Next in my series of going backwards through the Traditional scale "Breyer alphabet" is the Zebra!
The Zebra mold was released in 2000, the same year I officially started collecting (I got my first Breyers for Christmas 1999, so close enough!) I have never owned one, but it is a mold I'd like to add at some point! The promo picture shows a much more cleanly masked version than the actual copies of the first Damara Zebra:
http://www.identifyyourbreyer.com/images/zebraintro.jpg
This isn't terribly surprising, since in the early 2000's, Breyer was still in the process of getting most of their production moved to China, and so anything painted here would have still been using the older 1990's technology & techniques.
In 2000, Breyer offered the famous "fruit stripe" colored Zebra in the BreyerFest auction.
Aside from an auction model in 2011, the Zebra mold sat unused for 10+ years until the next production run, Caves of Lascaux in 2015. There were only 650 made of this run, and the demand was definitely greater than the supply.
In 2018, Breyer auctioned off a test Zebra at BreyerFest with updated production technique, and I'll be honest, I was disappointed that this was not a larger run. I do hope they are able to do something similar one day.
The final run since then has been the Christmas Candy gambler's choice set from 2019. The 4 main colors are pearly/metallic with "candy" colored stripes - Blue, Red, Green, and Gold. There is also a micro run of 12 glossy black Zebras called Licorice in the mix. This run was not initially that popular, and leftovers have been offered on the Breyer site a couple of times, including the Black Friday sale of 2021.
Personally, I'd love to see an updated realistic Zebra, as I mentioned above. The early 2000's one is neat, and she's a throwback to my childhood, but I've never felt that it was super important to get one. Aka, she's on my wish list, but not the highest priority. I do think the Candy Cane ones are cute and might like to have a representative of them someday. Maybe a gold, or a blue. Thankfully, I'm not interested in Caves of Lascaux or Licorice because both of those would be some degree of financial pain!
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