Smack me with a mackerel and call me shocked- Kingfisher Cooper showed up Tuesday evening! He had been showing label created for days but there was no movement from the warehouse, so I wasn’t expecting him. I then checked the Honeybears’ tracking and it actually had updated at some point late Tuesday afternoon, showing a delivery date for the next day (Wednesday March 9th). I had someone order a Honeybear for me, plus I was able to order one while at work. Get the smackin’ mackerel out for another round of being shocked- both of the Honeybears were delivered on Wednesday. They too were in the label created realm since the day they were ordered. I am not understanding how these packages are leaving the warehouse with no updates to their whereabouts as UPS is supposed to scan the packages in over the course of the journey. Interestingly, this only seems to happen with Breyer. We had a few items being shipped to us from different merchants, and they all started out with label created. Once the parcels are in the possession of UPS, they are scanned in at the various arrival points so that, you know, they can be tracked… okay, enough of that. On to Kingfisher Cooper!!!
The first thing I noticed is that he is base coated, which kind of surprised me (a good surprise!). I was expecting the black leopard spots to be slapped onto the bare plastic. In the past Breyer had advertised that certain Vintage Club models would be base coated, but they weren’t. Farah and Leopold come to mind. In fact, here is Leopoldo’s ordering page from 2019. I circled the part about the chalky basecoat:
And whoo hoo hoo hoo hoo, yes indeedy the Kingfisher stamp is present on my model as you’ve guessed due to my referring to him as Kingfisher Cooper. It seems that the entire run may have the Kingfisher stamp as so far I haven’t heard of any reports of the stamp being absent. Of course, not all of the Coopers have made it to their new homes yet, so who knows what may surface. This brings up another point about the stamping; if the actual Kingfisher from the Birds of a Feather Series is a run of 500 as Cardinal was, didn’t anyone at the factory notice that they were stamping an additional 250 horses? I suppose they weren’t keeping track; probably just a ‘stamp this bunch of horses’ situation. My Kingfisher Cooper’s stamp has a few areas where it looks like the ink was running out, and the Kingfisher line drawing is missing it’s head since it was stamped over one of the black spots:
Muhuhuhuhuhuhu, move over, Headless Horseman! The Headless Kingfisher is out to take your place! *Ahem* Here is another photo of a tackless Kingfisher Cooper with his trappings at his feet:
And here he is, channeling the APH from the original Brenda Breyer Gift Set. I left the reins dangling as it was super windy and they wouldn’t stay put (I also didn’t feel like knotting them):
Overall, Kingfisher Cooper gets two thumbs up from me (yup, a total ripoff of the Siskel and Elbert phrase). He is a delightful take on a vintage set (sans Brenda Breyer) and is exactly what you’d expect from the Vintage Club. And we cannot forget about his iconic tail:
I hope the rest of this year’s VC offerings are as appealing as Cooper has been. Breyer still has not revealed the rest of the 2022 VC line up. The Honeybears will be featured in an upcoming blog post.
*Photo of the description page from VC Leopold (2019) is from Breyer’s website.*
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