I don´t think I´ll buy more CollectA

Today I received more Collecta horses. More than half of them have blended legs. One of them even can´t stand by itself. And the repositioning techniques I use with other brands don´t work with Collecta horses, I supose because of the matherial they are made of (I´m talking about 2011 and 2012 ones, the soft and rubbery horses).

I´ve thought about returning the affected horses and ask for new ones, but as you know Collecta horses go by pairs (the same mold, 2 different paintjobs), and the problem is not on ONE horse, is the same on BOTH horses of the pair. If one horse has his left rear leg blended, the other horse of the pair has the same.

Collecta horses are very detailed, with beautiful poses, some of them are better than others. But they are BAD.

I don´t think I´ll buy the next year horses. Last year were not quite good about this, but this year they are horrible. I don´t understand how a brand allows this quality on such beautiful figurines.

I´ll post some pics when I have time to do them.

It's a pitty that we face such problems, indeed.
I hoped Lusitano mold from 2011 would be available in resin (he turned to be my fave from the 2011 release), but it never happened.

BTW some of my CollectA horses (TB mare and TWH) have bent legs now, though they came in good condition. And me friend's grey Lusitano is having flaws just because of touching him

Silvia, as I already told in another tread, almost all CollectA horse figures I can find here in local shops. These of a lighter material, have bent legs and most also have poor painting.
The lady of the shop is having nice results using hot water.
It is a shame that these nice sculptures are not having a factory that make them justice. This year CollectA charged us with many and fantastic figures and unfortunately it is creating a high pressure in the development of some figures. The final tooling of the horses and antelopes is being problematic and I'm afraid that they cannot solve it easily. Sometimes it is better to give a narrower range but with a better balanced quality. :)
From another point of view I see that in terms of factory CollectA is in an experimental phases, trying several different solutions what has helped them to make some very well manufactured and detailed figures.
The little hedgehog and squirrel are excelent, with a detail never seen before in such small figures and that is because they experimented a softer material in their production. The same is happening with some very detailed dinosaurs with sharp details. They are in progress and studying several solutions to give us a mix between quality and diversity.
My suggestion is to wait some time and buy the figures when their manufacturing is more matured.

Aaaarh, what a terrible shame

It is fine to reach for the stars, but not to SELL stars to people ( and probably mainly children) when they are more like mud

I remember the first CollectAs I got, where the paint was peeling like crazy.
I swore never to buy any CollectAs again, but Roger sent me some goodies and convinced me that they had solved that problem . So let us hope they solve this one also

Gosh! I am happy I am not their sales director !!!!
She ( Conny Lederer ?) must have a h... of a time with lots and lots of angry shop owners.

It is hard to overcome such a problem, it sticks like adhesive plaster to the fingers of Captain Haddock
Just think of all the collectors who still claim that the paintwork of Bullyland models is peelong. That was after they changed to PVC-free plastic and non-toxic paint many years ago, and could not get it right at the beginning.

I'd be interested to know which horses they are as all of mine stand perfectly. I guess it also depends how they were stored when delievered to the store, left in a box, in a hot climate ?

Yes the material can be slightly more bendy now but as I said, I've no problem with it.

I am very sorry to hear about this and would be interested to see photos of this problem. I agree that it must be down to the shipping and transportation of the models or the way they were stored in the shop.

All wildlife 2012 models are in perfect condition and made from a heavy solid plastic so not sure how this could have happened to your horses.

Do post photos. thanks

SyLoBe wrote:

Today I received more Collecta horses. More than half of them have blended legs. One of them even can´t stand by itself. And the repositioning techniques I use with other brands don´t work with Collecta horses, I supose because of the matherial they are made of (I´m talking about 2011 and 2012 ones, the soft and rubbery horses).

I´ve thought about returning the affected horses and ask for new ones, but as you know Collecta horses go by pairs (the same mold, 2 different paintjobs), and the problem is not on ONE horse, is the same on BOTH horses of the pair. If one horse has his left rear leg blended, the other horse of the pair has the same.

Collecta horses are very detailed, with beautiful poses, some of them are better than others. But they are BAD.

I don´t think I´ll buy the next year horses. Last year were not quite good about this, but this year they are horrible. I don´t understand how a brand allows this quality on such beautiful figurines.

I´ll post some pics when I have time to do them.

Do this, be it works:
1 put the horse's feet in hot tap water.
2 Put in the position it is,
3 After quickly switch to cold water and should be with the right leg.

Numaan wrote:

All wildlife 2012 models are in perfect condition and made from a heavy solid plastic so not sure how this could have happened to your horses.

Álvaro/schleich wrote:

Do this, be it works:
1 put the horse's feet in hot tap water.
2 Put in the position it is,
3 After quickly switch to cold water and should be with the right leg.

I think CollectA's wildlife line this year has been stupendous. But I've noticed problems similar to Silvia's with respect to the Horses.

The first thing to mention is that the wildlife models I've received are made of heavy solid plastic (as Numann points out above) and so when I've had a bent leg or horn, the process that Álvaro suggests works very well.

However, the 2012 CollectA horses that I own are made from an entirely different material. It basically feels like Rubber. For example, you could practically bend the front leg of the Thoroughbred to touch its nose and it would bounce back into place immediately without risking damage. Another example: the legs of some of these horse are almost too rubbery to support the weight of the body and they bow and distort the moment you set the figure down to display it. In this case, I don't think the hot/cold process works to correct legs that arrive in bent and incorrect positions and this is the concern that Silvia has raised at the beginning of this thread.

At the same time, I think that Roger has made a very important point: These companies -- CollectA in particular -- are aware of these problems and always working to improve the models. Hopefully, that will happen in this case. Personally, I'm a big fan of CollectA right now, but I confess that after testing the waters with a couple of the 2012 Horses, I declined to buy more. With the Wildlife, on the other hand, I am going crazy and trying to get everything they've made this year.

Right now, my biggest question -- and I ask purely out of curiosity -- is why CollectA made the horses out of an entirely different material from the material they used, very successfully, for the Wildlife series. I doubt that anyone can answer this, but I am genuinely curious. The answer may be illuminating and help us be more sympathetic towards a company that has done fantastic work over the last two years.

THAT BAD
And her warm with the dryer?

scot(t) wrote:

However, the 2012 CollectA horses that I own are made from an entirely different material. It basically feels like Rubber. For example, you could practically bend the front leg of the Thoroughbred to touch its nose and it would bounce back into place immediately without risking damage. Another example: the legs of some of these horse are almost too rubbery to support the weight of the body and they bow and distort the moment you set the figure down to display it. In this case, I don't think the hot/cold process works to correct legs that arrive in bent and incorrect positions and this is the concern that Silvia has raised at the beginning of this thread.

I just went and actually tried to touch the front leg of the Thoroughbred to its nose to see if I really could do so and have it bounce back into place immediately without risking damage, and I absolutely could not do that. The leg would definitely not bend that far and I regret having exaggerated my point with a false example.

The material the Horses are made from definitely feels more rubbery than the hard plastic material the Wildlife models are made from. But it does not feel like rubber. It feels like rubbery plastic. The thin parts of the legs bend and tweak easily and bounce back to their original position very quickly.

And to correct one more possible exaggeration: I still don't think that the hot/cold process will work nearly as well on these models, but I haven't tried it. I haven't needed to, since the legs on my figures are in the right position (even though the Lusitano has a hard time not falling over). I have, however, used the hot/cold method on many plastic figures, often very successfully, and I feel like I have a good sense for how it works. (I use boiling water and then ice water.) But my opinion that it will not work well on the CollectA horses is speculation, and has not been tested.

I´m sorry I have not posted some pics yet. I had hard work days :/

I did try to use the hot/cold method. In fact it works perfectly with other brands, even with minimal changes. After applying hot to be able to blend the plastic I use water with ice to cold it at the moment. But I must completely agree with scot(t). That method doesn´t work with the matherial the Collecta horses are made of.

Hmm after reading all this....

I was seriously considering about buying these models, but as I said above, I don't think that's going to happen if the models are such bad quality.

Maybe I'l buy one, cause I remind a shop around here that sells stuff to make molds so I can make a model of better material.
I already managed to do that with a toy horse from plamobil when I was little

But it really is a terrible shame that such wonderfull model come in such bad conditions

Numaan wrote:

I agree that it must be down to the shipping and transportation of the models or the way they were stored in the shop.

All wildlife 2012 models are in perfect condition

Well, I don't know about all the wildlife - Scott had problems with his antelope's horns and my giraffe's back legs are wonky and keeps falling over. The collecta horses flexible material, which I really don't like, makes them feel almost cheap. I hope they change the material, the first horses Deborah McDermott did for Collecta the material was better, but even then the quality wasn't as nice as their wildlife range.

I can at least reassure you all that the Shire mare is fine - she's made from the right kind of plastic. My Lippi stallion, OTOH, is every bit as bendy and wobbly as the 2011s. I think Collecta was fooled by how the Bullylands are so sturdy, despite the soft and lightweight plastic, but forgot to take into account how much thinner the legs of Deb's models are. Hopefully they'll see sense and switch to a harder plastic eventually.

Sorry to hear that! Hopefully CollectA will make their horses out of better material!

I bought the 2012 CollectA Quarter Horse Bay this week (it just arrived) and to my surprise, it does appear to be made from a more sturdy plastic than the 2012 Thoroughbred and Lusitano I bought earlier this year.

Maybe CollectA is tinkering with their production of these horses. (Or maybe it's completely random and there is no design or intelligence behind these differences. I really don't know; but I do like the material of this new model.)

The horse does, however, appear very pear-shaped when one looks down on it from above. That flaw is not apparent in this picture.

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I received the Shire recently and it's heavy, made from harder plastic. It's beautiful, except the way the body get's really thin toward the torso, it spoils the whole figure. Do you think we can point this out to Collecta and ask them to fix it? I also bought the mustang, although the body is made from this harder plastic the legs are still rubbery and really flexible.

I hope you'll post some pictures of the Shire, Harriet! It would be great to see.

scot(t) wrote:

I hope you'll post some pictures of the Shire, Harriet! It would be great to see.

Here you are I don't like the thin girths on both Mustang and the shire as I mentioned before and it's left ear is larger than the other, I think it's due to the mould line behind, it distorts the ear. I also think it would be nice if the ears had holes in, instead of being flat. But other than that he is very beautiful, but I'm tempted to get another one and customise it.
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Yes, one of her ears has not been carved out but she's still a gorgeous girl :)

I'll be taking my girls to my first model horse show in just under two weeks !

Thanks Harriet! The ears are odd. I wasn't sure I understood what you meant when you first described them, but with the closer picture, I can see that is very strange.

Rio wrote:

Yes, one of her ears has not been carved out but she's still a gorgeous girl :)

I'll be taking my girls to my first model horse show in just under two weeks !

Your's is like it too is it.
That's exciting! Are you taking them as OF or have you had some repainted?

scot(t) wrote:

Thanks Harriet! The ears are odd. I wasn't sure I understood what you meant when you first described them, but with the closer picture, I can see that is very strange.

I'm terrible at describing things - I think it's where the mould line cuts across behind, it's distorted the ear.
I was comparing the Mustang with last years horses and found that she has a slightly thicker girth.

HKHollinstone wrote:

I'm terrible at describing things

No you're not! Really.

(I didn't do a good job of explaining what I meant above. I meant that when I first read your description of the horse's ears, it seemed too weird that the ears would be that way. Consequently, even having read the description, I was still surprised when I saw the picture.)

What an absolutely beautyful model

Funny though with that ear, - it seems that they forgot to finish it

Okay...

Some time ago, when I bought the 2011 collecta horses, I was dissapointed because of the soft matherial and all the blended legs that were impossible to fix with the methods I use with my other brands. I put my horses in a shelf and they stayed there, like my other brands. Exactly the same.

And what was my surprise when today, checking the horses and putting them in a new orden, I discovered some horses that HAD NOT BLENDED LEG, NOW HAVE! Some of them could stay for theirselves when I bought them. And now a couple of them can´t.

Seriously... Do they think I will continue buying THAT?? Spending my money on such bad quality models? If only they had a good paintjob. But no. The only good thing on them is the sculpture job. And this, ignoring the pear-shape of their bodies (have you seen the newest arabian? ...). The paintjob is the worst of all brands I have, and the quality... The quality is just HORRIBLE.

And they are more expensive than any other brand I have.

I can´t understand why Collecta does that with the horse serie (I have no idea about other kind of animals).