The Metlox Mystery - I Believe

First Post of the Day

So, did Metlox make a ballerina circus rider or not? Sally and I have been talking about this since the last blog post on the topic.

I ended that post pretty convinced that there is no Metlox ballerina. But Sally is far more knowledgable about Metlox than me, and she believes that Melox did indeed make a ballerina. With her permission, I post her thoughts here. (They have been edited a bit - she and I enjoy chatting about other things, too!)

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Hi, Lynn,

 Now to the Metlox ballerina - yes, the Metlox book makes no reference to it, but as with other specialty books, sometimes the author either accidentally leaves things out or just doesn't know about an item. 

But despite your very thorough research, I still think a Metlox ballerina exists - but is very, very rare. I have seen one twice - I saw one on a web page from a Metlox collector. The other was from the eBay auction which was in 2009 and had 16 bids and sold for $920. It had both stickers, Metlox and Poppytrail. The picture for the auction makes no reference to a horse. Maybe it's a shelf sitter as it is sitting on a small box.

In terms of the ballerina's left hand not touching the horse, that could have been the way someone sat the girl on the horse as the auction picture shows her touching the box - no gap.

The auction noted the ballerina was 7" tall, 3 1/2 " deep, and 3" wide. The auction says the tutu was white with some pink near the left arm, but the picture that is floating on the internet makes it look like it is light turquoise.

You have a lot of good points in your research, but for me, having seen the auction and the web page, I tend to think that it is out there. Maybe only in collectors' hands, but very, very few of them exist.

TTYL,

Sally

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The possible Metlox ballerina on one of the Metlox Circus Horses. This picture is from Sally and may be the one that was in the auction.

The file photo I have had in my collection for years. Is this from the eBay auction? I do not know.

Sally mentioned that one of the ballerinas she saw had both Metlox stickers.

One of them, the round Metlox sticker, looks like this and is on my palomino Circus Pony.

The triangular sticker with "Poppytrail" is on this white Metlox Circus Pony. The round Metlox sticker is also present - you can barely see the round sticker under its belly. (Not my photo; one I'd downloaded for my files  before I bought this piece for my collection.)

Having two stickers is not unusual for Metlox pieces, and the ballerina Sally saw in the auction had both. While stickers can help document a piece, they are not always a reliable piece of documentation. They can be transferred from one item to another, something that is known to have happened in the past.

Still, the Metlox and Poppytrail stickers are pretty solid and substantial; my guess is that if the ballerina that Sally saw had them, then there's a good chance that they are original to the piece.

As I read what Sally had to say, I thought back to a similar situation in the model horse world. Ever heard of the original Breyer Christmas decorators? For decades rumors have swirled around saying that, in the 1960s or so, red and green decorator models were briefly produced by Breyer. 

Simone Smiljanic, Ellen Hitchins, and Marney Walerious were the original "hobby mothers." Back in the late 1960s/early 1970s, they helped give the model horse hobby its earliest underpinnings. Simone was a good friend of mine and she was the source of those rumors.

Ellen Hitchins and Simone Smiljanic, November, 1971. (Taken by Nancy Kelly, the photo is in the collection of Liz Cory. Used with permission.)

A few years ago, the topic came up on social media and Simone was drawn into the discussion. Someone there was quite insistent that there was no proof of those 1960s decorators and that they were just a hobby rumor.

Simone responded quickly and adamantly. She wrote that she had been in the Breyer factory together with Ellen Hitchins and they both had seen those models on a shelf in the warehouse. She insisted that they did exist despite the lack of any photographic proof. They were real and she had seen them. 

Throughout her life, Simone's account of her visit to the factory and having seen those decorators never changed. And to this day, I believe her.

No photos of the 1960s red and green decorators have ever come to light. But, as Andrea Gurdon wrote in a blog post dated October 3, 2009, "Yet absence of evidence is not evidence of absence: all it takes is one photograph, one document, or one model to move something from the realm of imaginary."

That's a really good point. And in the case of the Metlox ballerina, we have an auction with multiple photos as evidence. Plus, I have a second photo of the piece, although it may be the same piece from the auction.

Just as I believed Simone in her lifelong assertation that the red and green Breyer decorators existed, I believe Sally that the Metlox ballerina is real.

Sally, I hope you find one for your collection. (One that's not $920!) What a find that will be. Send pictures when you do and we will all celebrate with you!

Don't forget the August give away! Comment to enter. Entries close Tuesday at 11:59 PM Eastern Time. Two winners this month!

Guest Blogger: Kirsten Wellman

 When I was finishing up The Palomino Project, I mentioned the elusive Breyer Christmas decorators, red and green models that were reportedly seen in the 1960s/70s but have never been verified as actually existing. 

One of the references I used was Model Horse Collectibility, Kirsten Wellman's blog, and her article about those pieces.With her permission, I share that blog entry here. Fascinating read - thanks for sharing, Kirsten!

Breyer Mysteries: Christmas decorators (December 24, 2020)

Since I have a bit of extra free time this week, I thought it would be fun to tackle another holiday related blog topic, the infamous Breyer "Christmas decorators" rumor. While Breyer has blessed us with a variety of modern holiday decorator offerings in the last few years, everything from dappled red and green horses to clearware to candy cane striped zebras, the subject of vintage Christmas decorators always sparks a debate. Do they exist or don't they? Has anyone really seen one? Can anyone prove it one way or another?

Before we tackle that subject, it's useful to consider the history of the traditional Breyer decorators, the blue and gold beauties that collectors prize so much. In 1964, Breyer offered four decorator colors---gold charm, florentine, wedgewood, and copenhagen---on five molds, the Running Mare and Foal, the Five-Gaiter, the Mustang, and the Fighting Stallion. Very little documentation for them exists, but they were offered for sale in holiday catalogs like Aldens, in department stores like Montgomery Wards, and in five-and-dime stores like Ben Franklin. They did not sell well however, and were probably discontinued by 1965. Despite not having been made very long, the Breyer decorators do seem to have been issued in fairly large quantities. They remain rare to be sure, but a patient collector will find multiple decorators for sale every year on eBay or social media. 

Gold charm Mustang, copenhagen Running Mare, 
wedgewood Running Foal, and florentine Five-Gaiter

Which brings us to the purported vintage Christmas decorators. By the late 1990s, a few collectors reported rumors of Christmas decorators possibly spotted when they or someone they knew were children in the 1960s. These models were either dappled red and green much like the florentine and copenhagen models, or they were solid red and green with white points like the gold charm and wedgewood decorators. Nancy Young mentions these observations in her Breyer Molds and Models books with some skepticism, and interestingly, there is no mention of them at all in Marney Walerius' book published several years earlier. Marney did not shy away from including information that trended more toward rumor than observed fact, and it's interesting to me that the Christmas decorator rumor was apparently not circulating at that time. I myself never heard it until I read about it in Nancy's book though I was familiar with other persistant hobby rumors at that time (more on those in a future post). 

 

As of this writing in December 2020, not one credible scrap of evidence of the existence of vintage Christmas decorators has yet come to light. No models have ever turned up, no photos have been discovered, and not a single ad, price list, or catalog entry has been found. There are of course gaps in the paper trail of Breyer history, especially in the early years of the company, so it is possible that any documentation has simply been lost to time. After all, only a few documents pertaining to the blue and gold decorators are known.

1964 decorator dealer sheet

But while the lack of documentation is not surprising, I do think it's odd that no models have turned up in the last 55+ years. Other small runs from the 1960s are known, even in multiples, like the wedgewood Fury Prancers, the wedgewood Longhorns, and the In Between Mares. Had red and green decorators really been available in stores as reported, you would think at least one or two would have survived and turned up in an estate sale or antique mall. Also, given that the traditional decorators were only available for about a year and given that they did not sell well, would Breyer really have added red and green horses to the unsuccessful blue and gold line up?

It has been suggested by other collectors that the Christmas decorators may be the hobby's equivalent of the Mandela effect, and I suspect they're right. Human memory is of course fallible and definitely persuadable and changeable. The power of suggestion and confabulation of memories are common and well-known phenomena, and they are something pretty much all of us experience. I know I have absolutely misremembered things I thought I was certain of!

So with all of this in mind, I remain skeptical of the existence of vintage Christmas decorators. We can't prove their existence any more than we can disprove it, but as more time passes without one coming to light, the less likely it seems that any ever will. I sure would love a dappled red or green Five-Gaiter like the modern test pair that exists in the Breyer sample room. Maybe Breyer will bless us with some some vintage molds for their Christmas morning special run one of these years. Maybe even tomorrow? A girl can dream!

The Palomino Project: Conclusions

After being as thorough in my research as I can, I'm ready to share my thoughts about the original question:

Was Breyer's original palomino color an orange shade that later shifted to a lighter yellow color? Or, was it originally a carmel tan that has remained mostly the same with the passage of time? What documentation can be found that supports one or the other position? 

We have heard from people on both sides of the discussion, four who spoke to me and one who declined, all of whom are respected for their knowledge and experience in the hobby.

~ Out of those four people who spoke with me, all believe that the color did not change and were able to back up their comments with personal observations. (As I was writing this series, I received several messages from additional long time hobbyists who had early palominos that they'd purchased new which had always been carmel and never orange.)

~ My own experience with palominos from the theoretical color shifting period is that they were carmel when purchased new off the shelf.

~ Numerous orange palominos from the supposed era of the color shifting time still have their orange color.

But having said that, Andrea Gurdon says that she saw a half carmel/half orange Fighting Stallion in her entry titled "Honey" that was posted July 29, 2013. She wrote,

"I'm not sure if it's completely due to exposure to sunlight, or if another environmental factor such as heat is necessary. Several years ago I saw a Gloss Palomino Fighter that had been kept in a window for some time; one side was Orange, and the other side was honey."

If that is true, and I have no reason to believe that it isn't, then that gives me pause. Why? Ever heard of the original Christmas decorators? For years rumors have swirled about that in the 1960s or so, red and green decorator models were briefly produced by Breyer. No photos have ever come to light and they have never moved beyond "hopeful rumor."

But, as Andrea wrote in a blog post dated October 3, 2009, "Yet absence of evidence is not evidence of absence: all it takes is one photograph, one document, or one model to move something from the realm of imaginary."

That's a really good point. One of our hobby mothers, Simone Smiljanic, insisted her entire life that she had seen those green and red decorators. She never recanted that, and I believe her. But we have no photos or documentation, just Simone's word and a few rumors from others that they existed.

So, while I am keeping an open mind, I agree with Kirsten Wellman, Kelly Korber-Weimer, Sande Schneider, and Nancy Kelly that Breyer's palomino color was not fugitive and never changed from orange to carmel.

But I'm also going to follow my own advice and "stay 'tooned," because, as Andrea said, it just takes one picture.