Playing Goldilocks with Red Roan

When I wrote about receiving my Julius, I said that I didn't think his color was true to Breyer's original red roan. (You could say that the color is erROANeous. And then you might gROAN because guess who found Punpedia?)

I decided to do some comparisons of Breyer's red roan color over time.

I pulled out all my red roan models, five of which are original red roans, and set them up with the other red roans released by Breyer that I have in my personal collection.

The Running Stallion was Breyer's first release in the red roan color and was first produced in 1968. While the spots vary in size and some body color versions are a little lighter, you can see that Julius's body color is browner than the Running Stallion.

The next two releases were the Lying Foal (1969) and the Scratching Foal (1970). Again, they have brighter body coloring that Julius.

1971 brought the release of the Running Mare in red roan.

You can really see how different her spots are from those that were painted onto Julius. She was only released until 1973 and then Breyer did not release any models in the colorway until 1982 when they did a special run on the Running Foal for the 1982 Model Congress - a nine year gap. (A piece I would love to find.)

Two more years went by and red roan appeared again - a special run of 600 on the Belgian mold produced for Horses International.

The speckles on my Belgian are the small variety and similar to Julius's but notice that the Belgian's body color is true to the original releases despite the passage of nearly a decade.

Another gap of seventeen years and then Breyer gave us Firefly who was only released July to December 2001. His color is a little brighter and more orange than the original red roan, but he is closer to it than Julius. (There are other red roan models, like the 1997 BreyerFest Stablemate Foal keychains; I am focusing on those in my collection.)

BreyerFest 2003 saw the release of Strawberry Fields, red roan on the popular Silver mold. (I forgot about mine when I took that group photo.) Like Firefly, the color is brighter and more orange than the original color as well as the one on Julius.

With the advent of the Vintage Club in 2012, Breyer has brought the color back several times.

Diablo in 2014 who has a similar brownish look to him,

Rosie and her foal

Bailey in 2016

who have a decidedly pink cast to them,

and Rosemary. She was the Vintage Club Stablemate freebie in 2018 on the G2 Saddlebred mold. (Photo of Rosemary taken from Identify Your Beyer.)

Take a look at Pharaoh, the 2008 BreyerFest Tent Special model on the Sham mold.

He caught my eye when I was pulling out models for the group shot, and while he isn't red roan, look at his coloring. Maybe too pink?

Yes, when I compared him to my original red roans, he is too pink.

Too pink, too brown, will it ever be just right? Or is it just because my heart belongs to those old vintage colors and molds that I am hoping for the original color again?

Regardless, I am happy with the models I have in red roan and am glad that Breyer is using the color more frequently again. But if they ever, ever have a "just right" on that yummy vintage red roan color, you can bet that I will be buying that model as fast as I can.