Cherries Jubilee, Posey, Lickety Split, Tootsie...

[Taffeta]

So I've been trying to untangle 1985 and 1986 a bit as a break from doing my own research work and prepping for my classes, and I've realised how muddled these guys are. And how many sets they come in.

So I thought I'd reach out to the global community and clarify if I'm right about how I'm organising them. I am fine with the UK and US, but I have some blurry lines for Europe because of the bad habit some countries have for not picturing ponies on the cards *grrr*

So anyway. This is what I think I know. Please note I am only concerned with HK releases. Not Nirvana. I leave that headache to PKW to work out

Cherries Jubilee
1985 - y3/Groom & Style set
1986 - UK (set with Gypsy, straight hair, dark symbols)
1986 - Europe (dark symbols, curly hair - probably sold in a set on a card picturing 1985 ponies, either UK or US style art, maybe at the same time as white Tootsie? Hopscotch? Snowflake? Dark symbol Posey? Curly/dark symbol Lickety Split?).
1987 - Scandinavia and South Africa, Pony Friends (Truly/Cupcake etc) set - same as previous with curls/dark symbol.
So Soft

Lickety Split
1985 - y3/Groom & Style set
1986 - Europe (dark symbols, curly hair - probably sold in a set on a card picturing 1985 ponies, either UK or US style art, maybe at the same time as white Tootsie? Hopscotch? Snowflake? Dark symbol Posey? Curly/dark symbol CJ?).
So Soft

Posey
1985 - y3/Groom & Style set - light symbols
1986 - UK (set with Gypsy,, dark symbols)
1986 - Europe (dark symbols - probably sold on a card picturing 1985 ponies, either UK or US style art, maybe at the same time as white Tootsie? Hopscotch? Snowflake? Dark symbol CJ? Curly/dark symbol Lickety Split?).
1987 - Scandinavia and South Africa, Pony Friends (Truly/Cupcake etc) set - same as previous with dark symbol.
So Soft

Tootsie
1985 - y3/Groom & Style set (green)
1986 - Europe (white? probably sold in a set on a card picturing 1985 ponies, either UK or US style art, maybe at the same time as dark symbol/curly CJ? Hopscotch? Snowflake? Dark symbol Posey? Curly/dark symbol Lickety Split?).
*possibly sold in the 1987 Pony Friends set thanks to suggestion on advertising from Scandinavia but unconfirmed, not pictured on the card*

[NightGliderSA]

Hi Taffeta!

I really cannot help you with release years; I didn't have any of these ponies as a child or even know of their existence. However I can confirm that we definitely had Hopscotch, as a friend of mine had her and I wanted her.

We also had:
White HK Tootsie
Green HK Tootsie

Cherries with the dark purple symbol and curly hair
Cherries with the peach cherries and light stalks
Cherries with the bright pink cherries and dark stalks
and:
Cherries with the pink cherries and curly hair

Spoiler

(this one)
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Lickety Split: I have only seen two and they both had the light ice cream cones. Mine came from England, so she doesn't count, however her symbol appears the same as the other 2 ponies I have seen.

Posey with the dark pink tulips
Posey with the light pink tulips

We also had Italian Posey, along with various other Italian ponies, Scandinavian ponies and Spanish (NC) ponies. But I will not list them as that is not what this thread is about 

I'm really sorry that I cannot help you with WHEN they came, but hopefully knowing who is here will be a step in the right direction. Good luck!

[Taffeta]

No, that is helpful, because it gives me some idea from one of the areas these sets were sold. It sounds like maybe you guys had the original Lickety Split, rather than the one with the darker symbols. Would be interesting to know if the same was true in Scandianvian countries since your release was sometimes similar and sometimes not.

And no straight haired CJ which is what I expected but I am never 100% sure with South Africa how much stuff got imported and whether you could have had the whole Gypsy set or not.

So thank you, that does help a little

[pinkkittywinks]

Please note I am only concerned with HK releases. Not Nirvana. I leave that headache to PKW to work out

Love pkw xxx

[NightGliderSA]

Always happy to help as much as I can 

I can confirm that I have never seen Gypsy here, sadly. I would have noticed such a gorgeous pony; she has been on my wish list since I started collecting.

[Taffeta]

Please note I am only concerned with HK releases. Not Nirvana. I leave that headache to PKW to work out

Love pkw xxx

@NightGlider - I keep trying to discover other countries that Gypsy was sold in other than the UK, but thus far am still drawing a blank. It makes no sense to me that she would only have ever been sold here, when Snowflake and Hopscotch had such a wide release...:/

[Leikin]

of course, I'm always at the wrong computer when these discussions come up

I do think we had both green and white Tootsie in Sweden, but cant say 100%. I know we had Hopscotch, as my friend had her, and I was so envious. Blue was my favourite colour. ^^

I still need to dig up a few things for you

[NightGliderSA]

Please note I am only concerned with HK releases. Not Nirvana. I leave that headache to PKW to work out

Love pkw xxx

@NightGlider - I keep trying to discover other countries that Gypsy was sold in other than the UK, but thus far am still drawing a blank. It makes no sense to me that she would only have ever been sold here, when Snowflake and Hopscotch had such a wide release...:/

I completely agree, it is so very strange and goes back to nothing that Hasbro ever did making any sense whatsoever. I have only seen Snowflake here once, and I bought her, but she was Italian. So I cannot say whether the 'regular' version was released here either. And again, she is a pony who I really like and keep an eye out for.

[Taffeta]

When I think back to what I believed the MLP release was like as a kid and what it actually was, my brain hurts. I had Snowflake as a kid and then in a sense Gypsy too as I found her at a school fete when I was about nine...and my close friend had Hopscotch (who I now have) so all those ponies were just normal to me and part of a bigger set of 'original' ponies based on what the factfile included. Which put those ponies together with Medley and Sparkler's sets that we didn't get, and Lofty, Paradise and Ribbon who didn't even exist in regular form, as well as all the earth ponies we did get, the movie stars and Honeycomb of course.

Trying to get my head around what Hasbro were thinking is so hard :/ As a kid carbooting I believed Medley and Firefly were out there (which they weren't, not here). As a teenager I believed they might have just been story ponies, as I never found them. Then I came online and discovered they were in other places but not here. At the same time, ponies like Snowflake and Gypsy which I took for granted as ponies from my childhood, when I first mentioned them to my first trade partner she had zero idea who I was talking about and I ended up having to take (physical) photos and mailing them to her because at the time they weren't known about online.

It's so weird how those decisions were made. I mean, wouldn't it have been way cheaper to just give the UK Sparkler and Powder, say, instead of Gypsy and Snowflake? And why Honeycomb and not Surprise? I dunno. So weird.

[Shaz]

Please note I am only concerned with HK releases. Not Nirvana. I leave that headache to PKW to work out

Love pkw xxx

@NightGlider - I keep trying to discover other countries that Gypsy was sold in other than the UK, but thus far am still drawing a blank. It makes no sense to me that she would only have ever been sold here, when Snowflake and Hopscotch had such a wide release...:/

Distribution of Gypsy interests me as well. If it's any help, Gypsy, Honeycomb, Snowflake and Hopscotch may have been sold in Hungary, as they have all turned up on the second-hand market over there. Not conclusive, I know, but a good indication that Gypsy wasn't just limited to the UK.

[Taffeta]

Please note I am only concerned with HK releases. Not Nirvana. I leave that headache to PKW to work out

Love pkw xxx

@NightGlider - I keep trying to discover other countries that Gypsy was sold in other than the UK, but thus far am still drawing a blank. It makes no sense to me that she would only have ever been sold here, when Snowflake and Hopscotch had such a wide release...:/

Distribution of Gypsy interests me as well. If it's any help, Gypsy, Honeycomb, Snowflake and Hopscotch may have been sold in Hungary, as they have all turned up on the second-hand market over there. Not conclusive, I know, but a good indication that Gypsy wasn't just limited to the UK.

Interesting! Also very possible since the conversation that Hungary came up in mentioned a wide range. I also wonder about certain other places like Israel, Malaysia etc. I know that Singapore probably had Mountain Boys, and Malaysia definitely did because someone who was a member here grew up there and found them over there new. I would expect Mountain Boys to also be around in South Africa and maybe Australia and NZ as well, though, but I don't know if that has happened.

I can't think Gypsy only had a UK release, but if she did appear in other places, there's a difference for me between whether she was imported there by a store chain or by a branch of Hasbro. In the UK we had a couple of sets (the Happytails spring to mind) that don't appear in any Hasbro material for the UK that I know of, including their own lists, but they did appear in the UK. I have found them both loose and MIB at carboot sales (!) and the box was US. I believe them to have been one of Woolworths' many "store exclusive" imports...but whether to consider them proper UK release ponies or not still kind of troubles me.

In any event, it would be good to map those ponies in other locations, Gypsy especially. But I'd also like to know whether they were officially imported (or exported) via a Hasbro branch or whether (like the happytails here and others) they were stores in those countries buying up excess stock from UK stores.

[Shaz]

I never knew that Happytails came to the UK! I still have so much to learn about the weird ways of pony distribution . I think Lesson 1 is probably: It makes no sense!

I'm not sure if Hungary had their own branch of Hasbro or if some toy stores were just importing leftovers from elsewhere. Or a mixture of both. (I must look into this!) There does seem to be some indication that ponies were released in a different order over there. From what I've heard, there were at least some ponies with English-language packaging. The European boxes with the multiple languages on them don't have any Hungarian on them, which might indicate that they weren't originally planning on distributing them in Hungary? - Sorry, I've gone a bit off-topic.

Hasbro's fondness for featuring ponies in comics etc that then weren't released doesn't help with this sort of thing. I bet a lot of people who grew up with MLP in the UK feel more attached to Glory, Moondancer, Medley, Firefly etc than to some of the things that were actually sold here. Hasbro, you were so mean to us!

Edit to add: On the subject of Gypsy, this page (http://www.ponylande.de/g1/jahre/jahr3/jahr3.html#international) gives her a German name and says that these ponies were sold in Europe. Maybe an indication that she was sold in at least one German-speaking country? Or of course it could just be that she appeared in a comic there, I think she was in the Finnish comics too.

[Taffeta]

It makes no sense Pony nonsense 101. I think its one reason so many people cling to the US system of years, because it at least makes some sense compared to everywhere else.

Yes, Happytails came here but I don't entirely know when or if for sure they came through Woolworths...In any case I have found Woosie (lavender), Tossles, Tabby, Romper and Squeezer here second hand. The only one I haven't seen is Tall Tales, ironically given the weird hybrids for this set that exist.

I have never found anything to indicate Gypsy or Honeycomb were sold in Germany, but I wouldn't rule out them being in the German language comic as a lot of comic art got shared from the UK comic. Would need someone in that area to confirm of course...but it's a question that's come up a few times and I've not yet had anyone from that area of Europe say Gypsy and Honeycomb came out there. I do have a German card on which they are pictured (it is the UK card but with language in German) but none of the ponies on that card have names, and it just says Mein Kleines Pony. The pony on the card is CP Bow Tie who is not pictured on the card anyway :/ Very odd.

In any case that resource lists them as 1984 ponies, which they are not, so...

And I think you are right that there are many people here more attached to those early ponies we never had.  A major marketing mistake on Hasbro's part.They must have lost out on many potential sales.

[NightGliderSA]

Please note I am only concerned with HK releases. Not Nirvana. I leave that headache to PKW to work out

Love pkw xxx

@NightGlider - I keep trying to discover other countries that Gypsy was sold in other than the UK, but thus far am still drawing a blank. It makes no sense to me that she would only have ever been sold here, when Snowflake and Hopscotch had such a wide release...:/

Distribution of Gypsy interests me as well. If it's any help, Gypsy, Honeycomb, Snowflake and Hopscotch may have been sold in Hungary, as they have all turned up on the second-hand market over there. Not conclusive, I know, but a good indication that Gypsy wasn't just limited to the UK.

Interesting! Also very possible since the conversation that Hungary came up in mentioned a wide range. I also wonder about certain other places like Israel, Malaysia etc. I know that Singapore probably had Mountain Boys, and Malaysia definitely did because someone who was a member here grew up there and found them over there new. I would expect Mountain Boys to also be around in South Africa and maybe Australia and NZ as well, though, but I don't know if that has happened.

I can't think Gypsy only had a UK release, but if she did appear in other places, there's a difference for me between whether she was imported there by a store chain or by a branch of Hasbro. In the UK we had a couple of sets (the Happytails spring to mind) that don't appear in any Hasbro material for the UK that I know of, including their own lists, but they did appear in the UK. I have found them both loose and MIB at carboot sales (!) and the box was US. I believe them to have been one of Woolworths' many "store exclusive" imports...but whether to consider them proper UK release ponies or not still kind of troubles me.

In any event, it would be good to map those ponies in other locations, Gypsy especially. But I'd also like to know whether they were officially imported (or exported) via a Hasbro branch or whether (like the happytails here and others) they were stores in those countries buying up excess stock from UK stores.

Oh how much I would have loved if the Mountain Boys had come to SA, but I doubt it. We all, in the small collecting community here, love them. But no one has them. Which I think is pretty conclusive. We do have Spanish NC mommy and daddy family ponies though. And so the plot thickens...

[Taffeta]

Yeah, I haven't heard of them showing up in SA either. Which means that although there are similarities between your release and that in Scandinavian countries, it isn't exact :/

I think all the surviving examples of Mountain Boys still MOC (of which there are probably examples in single figures) came from Scandinavian surplus stock. I am not aware of any being found in the UK (and this is true for a lot of 1987 UK release ponies, there aren't many surviving examples of MOC ponies from this year or even surviving loose backcards) which suggests that they were either quickly superseded by 1988 ponies on shelves or that all the unsold stock went somewhere else.

There are some Movie Star ponies but they often miss stickers which suggests they may be later releases or again,from Scandinavia, where they didn't have stickers at all. And there are some Princesses, but they were sold here with the same packaging in 1988 so that tells us very little. By contrast, packaging and MIB examples of UK release TE ponies, Mountain Boys, Newborn Twins, Megan & Sundance (1987) are pretty difficult to come by.

Twinkle Eyes are a whole other topic of conversation though.I might need to start another thread on that...