Another question, but this time about Bow Tie

[lovesbabysquirmy]

Bowtie... so many versions... so many varieties... so many different lots and batches...  they are all a teensy bit different aren't they? 

[pinkkittywinks]

Wait, are Nachtlicht and Regentropfen nirvana or not? I've never been too sure about that :s the German babies like Baby Cherries Jubilee, Honeycomb etc aren't Nirvana, right?

Nope and nope, not nirvana They are regional exclusives

http://mlparena.com/index.php/topic,283451.0.html

Scandinavian, Australian, German and Dutch ponies are regional exclusives rather than being true nirvana ponies. They were put under the nirvana umbrella when the term was coined in the early 2000's. This before their release pattern was understood. They may be posted about in the nirvana forum, but they are equally acceptable elsewhere as well

A nirvana pony is really a pony that was made anywhere except Hong Kong or China, with the exception of some oddities. Thailand is a grey area right now, because of the Mountain Boys and the US Baby Fancy Pants, we still need to get to the bottom of the Thailand Mountain Boys.

The Nirvana classification itself existing isn't wrong. The fact it evolved when people were still really confused about UK and European release ponies is the problem. It's trying to apply really old classification ideas in a pony community where we know a heck of a lot more about ponies in general.

The term was coined in the early 2000, when there was still very little understanding of releases outside of the US, this mean some ponies got put under the nirvana umbrella when they are actually a regional exclusive.

I recall this misunderstanding causing me problems when I first dug my ponies out in 2003. I did spot of research in the internet and was MOST confused when the website (it is gone now, but I suspect it was Dream Valley) I was looking at said Collectors Pose Applejack and Bowtie were only made in Italy. How many times do you think I checked my ponies feet to see a HK stamp? How confused was I, as a UK person who has not been to Italy or anywhere which sold Italy ponies? VERY confused! THEN I found Taffeta's site and things started to make MUCH more sense

visitors can't see pics , please register or login


My childhood Bowtie who is CP not Italian!

Of course all this lead me to have an interest in nirvana ponies.

Love pkw xxx

[Taffeta]

DV had a lot of errors and wasnt good at updating them. Basically the reason I did my site at all was because I and other UK people were fed up with being accused of being scammers and liars because we had ponies for sale that DV said didn't exist - and it wasn't as easy then as it is now to get images and stuff online to advertise a sale. It sounds weird now but back then DV was the pony gospel and you would get hassle if you contradicted it, because it was all there was. And it was really wrong about UK and European ponies. Not wrong like the occasional Wiki wrong. REALLY wrong.

Variant ponies came up pretty early in all of this. I found Surprise and Peachy (italy) in around 1997 and began dialogue on them and then there were some other folk from Europe - Lieneke is the one I remember most - and a few others who had them to trade, told us info about them and so on...but it all got muddled up because basically DV was still plodding along claiming Argentinian Flutterbye was Cascade (or "pretty bow") while there was an increasing number of people outside of DV realising that there were all these ponies made in other places and nothing was being done with them. I saw my first argentinian, peruvian and brazilian baby ponies in April 1998 when my trade partner brought them with her from the US to show me. Now those ponies are identifiable. Then they were entirely unknown and absolutely nobody was discussing them. So it is important to have a niche to explain and explore those variations.

I just wish that it had managed to happen in a less confused environment. If DV hadn't been so slow to adapt, then Nirvana and different country releases might have been more broadly understood sooner - instead of just being shoved into a quarantine category of "International" which has confused them forever :/