MLPArena Nirvana Spotlight: South African Ponies by pinkkittywinks

[pikkupapupata]

OOOOOOOO look at those stickers!!

Oh boy, this is getting so interesting. I kept poking around the internet to see other cards and boxes, whatever I can find available, and from what I've been able to find and see, I've noticed that Greek packaging and Danish packaging don't explicitly mention copyright or licence information. The Danish card for Alternate Birthflower December has only a Hasbro logo in the bottom left corner on the front, and an 'Import' marker in the bottom right corner. Nothing on the back. An Australian card for April, though, has copyright information on the back at the bottom. I just can't tell if it mentions a licence or not, but I don't think so. The Greek packages don't typically have anything aside from an El Greco logo; I thought I found copyright writing of some sort on one of the Collector Pony boxes on eBay right now, but after translating, it just lets one know to collect all eight ponies in different colours. One of the Pony Wear boxes had a Hasbro logo on the back in the bottom right corner, with 'Patented by Hasbro U.S.', but that's all that I saw on any of the Greek packages. A Belgian card for the Rabbit Pony has Dutch and German on the front (aside from 'For 3 years and older' in French), and Dutch and French on the back with copyright and distribution information, but no mention of a licence. A German card for Baby Sunribbon has copyright information on the back in German, but nothing about a licence. A German card for Nachtlicht also mentions no licence. An Italian box for Minty mentions copyright and licence.

Aside from the Greeks, I've noticed a theme of mentioning a licence if the ponies are not made in either Hong Kong or China. If the ponies are made in either of those two places, then there is at least a small mention of Hasbro somewhere, but not of a licence. I'm curious about cards from France for those made in France, as well as Colombian, Mexican, and Venezuelan packaging to see how they are formatted and what information they disclose.

I'm not sure what this all could say about the South Africans, but if wide-release ponies were sold in South Africa alongside the South African ponies, which have Hong Kong on their hooves, it might not be odd that there's no mention of a licence, and they could very well be genuine as opposed to knock-offs. But then, I wonder, was a South African pony on that South African card, or was it a wide-release pony on that South African card?

ALSO! Just found this thread over on the Trading Post where Seashell, under ZuluSeashell, posted in November of last year. She has clearer photos of the backcard! Interestingly, I went to save them for my digital reference collection of others' packages, and they automatically showed up with the names 'FakieBackcard1gif' and 'FakieBackcard2gif'. Hmmm...

[Taffeta]

There is some discussion about the means by which the 1995 Dutch ponies were sold and whether they were/were not official MLPs in the sense of those which came before.

This is probably going to need to be a different thread as we're moving away from South Africa, but I need to say quite emphatically that there is a difference between licenced ponies (Estrela, Top Toys, etc) and ponies distributed in other regions outside of the US but still produced by Hasbro. Those two things are being blurred.

The US line is not the central nucleus and ponies not sold in the US are not peripheral and other in this equation. This is a false division invented by collectors but bears no resemblance to production reality (which is why I want to stamp out the tendency to segregate). In a lot of cases different cards just show different packaging in different areas. Ponies like Baby Sunribbon are produced by Hasbro in Germany and the Uk just the same as in the US. They are just packaged locally, albeit that style of packaging is uniform across Europe for the period. Baby Sunribbon herself is made in China.

Similar rules for Nachtlicht. Her set wasn't sold in the US, but that doesn't mean she needs to be licensed. Hasbro has a lot of branches outside of the US. To put it more simply, if you look at the hooves of the Surprise Twins pony, you'll see it says Hasbro Int'l - a collaborative Hasbro based in Europe which produced MLP after the US line ended.

What we're talking about here is not distribution in different countries or regional exclusives which were produced by local Hasbro in different areas of the world. We're talking about actively selected other companies who produced the ponies for Hasbro. Sunribbon doesn't need licencing on her card because she isn't licenced - but the Top Toys argentinian ponies do, because they are.

Of course, into this is the grey area of European made ponies sold under the hasbro umbrella. The piggy ponies are a separate extreme entity, but the difference between the italian ponies sold in Italy under the special licence and the Italian ponies sold in other parts of Europe on other cards in other languages is a blurry one sometimes. My MOC Italian Hopscotch (German Card) says all the usual copyright for a Hasbro pony and then made in Italy instead of Made in China. Her card also has the label on it that says she is an original Hasbro pony - so we can say she's not licensed but made by Hasbro in Europe directly for sale there. But there are Italian ponies with very distinctive different labelling and Italy has a unique style of packaging as well. And some of them DO have different criteria.

Let's not forget that Hasbro in the US produced one set in Thailand, but we don't think of that as needing licencing messages on the boxes...I think for the most part that exported Italian and French ponies may also be Hasbro directly. Spanish ones are also complex...I just looked at the info on Rocio's card and it doesn't mention a licence but Hasbro own MB by that point, so is a licence even necessary at that point? Probably not...?

I would love to know exactly what the copyright convention their cards mention relates to though...from what is said on Hopscotch's card it sounds like it was something to do with the division of copyright/assets/whatever relating to the merger of Hasbro and Milton Bradley.

Whatever was going on in Europe at this point, it didn't spread to the UK - except in Sundance and some of the family ponies. Everything sold here aside those was either China or HK (even the set which in the US is made in Thailand), and all of it officially distributed through Hasbro, not under licence - by Hasbro UK in first Berkshire then later, Gwent. Hasbro UK is still in Gwent.

Going back to S.A - it is interesting that she refers to it that way. I am in no way brave enough or convinced enough either way to state that I think the S.A ponies are real Hasbro ponies or bootlegs, not least because of all the money tied up in them. I still think we need much more information about them before we can be sure.

[pikkupapupata]

Sorry, I'm not meaning to take away from South Africa, or imply that the US are central; I was writing as I was thinking and thought that everything was connected to the goal of understanding more about the South African ponies by looking at some of these details generally. I think I'm showing how little I understand about how these things work, and I may have been making or implying improper connections unintentionally. Your breakdown did make everything a bit clearer, though.

I found it interesting too how she termed them; she seems to know a lot about them, but that terminology seems so definitive when there are still so many questions. It could be subjective, but it could mean something, too.

These ponies are so mysterious!

[skyline]

For what it's worth: I grew up in Australia, but my grandmother lived in Johannesburg my whole childhood, and we would visit her at least once a year for the bulk of the 90s. She bought me MANY ponies from local sources, but the ones I remember most clearly were First Tooth Baby Ponies - she loved spoiling me and my sister, and some of my best memories of her & her house were opening the cupboards in the guest room that she would stash with presents for us. For sure she gave me FT Baby Lickety Split, FT Baby Fifi, FT Baby Bouncy, and FT Baby North Star, but I'm pretty sure there were others as well.

I also distinctly remember a friend in the neighbourhood who had a lot of first group princess ponies (Princess Sparkle stands out in my memory), and the Dance N Prance puzzle...

Funnily enough, though we would go to department & toy stores, I have absolutely zero recollection of these Nirvana variants. All my experiences with MLP in South Africa were later release official ponies I had seen on backcards & in catalogues elsewhere. The local kids' TV station, K-TV, had My Little Pony N Friends on high rotation.

[Taffeta]

@Skyline - interesting o.O. Do you remember if your friend in the neighbourhood had dragons or bushwoolies or neither of the above with her princesses?

[skyline]

@Skyline - interesting o.O. Do you remember if your friend in the neighbourhood had dragons or bushwoolies or neither of the above with her princesses?

That is a great question, and one I often wracked my brain about when I started re-collecting in the early 2000s. I could never make up my mind. Both felt familiar, but I couldn't remember if the bushwoolie memory came from Quest of The Princess Ponies, and the dragon memory from brochures. I think the reality is that by the time I hung out with her and played with her ponies she had lost most of the accessories, so it's impossible to know if they were US or UK release. I WANT to say UK, but that feels very un-scientific.

[ZuluSeashell]

This is a lovely Spotlight thanks!

I am from SA and have 7 SA ponies! I'd love to post pic but it doesn't seem to let me for some reason...?

I have SA Seashell, Cotton Candy, Applejack, Heartthrob, Moonstone, Skydancer, Blossom.

I also have an SA Seashell up for sale on the Nirvana sales page for anyone who is interested... pretty much mint condition.

xxx
ZuluSeashell

[pinkkittywinks]

I am glad you enjoyed the spotlight zuluseashell

Did you have them all from new as a child? What a collection to have 7 of them

Can you post a link to your pictures?

Love pkw xxx

[ZuluSeashell]

Hi there,

No only Seashell and Applejack are from my childhood. The rest I have picked up whilst thrifting... but few and far between... ive been collecting since i was a little girl.

Just to clarify; I was 'Seashell" who has the website with that info on Applejack and Seashell that was mentioned above in this thread. I left the arena and trading post several years ago and put pony collecting on hold as life 'got in the way'. When i re-joined - last year- I had to create a new name so I became 'ZuluSeashell". It was me who put up the pics on the Trading Post of the backcards in November last year. Way back then i saved the pics as 'fakiebackcardgif1' because to me they were always 'not the real thing' when I was a kid. As I said long ago on my old website, I was disappointing when given those ponies because they looked so different and poorly made. I always wanted sitting seashell and I told my parents her name then I was given green SA seashell much to my disappointment. Obviously I had no idea that they were actually going to be valuable!!

Also by way of clarifying: SA first got the Year2 earth ponies from the US. We never (as far as I know) got the Year1 ponies. None of my friends had the collector flat foot ponies. Some lucky girls got ponies on visits to to europe though. My very first pony was Bowtie when I was 4 years old. After the year 2 ponies very released and year 3 started arriving in SA this set of SA moulds started appearing. At about the same time. The US and UK ponies we got here very very expensive. The SA ones were much cheaper.

From the year two ponies not the whole set was found equally. For example I don't recall ever seeing Sunbeam until i discovered ebay 20 years later... I have a feeling with the Apartheid system and sanctions in place back then we 'took whatever we could get' and we got end of ranges often and only part sets of things. We were at least a year behind in the ranges. For example i only got my Bowtie a year after the range was released overseas.

We tended to get imports of US, UK and interestingly Italian ponies... so a real range!

A friend of mine is going to post some backcards later (i can't seem to upload photos here for some reason so she's gonna do it). Shes also from SA as am I. She will also post a pic of my SA girls. I have 7 - Applejack, Seashell, Moonstone, Skydance, Heart throb, Cotton candy and Blossom.

Anyway please ask me if you want to know anything else... I was such a keen collector my whole childhood and was obsessive with my lists of what ponies i had etc.
As for Prima Toys and where the SA girls were actually made, no one knows... not even the prima people. They do not have records from so far back.

Hope this info helps

[Taffeta]

@ZuluSeashell



I feel like mysteries are about to be solved. Also, backcards

[pinkkittywinks]

ZuluSeashell I did wonder if it was you, I remember finding your website and drooling over your SA Seashell! However I can well imagine as a child, your disappointment at your Seashell not being lilac and not sitting (incidentally, Seashell was the pony I always wanted as a child and never got)

Do you ever recall a SA Sprinkles? She is a rumour I picked up of your website

Love pkw xxx

[ZuluSeashell]

 pinkkittywinks, that was another confusion from my childhood. On my webpage I referred to a Sprinkles. But it was because my Neighbour when I was a kid had her and mistakenly called her sprinkles...she was in fact HeartThrob. But the symbols were not clearly stamped in and looked more like Sprinkles symbol than heartthrob’s 

Nice to reconnect with you all after all these years!!

[Leikin]

pinkkittywinks, that was another confusion from my childhood. On my webpage I referred to a Sprinkles. But it was because my Neighbour when I was a kid had her and mistakenly called her sprinkles...she was in fact HeartThrob. But the symbols were not clearly stamped in and looked more like Sprinkles symbol than heartthrob’s 

Nice to reconnect with you all after all these years!!

Oh, nice to meet you! I remember your site as well from back then. The SA ponies where such a mystery
And I suspected that rumored Sprinkles to be Heart Throb. Neat to finally have it confirmed
Welcome back!

[ZuluSeashell]

Thank you Leikin

[pinkkittywinks]

pinkkittywinks, that was another confusion from my childhood. On my webpage I referred to a Sprinkles. But it was because my Neighbour when I was a kid had her and mistakenly called her sprinkles...she was in fact HeartThrob. But the symbols were not clearly stamped in and looked more like Sprinkles symbol than heartthrob’s 

Nice to reconnect with you all after all these years!!

Thank you so much for confirming the Sprinkles was indeed Heartthrob I too suspected it was a case of "mistaken identity" but I couldn't be 100% with out proof

Love pkw xxx