Give Me an "F"

Today we take a look at one of the "F" horses in our alphabetical tour of my collection.

"F" is kind of a fun letter to play with.  There are lots of great words that begin with the letter "F" that might make good horse names, or the start of a good horse name: "fly" and "flying," "flower and flora," "fun and funny," "fast," "first," and "flash," for example.

At last count I had over 30 horses in my collection with names beginning with the letter "F."  I also use "F" for the names of all my model cats, although I only have a few of those.

Given the wealth of "F's" I have to choose from, I found it a bit difficult to pick one out for today's feature.  But I finally settled on "Fluffernutter," a Made in Japan (MIJ) trotting mare.

"Fluffernutter" my trotting Morgan mare

 Not much is known about this spritely little mare.  A friend found her in a garage sale, and I bought her from that friend for a grand total of $7.

She's definitely Made in Japan -- she has the tell-tale rolling eyes and the sturdy (some would say clunky) conformation of the typical MIJ horse.  But with no stickers and no stamps it's hard to say which of the many Japanese manufacturers made her.  A consult with the Collecting Japan Animal Clinkies Facebook group turned up the possibility that she may be a Relco, but that still doesn't tell you a lot.  She would seem to date from about the mid-'60s to '70s, but that was a time when MIJ products were flooding North America, so there's nothing special about that.

Despite that, there's something special about this mare, at least in my eyes.  She's performing a pretty good jaunty trot, where most MIJ horses display painfully disjointed gaits when sculpted in action.  Like many MIJs (as well as some early Breyers) she's not a true bay as she lacks the black leg points, but her coat is this really lovely roasted peanut butter shade, which, together with her big fluffy tail inspired her name.  It didn't hurt that her expression makes her seem a bit "nutty" too.

"Fluffernutter" is, of course, what you call a peanut butter and marshmallow creme sandwich.  I've never actually tasted such a concoction, but I remember hearing about them as a kid and pining for one.  I don't remember ever seeing marshmallow creme in the grocery stores of my youth, though, and even if it had been there it was certainly something my mother would never, ever have purchased.  Besides the fact that it would have been bad for her kids, she was never one to buy a prepared food when she could make the same thing herself -- simply by melting marshmallows.

It turns out, according to Wikipedia, that a fluffernutter is really a New England creation, which is perfect since I had already decided to make my high-headed trotting mare a Morgan horse -- another New England creation.

I can easily imagine her as someone's backyard Morgan, called "Fluffy" for short, toting tots around the pasture and teaching them to ride.  This is the same sort of scenario Kathleen Moody is said to have had in mind when she sculpted Breyer's "Marabella" with her messy braid and fond, gentle expression.  "Fluffernutter" has a bit more fire than "Marabella" but I can still see her a lesson horse, although one with a little more devil in her.  Where "Marabella" is maternal, "Fluffernutter" is mischievous.

She's also, and probably always will be, a bit of a mystery.  But no matter where she came from, I'm glad she finally came to me.

Mighty Mites

Of all of Candace Liddy's Creata Micro Minis (also known as Breyer Mini Whinnies), I think my favourites may be the four drafter models -- the show stance Percheron, the trotting Clydesdale, the working Belgian, and the Percheron foal.

 

This is ironic because, as I've stated before, I usually actively try not to add draft horses to my collection.  However, Mini Whinny drafters are not the shelf hogs that their Traditional scale brothers and sisters are.

Lately, thanks to Breyer's enthusiasm for shrinkies, a few new drafters have been added to the Mini Whinny line-up, both real drafters and unicorn types who may eventually appear de-horned as draft horses. New molds include a micro Wixom, a micro unicorn Gypsy Vanner, and a micro unicorn Ballyduff.

I would cheerfully add Wixom to the original four as one of my favourite Mini Whinnies.  With the Vanner and Ballyduff, I'll have to wait and see.

My very favourite Mini Whinny, though, has always been the working Belgian.  He's such a determined-looking little dude, solidly built and yet the picture of animation.  Aside from the original, I also have two Mini Whinnies: the chestnut from 2008 and "Dani" from 2016 -- and I don't usually collect duplicates.

So you can imagine that I was delighted when the random Mini Whinny I received in my 2020 Collector Club Grab Bag turned out to be the other working (or as he's called on the Identify Your Breyer database, "pulling") drafter from 2016.

His Breyer name, "Rio," seems odd to me, but I guess they're running low on ideas.  My guy has been newly rechristened "Tux," a North American Spotted Draft gelding.

The online photo show series I'm involved in showing in and judging this year has a couple of classes for Micro horses, with a lot of Mini Whinnies being shown in Original Finish.  So although I've never really considered my Micro Horses/Mini Whinnies to be show horses, I have an opportunity to let them strut their stuff this year.

Not being a great photographer, I have to admit that I find Mini Whinnies a challenge to focus on, but it's always fun to try.

Heads Up, Hands Down

My elementary school library stocked a good variety of what were to become some of my favourite horse books -- a lot of Marguerite Henry works, the whole Black Stallion series, and a bunch of C.W. Anderson books ranging from the early reader Billy and Blaze series to more adult-oriented works like A Touch of Greatness and Heads Up - Heels Down.

Heads Up - Heels Down was supposed to be a factual, informative, guide to horse care, but for a city kid with no chance at all of ever owning her own horse (I knew that -- I'd already asked my parents hundreds of times) it was a work of pure wish-fulfillment fantasy.  Over the years, most of the knowledge of horsemanship I gleaned from the book has passed out of my memory, but the title has always stuck with me.  And of course the title itself is a riding tip: keep your head up and your heels down.

"Hands Down" and Friends

I was powerfully reminded of this book when Breyer decided to call their Breyerfest Stablemate horse and jockey "Hands Down" in 2018.  I don't think they meant it to refer to riding advice, however.  Although many horseback disciplines do emphasize quiet hands held low on the horse's neck, race riding is not one of those.  Jockeys may start a race with their hands on their mount's mane, but once they're in the fray and fighting for a place you often see them with their hands high on their horses necks, "scrubbing" away for all they're worth in a effort to push their horses forward.

Instead, a lot of the names Breyer came up with for the horses released for Breyerfest 2018 refer to the bettors' or watchers' experience of a race -- "Dead Heat," "Straight Bet," "Win, Place, or Show," "All Out," "In the Running," "Dark Horse," "By a Nose," "Home Straight," "Winners Circle" and "Hands Down" -- like a succession of Dick Francis novels (for the record only Dead Heat is an actual Dick Francis title).

When I first saw "Hands Down" previewed before Breyerfest 2018, I was amazed to see that it seemed to stand perfectly well on its own.  I have three other horse ornaments in that mold -- "Citation," "Native Dancer," and "Zenyatta," and it never occurred to me to try any of them on their own feet.

"Zenyatta" and "Native Dancer" on their toes.

To be honest, my "Hands Down" is a little bit tippy, but he will stand and so will all the others on this mold.  Quite a revelation for someone who's been a fan of the race horse ornaments for a long, long time.

All of my Breyer race horse ornaments are included in my collection database, but since they are not intended to ever be show horses I don't give them proper names.  Instead, I call them by whatever is written on their saddle blankets, so my first three in this mold are "Citation Six," "Native Dancer Four," and "Zenyatta Eight."  Following this trend, "Hands Down" has now been named "Breyerfest Eighteen" -- the first model horse I've owned that actually has "Breyer" in its name.

Four of a kind

It may not bring back memories of my old school days, but with a name like that, at least I'll never forget where he came from.

Monokerophobia (fear of unicorns -- I kid you not)

It hasn't been easy, but I've been avoiding Breyer unicorns as much as I possibly can.

As I think I've mentioned before, I don't really approve of the "horse-with-a-horn" type unicorns with which Breyer has been flooding the market.  To me, unicorns are a different kind of beast, and the best of them have beards, hairy fetlocks, and cloven hooves.  Some even have elongated asses' tails as opposed to horse tails.

Breyer's only unicorn to pass my personal unicorn test was the Little Bit unicorn (1984) who had a big fluffy horse tail but otherwise all the characteristics I was looking for in a unicorn.  Some of Breyer's earliest unicorns, like the Running Stallion (1982) and the Lying Foal (1985), also had token beards, but aside from that they still look basically like horses.

The only unicorns I have bought since I purchased my Little Bit in 1990, have been a trio of Stablemate (SM) unicorns.  The first two were from the first series of Horse Crazy Unicorn blind bags released -- a lavender mini Alborozo and a peachy mini Magnolia.  I lucked out getting these two; they were the two I most wanted as, at that time, these molds had not yet appeared as regular horses in regular horse colours.  Getting the ones I really wanted on my first try allowed me to ignore all the rest.

There was a similar motivation driving my purchase of a Unicorn Paint and Play Warmblood.  I did not have one of these molds in a regular horse colour -- in fact, it only appeared as a horse for the first time as a Breyerfest Single Day SM in 2019.  Today I have the opportunity to get one in one of the horse and foal sets, but the chance of getting it is one in four as these are also blind boxes.

Anyway, I did have a thought about de-horning my Paint and Play unicorn, but found that I didn't have the right tools to do that, so I opted to paint her as a unicorn as my 2020 NaMoPaiMo "horse."

"Sarafina" now known as "Skyfire"

And now there's Sarafina -- the classic size unicorn on the Morab mare that came in my 2020 Collector Club Grab Bag.  I never, ever would have considered buying this unicorn on my own, but now that I have her I figure I lucked out as far as Breyer's newest unicorns go.  I don't think I would have been able to find shelf room for any of the Traditional size unicorns, and I really haven't liked any of the ones I've seen.

The classic Morab mare is a mold I have only recently fallen in love with.  I never paid much attention to her before I judged one in an online photo show that was being shown as a Morgan mare.  Suddenly, she made sense to me.  I guess I'd never really seen the Arab in her, but as an old style Morgan mare she looked really, really good.  It was the first time I'd noticed the twitch of her ear, her carefully painted chestnuts, and her well-balanced stance.  She looked like a pleasure to ride.

Needless to say, I didn't already have a Morab mold in my collection prior to receiving Sarafina.  She's been used as a unicorn once or twice before -- in the Glitter and Gem set and as the pink unicorn Aurora -- but I don't think either pink or palomino does anything for this mold and the foal from the set would drive me crazy with his huge horn.  No, if I have to have one of Breyer's new unicorns, I think Sarafina is the one for me.  The Identify Your Breyer database lists her as being a Wal-Mart (U.S.) exclusive, but I'm not sure if that's correct since she was also available on Breyer's website.  Perhaps she started out as a special and was then shipped to all retailers?  I can't say I've followed the fortunes of Breyer's unicorns enough to be sure.

Glammed up with glitter

Although Sarafina is still essentially a horse with a horn, Breyer does give a nod to the otherworldliness of the unicorn by adding sparkles to her mane and tail.  This is also what they've been doing with the SM and Micro Fairytale Friends unicorns, although the glitter is quite overwhelming on these smaller models.  Sarafina's glitter is not too overpowering, and is strangely attractive in its own way.

So you got me, Breyer.  I have added my first ever "large" unicorn to my herd.  Let's just not make a habit of this, okay?