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

[Taffeta]

Speedy's story was already posted earlier in the thread, with the capitalisation. I had assumed you guys were already basing your assumption on that...I guess not? Not that it matters since we won't know for sure unless more information surfaces...

So Majesty was a much more important character in the UK comic, so was Spike, DC was probably still around in some of the stories as well. We didn't really have PE in stories beyond one or two around the time it was 'discovered' and then featured in a handful of issues. The core of Ponyland was around DC so it's not weird for them to be included on a UK card IMO. Dream Valley, however...yeah. I would also associate that name more with the cartoon than the comic, so that *is* an interesting insert.

On the substitution of name in the German version - that may be because of a different release timeline...

I don't have the German insert with the romance ponies on, but I know that the dutch/french insert has the Playschool babies on it, when they were no longer available at the same time as the romances here in the UK. It would make sense to change the story to promote whatever was out at the same time.

Although with that said, the Rainbow babies have stories relating to Rainbow Mountain and the Rainbow Curl ponies on occasion, and they were from a previous year, so maybe it's just Hasbro Germany being more efficient.

TBH I find that more interesting than the capitalised skates

[Leave a Whisper]

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!

I kinda assumed that her skates were magical and could talk when I first read her backstory.  Never woulda thought of it being a pony.

[Lilja]

Speedy's story was already posted earlier in the thread, with the capitalisation. I had assumed you guys were already basing your assumption on that...I guess not?

I can't speak for anyone else, but I didn't notice it right away and it doesn't seem like a thing most people would. While there's no direct evidence that Skates refers to Speedy, it'd be a big coincidence if it didn't considering she's a pony from the exact same timeframe and her symbol is a literal pair of skates (and considering how nearly all of the newly added ponies on this backcard differ from their final produced toys in some way, which is also very unusual). Likewise it'd be a big coincidence that the word skates just happened to be incorrectly capitalized in Speedy's own story.

TBH I find that more interesting than the capitalised skates

I actually do find it interesting, since it possibly gives some insight into how these things are put together. This is all speculative of course, but it makes sense to me that the story was first written with Skates being the name for the pony. Then someone proofread it and thought "oops, forgot to capitalize the pony's name here", without reading the sentence too carefully and not realizing it was about a pair of actual skates. Then finally the name Skates was replaced by Speedy, but the capitalization error still slipped by. (And no, I'm not saying this is definitely what happened, it's my personal speculation based on what we have)