Hi folks!!
Apologies for the absence...I have been fighting against the "winter blues" these past couple of weeks, as I know many others are as well in the Northern Hemisphere. February at least brings me two things that have a positive impact on my mood - NaMoPaiMo (which I'll talk about in another post!) and my annual Breyer Favorites on Each Mold Survey series!
I have always been curious to hear people's opinions on various Breyer-related topics..."what's your favorite ___?" In 2014, I started a (clumsy) series of polls on Model Horse Blab asking people to pick their favorite horse on each traditional mold. Because of how Blab is set up though, I had to make a *new conversation thread* for every mold - a very clunky approach. The mods (rightly so) eventually asked me to stop doing it that way, so I was inspired to seek out a platform where I could ask about a lot of different molds at once. I first used SurveyMonkey, which functioned the ways I wanted it to, but I was dismayed to learn that I could only receive 100 responses per survey unless I wanted to pay for the service.
That was rough for me, and I may have almost given up on the project entirely, if I did not come across Google Forms! The surveys have lived there ever since, though they have evolved a lot over the years! In fact, the Traditional Foals survey is the only remaining original. The rest have all been split up or re-organized over time as I have worked to provide the best experience possible for my participants. A few years ago, I started adding photos to each of the choices (linked to IDYB, whenever possible) in order to help people make their decisions a little more easily!
I also made a big effort a couple of years ago to add all of the responses over the years into one spreadsheet, so it would be easier for me to track, and more visually interesting for folks checking out the longitudinal results. While I experimented with opening the surveys during BreyerFest season a couple of times, I concluded that they get more lost in the chaos, and I get more folks disappointed that they missed the window. Unfortunately, that seems to be a Facebook algorithm issue, since I do post multiple times in as many general Breyer groups as I can manage. The posts are just not going out to everyone, even if they have a lot of interactions. I do now have my own Facebook group pertaining to my surveys (here if you're interested!), I always make a post on Blab, and of course, I will post updates here on the blog as well. For the foreseeable future, this survey series will stay with the February-April opening window! Results should be compiled and published in the April-May time frame.
I have a convenient "landing page" in Google that has links to all the surveys, which you can reference as you're going through the ones that interest you:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jyPCFnH6KcDRAcHH5bq6srZsPiLCygZvTF52UeNFm00/edit?usp=sharing
I appreciate any and all support! Of course, you do not need to take every survey if there are categories that don't interest you, but if you want to you can certainly take all of them. :) Sending links to your friends who may not have social media or Blab would also be very appreciated!
This is my largest survey series, but I also do several other surveys! Most of those are every other year, including:
- Vintage Woodgrain Rarity survey (even years)
- Vintage Chalky Rarity survey (odd years)
- Vintage Painted Over Deco Chalkies Rarity survey (first run in 2021 separately, but will be concurrent with the Chalky survey in the future)
- Vintage Pearly Rarity survey (even years)
I truly enjoy all of this hobby-nerdery and I hope that participating in the surveys makes your day(s) a little brighter, too!
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