POTTD 6/12/2017 Tootie Tails

[ringwraith10]

A beautiful pony with an unfortunate name.

Fun fact, the US Tropical pony names were all recycled from a different Hasbro line, Fairy Tails:

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Tootie Tails (the pony) was the only one not to have the "Tails" part of the name dropped.

Oh cool, I didn't know that! I have one of the Fairy Tail birds from that line (from childhood).

I would kill to have this pony on the card, but at least I have her in otherwise nice condition!

[Taffeta]

 Since they're based on the Tropical Fairy Tail birds, I wish we'd gotten the blue and green ones as ponies too.

Come to think of it, it's a bit weird that those ponies don't exist. I mean, it was common in the UK for us to have sets of four ponies, but most of those sets we had as fours in the UK had six in the US (like the Sunshine Ponies, the Candy Cane ponies, etc). So why not six Tropical Ponies? Were there two more that never made it to production? Should there maybe have been a Top Banana and a Sunnytails?

The mind boggles muchly.

Also the fact the names of those birds and the colours of the ponies which in the US got those names don't correlate at all well. But I did notice that "Hula Hula" at least has palm trees. I really genuinely think that palm tree earth pony was meant to be Hula Hula everywhere, but Hasbro in the US did a weird name switch. It's the only thing that makes sense given that the US symbol/name don't match up and yet its the only name that is in both UK and US sets (and when the UK used the same names as the US, we used them for the same ponies. Hula Hula is the only time that didn't happen). Looking at the fairy tails above it does seem like name switching may have happened a few times. It wouldn't surprise me even if they wanted to have other names for them but then decided to save money and use existing trademarks instead. Maybe they couldn't get the names they wanted through for some reason. Who really knows. I suspect it's easier to trademark "Top Banana Tails" than Top Banana on its own.

I always think that it was easier for the UK to have more interesting names because they were probably only licensing them in a small area, as opposed to trying to get them through in the US market. I think that's probably the reason Hasbro recycled. Partly to save money, but partly to save having to try and get yet more trademarks through.

[LadyMoondancer]

By the time the Tropical ponies came out, all MLPs had just four in a set.   My assumption is that it was because MLP's star was fading and they weren't selling as well, so Hasbro was scaling back. You could see Hasbro trying to hit the TOTALLY RADICAL neon 90s look in some of their last G1 MLPs--the bright Tropical ponies and Rockin' Beats, the Sweetheart Sisters who looked less "cute" and more like a horse-version of Barbie, and the Petite ponies (because Polly Pocket was huge)--but G1 MLP was just too tied in to the cute, cuddly, pastel 80s aesthetic IMO.

[starstrider]

Have her.  I really like this set, they're sure gloriously cheerful colours.  When I was growing up, I distinctly remember receiving a 100 piece puzzle with these tropical ponies on it.  Fond memories.