Who's Skates? An oddity on Twist's backcard

[Mrs. Prospector]

Sometimes, when I'm bored, I like to read the G1's backcard stories. I was looking at Twist's, and I found mention of a pony named Skates, who doesn't exist.

Spoiler

"Can you teach me to ice skate?" Twist eagerly asked Skates. They donned their warmest mittens and headed for the pond. Skates helped Twist lace up her ice skates properly, then showed her the correct way to jump, spin and do a figure eight. "Now you try it," Skates urged. Twist slowly glided to the middle of the pond and carefully jumped once, twice, then spun around. "Perfect!" Skates clapped. Twist took her position to perform a figure eight. She took one step forward, then another and another so that by the time she was finished, the skate marks left on the ice looked like a PRETZEL! The two friends laughed and laughed at the funny design until Skates said, "Tomorrow we'll show the other ponies how to put a little "twist" in their skating."

I'm thinking this was an early name for Speedy, or perhaps an unreleased ice-skating themed pony? I thought this was a little weird and wondered if anyone else noticed this!

[Ponyfan]

That's really interesting.  I've never noticed it before but I never had SS Twist in my childhood ponies.  I think you're right that Skates may be an earlier name for Speedy and might have been her name around the same time that SS Hoppity Hop's prototype was a unicorn.


Ponyfan 

[JanuaryJoy]

I'm thinking this was an early name for Speedy, or perhaps an unreleased ice-skating themed pony? I thought this was a little weird and wondered if anyone else noticed this!

Your hypothesis seems to add up. The first sets of Twinkle-Eyed Ponies and So-Soft ponies, where Speedy and Twist were introduced, are both Year 4. I can't find another pony from 1985-1986 that could've been realistically named Skates. What an interesting observation, I've never heard about this myself!

These circumstances remind me of how G1 Sprinkles was obviously supposed to be blue, but she seemingly changed to pink last minute before they could edit the playset's box... I really wish she was blue...
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Image sourced from My Little Wiki page.

[Snapdragon]

Oh wow, Skates would have been a super cute pony! I bet it was hard to trademark the name, though! "Skates" is pretty generic.

[Taffeta]

It's like the original names for Ice Crystal and Tornado are Frosty and Storm. One of which appears on a 1987 parlour tag. But I bet they were hard to trademark too.

I have Twist MOC but I never noticed that. Off to check my photos...

Yup, there it is O.o. How I missed that I don't know. Nice catch <3.

Spoiler

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[Ponyfan]

I'm thinking this was an early name for Speedy, or perhaps an unreleased ice-skating themed pony? I thought this was a little weird and wondered if anyone else noticed this!

Your hypothesis seems to add up. The first sets of Twinkle-Eyed Ponies and So-Soft ponies, where Speedy and Twist were introduced, are both Year 4. I can't find another pony from 1985-1986 that could've been realistically named Skates. What an interesting observation, I've never heard about this myself!

These circumstances remind me of how G1 Sprinkles was obviously supposed to be blue, but she seemingly changed to pink last minute before they could edit the playset's box... I really wish she was blue...
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Image sourced from My Little Wiki page.

She's blue in the US advertisement also.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuWQQTPtiUo

One reason I love the advertisements  is that they're full of prototype ponies that we modified for final production.

I didn't thin about the trademark side of things but I agree a name like Skates would probably be hard to trademark. 

Ponyfan

[Carrehz]

Aww, Skates is cute! I like it better than "Speedy", actually. I love stuff like this :>

[Taffeta]

So I looked at the story again and for a moment thought Skates might not be a pony - until the end, where it mentions 'other ponies' - which kind of implies Skates is meant to be a pony. Reading the story, it doesn't sound like Speedy, though. So that's a bit curious - maybe it is an unreleased pony concept after all!

Does someone have Speedy's US story for comparison? She was always and exclusively rollerskate related here but I don't know about the US release?

It's quite common for non-pony characters to feature in backcard stories, and Skates 'clapping' made me wonder, but that comment at the end does suggest Skates is also equine.

There are sometimes examples of pony names appearing in UK released stories where that pony didn't actually get a UK release (Ribbon, I think also one of the 2nd set Princesses) or only had one through imports (Lemon Treats). But those ponies at least existed...?

[Ponyfan]

Here's Speedy's US story from My Little Wiki


The ponies decided to spend a rainy afternoon exploring the attic of the Paradise Estate. As they dug through the boxes, Speedy discovered a pair of blue roller skates with a note attached that HANDLE WITH CARE. "What could be so special about an old pair of Skates?" she wondered. As soon as the rain stopped, Speedy and the other ponies raced outdoors to try out the skates. Carefully, she stepped into the skates when, suddenly, she was speeding along the ground, faster than a rocket! She zoomed up a hill and into the air, whooshing through a surprised cloud, before floating down to where Bouncy stood, laughing with delight. "What a ride," Speedy exclaimed. Then she asked with a big smile, "Who's next?"


Ponyfan

[Carrehz]

and Skates 'clapping' made me wonder

I don't remember which it was, but one of the newborn twin backcards mentions mittens for the ponies' "hands", so it wouldn't be the first time the backcards forgot they were dealing with hooved animals

[tailrustedtealeaf]

My first instinct was that it was a nonpony magical human like I see from the UK comics with fairies, but this was Stateside and Skates is a very pony name.
Reminds me a bit of "Queen Seahorse" from Wave Runners story, it would be neat to see how many backcards refer to entities and those in other sets.

[lovesbabysquirmy]

and Skates 'clapping' made me wonder

I don't remember which it was, but one of the newborn twin backcards mentions mittens for the ponies' "hands", so it wouldn't be the first time the backcards forgot they were dealing with hooved animals

I am going with this theory.

[Taffeta]

I guess there's no reason why a story can't refer to a pony that was never made. The TV show involved characters like the ancestor of Mimic and Knightshade, so...?

Good point on the clapping. I think Twist's story also mentioned mittens.

Like TRTL my instinct was that it might be one of the many non-pony characters that exist in ponyland lore but these are more common in UK stories/comics. That said, some of those stories are the same in the US, so that's also a possibility.

[Lilja]

The point of having different ponies interact with each other in the backcard stories was to advertise those other ponies to kids. It's extremely unlikely Hasbro would put in a "backcard story only" pony when they had 100+ actual toy ponies they could feature instead.

I'm 99% sure Skates is an early name for Speedy, or maybe even just a placeholder name. Her symbol is a pair of skates, so I find it unlikely there'd be another pony in the same set with that name. It seems likely they'd make sure to update Speedy's own backcard story, but forget to do it in another pony's story where she's mentioned (especially when there were so many characters to keep track of at this point).

The year 4 So Soft and Twinkle Eye sets are a bit special, since it was the only time Hasbro added more characters to a set in the middle of a release year and updated the backcard art for it. They might've been rushed out quickly to meet demand, which would explain all these errors, like how 4/6 of the new So Softs don't match up exactly to their toys on the edited backcard art.

It's always interesting to get an insight into the creation process behind MLP like this. Some have also speculated Bangles might've been a pegasus at some point in development since her backcard mentions her flying. Although I'm not so sure that would necessarily be the case.

[Taffeta]

Hrm. I mean, the Speedy argument makes the most sense, but the ice skates...not so much. UNLESS what happened was that someone in Hasbro's story department knew there was a skating related pony in the works, but not what kind of skates. Maybe Speedy was originally going to be ice skating themed, and then they thought, no, let's go with rollerskates and so it got changed and the story team never got to know about it. That seems the most plausible suggestion.

I'm not so much with the idea that the mid-season update matters all that much. We see a ton of production changes/errors/whatever going on throughout release years when you see sets transferring from one locality to another. Names change multiple times - sometimes during production as well as before, which we see with the Sundae Best. We see ponies changing species, like the Dance & Prance pegasus ponies did between advertising and release. And technically all sets that had updates or amendments had them with updated and amended artwork as well. Years are not set in stone...they tend to overlap anyway.

It seems more likely that it was just an error in communication whereby someone was told the basic concept of a pony coming out and that concept happened to be different.

Although the idea that a not-real pony should not appear in a backcard story is kind of null and void when you consider "Bobby" (Sweet Kisses Ponies' card), the existence of Ace, Lancer and Teddy who had massive promotion through various media, Lady Lessons and Miss Hackney - not to mention the wide cast of other non-released characters from MLP Tales when it would have been better to use more of the released lines from those years. And the nameless "mother" ponies that appear on the card stories of certain newborn twins as well. Add to that the entire cast of non-pony invented characters that do appear on backcard stories and it's not so farfetched to imagine a nonexistent pony could be included in a backcard story.

So while it may be Speedy, or it could be a concept pony that was wiped, it could just as easily be made up to fit the cute pretzel skating story the writers wanted to use to promote Twist.