Ponder: Breyer Bygone Era

My daughter Robin, who was an avid horse fan throughout her adolescent and teen years, collected scale model Breyer horses, an upscale toy and collector's item for horse lovers for 60 years. Per the Breyer Horse website

Breyer Animal Creations® began as the Breyer Molding Company, a Chicago-based plastics manufacturer. Its first model horse, the # 57 Western Horse, made its appearance in 1950. It was a special order for the F.W. Woolworth Company, made to adorn a mantelpiece clock. Breyer was flooded with requests from people who wanted to know if they could purchase just the horse! With that first horse, the Breyer Molding Company had changed the focus of its business forever!

After college graduation in 2002 Robin moved to Oklahoma in 2003 for an engineering job. A huge moving truck transported the contents of her bedroom out to her apartment. Maybe because she suspected a lack of space, or maybe because her Breyer horse collection was too precious to her to risk sending out, but the horses did not make the trip from California to Oklahoma in the moving van.

After Robin bought her own first house in 2005, I mailed the horses to her in 2006. On this shelf are twenty-two horses but I believe I had already packed some. I wrapped each one individually in bubble wrap and interwove them in a large box. To conserve volume, I did not pack each in its original box. I did keep the boxes though just in case they were important to the collection. The funny story about that package was that I heard something rattling in it before mailing but was not about to unseal it to find out what it was. If I had broken something, we would find out soon enough at the other end. It turns out the mother's ring, which she had gotten me years earlier as a present, had slid off my finger and into the box while I was packing. I was happy I had not lost it as I first suspected. We both had a laugh and uttered a sigh of relief and she mailed the ring back to me.

So here I am in 2020, fourteen years later, and those original classic yellow, blue and red Breyer boxes still filled the top shelf of the closet in my sewing room. They were nested two and three deep to save space but still they took up about 85% of the shelf. Her brother's architectural model from his college days took up the other 15% since his 2006 graduation –  but that is a different story. I am in closet cleaning mode and my daughter and I both agreed it was time to let the boxes go.

I emptied all the boxes out onto the cabinets in the upstairs hallway next to my sewing room. There the thirty five boxes sat for a couple days until I built up the physical and emotional energy to collapse them. I FaceTimed my daughter and we walked down the memory lane of her teen years, reminiscing where and when each horse was purchased, which were her favorites, and which models per Robin had a "new beautiful mold". She even recalled the name of the artists who sculpted a few of the molds. I also found two horses, still yet untouched and in the original packaging. They added another two boxes.

I enjoyed the FaceTime call so much I still wanted to keep a some type of record of what the horses were. I kept the front face of each box with the imprinted identification of the horse number and name. Some had gold seals and other special markings.

I stacked the front acetates, overlapping to show the names, and combined them in columns. I took photos but also typed the names into a list, lest a few be illegible. Some of Robin's horses date back to the early 1990's.

I pulled out the certificates of authenticity and smiled as I saw the green index cards of my daughter's notes, dreaming which horse she was going to add next to her collection. For two horses with special packaging for marketing purposes, I preserved the fancy decorative box background.

Here are the remnants of the boxes, their innards having been dutifully separated from the acetate of the box fronts. My husband carted the components of the collapsed boxes to the recycling bin.

I will mail the box fronts, certificates, and two backdrop scenes to Robin. If I become nostalgic I will reread this post. Otherwise I will enjoy having a entire additional shelf to store my quilting paraphernalia. A roll of batting that I buy in bulk will tuck in quite nicely up there.