Saying Goodbye to Just About Horses

Cover of the new Model Horse Quarterly

I finally received my last issue of Just About Horses in the mail today, and it was with some mixed feelings that I opened the familiar model horse hobby magazine published by Breyer.  JAH was the reason I learned about the entire hobby of model horse collecting in the first place back in 1978.

I remember the day like it was yesterday. I'd bought a model I'd craved forever - the mahogany bay Proud Arabian stallion.  He's still in my china cabinet in my office where I keep my model horse collection.  I have carried that model everywhere I've moved, and he is still one of my favorites.  Inside the brown and tan Breyer box was a Breyer catalog.  I couldn't stop reading it.  At the back was an ad for a magazine about model horses. I ran to my dad with my allowance and asked him for a check.  I remember how surprised he was that a third grader would even KNOW what a check was, but I did, and I wanted one to get that magazine.

When it came, I read it so many times the pages turned soft and frayed around the edges.

Several years later, when as a teenager I wanted to become a magazine writer, I sent an article into Just About Horses. It was called "Good Mail Manners" and described etiquette for model horse collectors. In those pre-Internet days, all transactions were conducted by snail mail.  I explained what all the acronyms meant in ads and how to correspond with fellow collectors in a friendly way.

Imagine my surprise and delight when a business letter arrived in the mail a few weeks later - with a check for $25! It was my first official magazine "sale". I was 15 years old.  A week after that a big box of sample copies arrived in the mail. I felt like I was in heaven. I kept looking at my byline - I was an official, published author.

Today, holding that last issue of JAH in my hands, I felt like I was saying goodbye to an old friend. I've been critical of the magazine of late, it is true. And I well understand the business decisions that probably led to their decision to shut down the print magazine.  Their young collectors are finding out about the hobby online, not in print materials. Kids raised in the internet age think first of Googling something they want to know and lastly about looking at something in print.


I wish Breyer well on their new website and new business models.  And, because I am among the older generation who grew up with paper...and still loves to feel a book in my hands...I am launching the Model Horse Quarterly, a new print publication scheduled to launch in January.  The first issue is almost complete.  Here is the cover. I  hope that when it is finally ready for sale, you will enjoy it too.

It makes me think of that day, a long time ago in 1979, when I held my first copy of JAH in my hands....

Here is the cover - front and back (like a book open and face down on your desk)