breyers had the kind of detailing they now routinely sport).
My collecting philosophy regarding Hartlands has changed over the years in lock-step with my Breyer collecting philosophy (more on that in a future post). At first I wanted to collect only the 7" series as I loved this size. Then somewhere along the line I was given or bought an early copy of Gail Fitch's self-published book, Hartland Horses and Riders. This introduced me to all the different molds Hartland had, and then I wanted to collect at least one example of each of the horse molds.
This book also confirmed something I was beginning to suspect -- that I had actually been playing with Hartland horses long before I knew anything about them. My maternal grandparents ran a small town gas station and snack bar, and every summer while they lived there my family would trek out there to live with them for a time while my mother helped her parents with their store. To keep my younger cousins and myself occupied, my grandmother had a box of old toys which included an old Roy Rogers with the standing/walking Trigger and Dale Evans with the chubby Buttermilk.
I didn't care much about Roy and Dale, but Trigger and Buttermilk were dear to my heart. They both had broken and missing tails (a fairly common problem with these molds where the tail was a separately molded piece) and I took it upon myself to furnish them with new swishy tails crafted out of string. I left Trigger's tail the natural string colour, but attempted to dye Buttermilk's tail brown by going over the string with a brown felt pen.
Those poor horses and riders did plenty of sandbox duty in their time, and I'm afraid I myself might have been responsible for the loss of Roy's and Dale's guns in some neglected sandbox corner. The hats were already missing by the time I got to play with them. The set had originally belonged to my aunt, after all, and had gone through decades of play by the time they came into my hands.
I've no idea what happened to these horses and their riders when my grandparents moved back into the city -- most likely they were tossed away as broken or left behind for the chlidren of the gas station's new owners. All I know is that they never came home with me.
Anyhow, when it became apparent to me that having an example of every Hartland mold would demand more space for my collection than I actually had, I started to pare down some of what I'd already collected that I didn't absolutely love. Now all I'd really like is to have one model from each incarnation of the Hartland company.
In the meantime, a couple of flea market finds -- a Tonto and Scout pair and the bay standing/walking horse for Major Seth Adams -- together with my nostalgia for my lost childhood toys has refocused my collection on the horse and rider sets, and I have since managed to find a Dale and Buttermilk in good condition and a Roy with rearing Trigger in fair shape to replace my childhood playmates. Due to the high prices being asked for these sets on eBay, I prefer to pick them up in bits and pieces here and there, always hoping for that next flea market or thrift shop find. After all, finding Hartlands, and finding out more about them is more than half the fun.
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