Variations: Black Stretch Morgan

The Stretch Morgan is one of my favorite vintage molds. (I think I say that about every vintage mold, right?) The mold is dated but it has a heavy collector following and appears with some frequency in Breyer's line-up, most recently as Kaibab this past summer, fifth in the America the Beautiful series.

I have three of #48 and as you can see, they vary quite a bit.

Shannon, the Bald Faced Variation
This bald faced black Stretch Morgan is one of my earliest Breyers, received as a gift in the late 1960s.

His name is Shannon, and he shows clear signs of being a carpet herd member and having been heavily played with. But like my other childhood pieces, he holds a very special place in my heart.

His hooves are the very early black hooves with four white socks.

 There is an odd hole at the base of his right ear that I believe to be factory original.

That right ear has always been hooked (part of his charm, in my opinion!) and he has a gorgeous pink nose that extends up his face. The bald face sweeps under his eyes and down the sides of his face. (Shannon almost looks pearly in this photo but he is not.)

 Shannon's shoulder shading shows up well in this photo.

The bottom of his hooves show the typical of the time extensions of that black paint underneath the hooves,

and he has the early round Breyer mold mark without the USA.

Short Sock Variation

I got this guy in the early 1990s. At the time I was not looking for variations, but I thought he would look nice on the shelf with Shannon.

 He is the short sock version of the color

 with the socks barely above the fetlocks.

Nancy Young's book, Breyer Molds and Models 1950-1997, mentions that some examples of this piece have a dagger shaped star like mine. 

The color is not a clear white and you can see the marks from the tool used to clean the model after molding in the factory.

 Hooves are grey without the paint overspray on the bottoms.

Finally, he has the Breyer stamp with the USA.

Solid Black Oil Crisis Variation
This guy was a lucky find at an antique shop. There had been some recent online discussion about the all-black oil crisis Stretch Morgan, and a few weeks later I spied this piece on a shelf in an antique shop. Home with me he came!

 He's truly all black - very flat with no shading or white markings at all.

 Had I not known what he really was, I might have left him behind since he was so unremarkable.

 This guy must've been super easy to paint!

Flipping him over, though, reveals that he is a chalky plastic piece. He is molded of grey plastic (this model has been found in purple plastic, too.)

And he has the round Breyer stamp with the USA.

All Three Together
Here they all are together.

There is a size difference among the three but it is not what this photo shows. It may be the camera angle or that my ironing board slants, but actually Shannon is the tallest with the oil crisis model next in height, and the short sock variation just a smidge smaller than him.

You can see that height variation better here - look at the tops of their backsides for comparison. And the sock variations show up very clearly here.

All three share the same model number (#48) but there are definitely differences that cropped up during the twenty-two years this piece and color were in production.