Another question, but this time about Bow Tie

[cookifaa]

Haha I feel like a complete newbie asking all these questions but oh well!

About Bow Tie in the shy pose, can she have white bows too? I have two of her and one has a light body with pink bows and the other has a dark body with white bows. All the ponies I have found online has pink bows...

Is it unusual or did hasbro just want to complicate things even more?

[Loa]

Ah, you need to head to the Nirvana!

[Elfpony]

It's possible that her bows have just faded, too. The pink paint (and some of the hair) that Hasbro used can fade pretty easily.

Elf

[Taffeta]

Bow Tie's bows can fade

Did both of your loose ones come from the same origin point (by which I mean country)?

There are some batch related shade differences with body and hair on some ponies.

If both Bow Ties have the same hoofprint marks they are probably batch differences.

They'd only be Nirvana if one of them has something other than Hong Kong on her feet


About Hasbro in general - the only thing consistent about Hasbro's production in the eighties and nineties is inconsistency and that is especially true with stuff here in the UK. It's not really that the UK is weirder than the rest of the world, just that because a lot of online sites like the Wiki are based on the US pony model, any minor differences that occur through batch because of a later release of a pony or whatever can get overlooked...for example, shy pose Bow Tie was released in the US in 1983 and the UK in 1984. At the same time she was re-released in the US around 1984-5 with curly hair, whereas she was replaced in the UK in 1985 by the Collector pose one. There's a lot of Bow Tie production going on, and a lot of opportunity for inconsistencies to develop in that production.


.it would be crazy for there not to be minor differences in production over that wide expanse of time. It's perfectly possible for different shades of body, hair, symbol print to show up because of that. Production was probably continuous, so it's also possible for two minorly different body shades and symbol prints to show up in the same country. One is probably just from an earlier batch than the other.

(Of course there are genuine cases of distinctly different symbol print meaning an entirely separate release, but this is not the case for Bow Tie xD)

[LadyMoondancer]

Her bows have probably faded.  Pink symbols (and sometimes purple ones) seem to have this problem a lot!  Although at least they don't fade as easily as fading pink hair.  But yeah, there are Poseys with white flowers, Bow Ties with white bows, and Peachys with white hearts out there, due to their paint fading.

Requisite mention of how annoying I find the 'nirvana' term and how I wish it would catch fire and fall into the sea.

[Taffeta]

I personally don't hate the term so much as I hate how its existence has damaged general pony knowledge by creating another false division in pony ID.

Tootsie also has the fading symbol issue.

[cookifaa]

Thank you!

I never realised their symbols could fade, it never even occurred to me because there doesn't seem to be even the slighted tinge of pink! It also further confused me because of how dark her body is compared to my other Bow Ties and because she has Hong Kong stamped on her hoof. I get confused very easily...

[Baby Sugarberry]

Bow-Tie comes in several shades, including light/dark blue.  All the long-haired curly ones I've seen are light blue but the short haired version comes in both.

[pinkkittywinks]

Requisite mention of how annoying I find the 'nirvana' term and how I wish it would catch fire and fall into the sea.

I have to ask why do you hate the term so much?

I personally don't hate the term so much as I hate how its existence has damaged general pony knowledge by creating another false division in pony ID.

You know I am working on that but nothing is quite straight forward and there are a lot of round pegs and square holes when it comes to Hasbro. It is difficult and frustrating that information, which was proven incorrect years ago, is still blighting information and ideas today. All you and I can do is present the information we have and know to be correct.

Love pkw xxx

[Taffeta]

@Pkw - you are not part of the problem and I am not undermining your work by complaining ;0

Remembering back to when variant stuff started, and we really didn't know anything at all about these subjects...I think part of the problem was that all this came up around the same time people were still getting to grips with ponies that were sold outside of the US and lines got blurred. So Nirvana was a term defined to try and separate those two issues - non-US and variant production.

The problem I have with the term is that it's still used for ponies like Nightlight etc where it isn't appropriate. And I have seen people refer to the fancy pants babies from Europe as nirvana, even though it's the US ones made in Thailand -.-

My issue with it therefore is not the term or its purpose, but that people either jump from US mainstream to Nirvana and completely ignore the middle bit, thus generating misconceptions, rumours, and so on...or they just aren't sure about the definition so use it for pretty much anything that isn't what they grew up with. DV began that practice with blue heart Dazzleglow and it's still prevalent now.

I just hate lazy ID. When people bother to ask questions (like the OP in this thread) about things rather than assuming, it makes me so happy They want to know, rather than just jumping to conclusions.

I don't think there's a solution for the problem of the Nirvana term because all variant ponies are a mainstream release somewhere in the world. But if I was to define Nirvana properly, I would probably now want to remove anything that Hasbro produced themselves, and packaged on their cards...and only include ponies actively licenced to other companies. That said, MB being both separate and the same company makes Spanish ponies continuously problematic whatever happens.

So yeah.

Going back to Bow Tie, I think light blue is the general default for the collector pose pony as well. As a tentative hypothesis I'd suggest the darker blue is the earlier version, and that gradually got phased out to lighter plastic as production continued. The UK line probably had some of these too and then lighter blue became more standard around the same time Hasbro US was beginning to work on the y3 version. That stayed for both baby Bow Tie and the collector pose version over here as well.

But that's entirely speculation. It just seems to make sense that way.

[LadyMoondancer]

Requisite mention of how annoying I find the 'nirvana' term and how I wish it would catch fire and fall into the sea.

I have to ask why do you hate the term so much?

Because why invent a term when we could just say "variant" or "country exclusive", which is all these ponies are?  It just sounds really over the top considering it's applied to a bunch of variants who are usually made of cheaper material than Hong Kong / China ponies.

I'm not saying anyone should stop using the term if they like it.  But to me it is just as bad as "cutie mark".

The classification system itself is also really US centric.  Like Raindrop and Nightlight are "nirvanas" because they were only sold in Austria / Germany even though they were made in Hong Kong (?or China?) . . . But all the ponies only sold in the US, or in US / Canada?  Not "nirvanas". 

Not logical.  It can't be argued that it has to do with rarity, as Italian Peachy is considered a 'nirvana' and she is dead common.

[Taffeta]

Nightlight/Nachtlicht and co are made in Hong Kong.

I basically agree with everything you said, esp. the US centric bit. MLP id is still too US centric for me, but I'm biased However it doesn't help with ponies like Sundance (NC) who is also common as anything and here the HK one is basically nonexistent without importing. But that's our normal and she's definitely not Nirvana.

I don't know. I suspect like with the impact of DV's timeline and her quarantining of UK and European ponies to the 'International' section, Nirvana is too entrenched now to be eradicated or reformed. People use it in different ways, many of which make no sense.

The use of the word international also is ridiculous in this context, because international does not mean non-US, it means global.

I would prefer country exclusive or version, or regional exclusive, or version. Variant implies subordination to a mainstream, which again reverts to the US-centric view of MLP that still dominates. Like the Non-terms, it kind of detracts from finding out what they actually are. Variants are things that bypass the norm, but if something is a normal release in a country, it becomes mainstream there. If that makes sense. Those things are versions, not variants.

Mind you, that then asks the question about whether we can label a variant by location of manufacture (ie outside of the normal HK/China). In which case, the US Fancy Pants babies are variants

[pinkkittywinks]

Thank you!

I never realised their symbols could fade, it never even occurred to me because there doesn't seem to be even the slighted tinge of pink! It also further confused me because of how dark her body is compared to my other Bow Ties and because she has Hong Kong stamped on her hoof. I get confused very easily...

There can be a lot of variations with some ponies, especially since some ponies got more than one release, Bowtie is an example as this as she was popular.

I have had enough Bowties through my hands to say the symbols can indeed fade so much that they appear as if they were made white!

Most of the Bowties I have had are the paler version, right now I have a darker one in my bait box and it quite struck me how dark she is compared to the other Bowties

Other ponies with pale pinkish symbols are prone to the same sort of fading, Posey and Peachy spring to mind as well as Baby Bowtie, oh and Tootsie as Taffeta has mentioned.

LadyMoondancer: Thank you for your reply. I asked because I have seen previous posts were you have expressed your dislike of the term.

Love pkw xxx

[Carrehz]

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?

[Taffeta]

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?

^^ They really shouldn't be. But for some reason they still often get called it. And it is an exceptionally double standard when you consider the baby ponies aren't.

It might be because of the different versions of Starshine (Sternenglanz) etc BUT in that case, if that WERE the reason, Wedding Bells Confetti also should be Nirvana (but she isn't).

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.

Though the word is a bit squinky.