PrintI was one of those kids who’d snoop for Christmas presents every year. By the time I was 10, I knew every single hiding place in our house—from my parent’s closet, to the craft room, to the downstairs coat closet way back behind the moving boxes that had been there since before I was born—it was pretty hard to keep a secret from me!
I also became quite adept at peeking at presents under the tree. Cleverly sliding my finger under the taped ends and lifting the corners just enough to see if I could discover what was hidden beneath the bows. Of course, sometimes I couldn’t tell, but I was always happy to find that distinctive yellow box with the blue Breyer logo on it.
In 1950, the F.W. Woolworth Company requested a special order western style horse from the Breyer Molding Company for a mantelpiece clock. The Breyer Molding Company was a plastics manufacturing company based in Chicago, Ill.
However, when the #57 Western Horse made its appearance, the company was flooded with calls from people who wanted the horse, not the clock!
That single horse changed everything for the Breyer Molding Company. When the clock company was unable to pay for the molding expenses, Breyer decided to keep the mold and sell the horses as requested by so many people. The horses sold incredibly well, so the company began to create other molds.
In the 1960s, Breyer transitioned into making toys and affordable art. Some of the older molds, like the clock or lamp molds, were leased to other companies as the demand for animal molds continued to grow. Breyer continued to add more and more models to their line, increasing their popularity and their collector base.
In 1984, Reeves International, a forerunner in the toy industry during the time and today, purchased Breyer Animal Creations. Swiss entrepreneur Werner J. Fleischmann founded Reeves International in 1946. The company entered the toy industry in the United States as a distributor of European toys and collectibles from brands such as Stieff, Corgi and Britains.
In the 1970s, Reeves began to shift from sales and distribution to manufacturing proprietary brands. Reeves acquired Breyer Animal Creations with that goal in mind and has now completed the transition from distributor to a manufacturing and marketing company. The company is still privately owned by Anthony Fleischmann, son of Werner.
Artists At Work
But Breyer models aren’t just generic toys. An artist designs each mold, and Christian Hess was one of the most influential artists for Breyer.
Hess wasn’t necessarily a horse person, but he was a phenomenal artist. He did visit some of the horses he molded in person, but for the most part he sculpted from a picture or drawing.
The very last Breyer mold Hess designed was Secretariat. He was 71 at the time, and he died a year later in 1988.
Today, Breyer’s main sculptor is Kathleen Moody, though Susan Sifton (Smart Chic Olena, Cigar, Flash, Idocus, Newsworthy) also contributes to the line.
