Review and images by Harecraft Horses; edited by bmathison1972
This is, as I’m sure all CollectA horse fans will recognise, an older mould re-released in a brand new colour for 2022.
Here he is alongside two of the older releases on the mould; the original Black Appaloosa Stallion from 2010, and the Buckskin Appaloosa (sometimes listed as Light Brown Appaloosa Stallion) from 2021. There was also a Chestnut Appaloosa Stallion, but unfortunately I don’t have it so the line-up here is missing one.
Being an older sculpt, this one doesn’t suffer from the too-thick limbs which modern CollectA horses tend toward, but there was a chunk of folded cardboard pushed between the legs for shipping, and looking at some of my angles here, I should probably have left the legs to settle before doing my photoshoot, as they’re a little bit splayed!
Any displaced limbs (or tails or ears) on CollectA models can easily be adjusted by immersing in just-boiled hot water if they don’t quite stand right, but in this case it was just the packaging which pushed his hooves too wide apart, and by the following day he was standing flat-footed and straight-limbed without any intervention on my part.
Just look at all those spots! They look to be hand-painted rather than printed on or masked off, though it could be some sort of stencilling process I’m not familiar with, so it’s possible the models will vary a little from individual to individual, I’ll be curious to see more photos as other collectors buy this release, to check how alike they all are! Although we’d already had one black based Appaloosa pattern, this update isn’t really redundant or unnecessary, I think it is a step up in realism compared to the initial 2010 release.
And again, some plain background shots:
Later in the year CollectA will be releasing this same sculpt in bay pinto as an American Paint horse. That’s the beauty of these stock breeds, the body type is interchangeable with many different colours and patterns, to give more variety in the range. And more is always better – after all, there’s no such thing as too many models, only not enough shelves!