Mail Order Majesty Discolors Less?

[JanuaryJoy]

Yesterday, I was reading my copy of Summer Haye's G1 Collector's Inventory book. I read to the mail order section, which documents every pony obtainable through horseshoe points and cash. This includes Majesty's mail order offer, of course. I didn't think there were differences in her two versions, but I was wrong! According to the book, if your Majesty's hairline (mane plugs) start roughly between the ears, she's from a playset. If the plugs practically touch her horn, she's from a mail order. I realized mine was the mail order version, which is cool!

Spoiler

This is the version of Majesty packaged with the Dream Castle playset,
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Image sourced from a sold online listing.

And this Majesty, my own pictured, was from a special mail order offer.
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I bought my Majesty two years ago because there's no discoloration between her head and body, pretty rare to see. I started to wonder, is the mail order version manufactured differently and less prone to head-body mismatch than her playset counterpart? I searched eBay and online images, and nearly every single playset Majesty had moderate to severe discoloration, while ones that appeared to be from mail orders had little to no mismatch! I mean, even Summer Haye's example of playset Majesty from thirteen years ago seems to of had a slightly yellowed head.

What's happening here? Are my observations accurate? If you have Majesty, cast a vote or leave a comment, and maybe we'll learn whether or not the mail order version truly ages better.

[tailrustedtealeaf]

My Majesty is supposedly mail order. She has some areas of discoloration and yellowing but it's not uniform on the head and her body and head are both equally affected.
The problem that I see isn't head/body mismatch so much as brown spots and just general poor shape.

[LadyAmalthea]

I wasn't able to take the poll because I'm not the original owner of either of the 2 Majestys I have, so I can't be 100% sure of their origin, but they are likely both playset ones due to the fact that they have very thin manes with sparsely spaced plugs, very unlike the lush, thickly-plugged mane in your second photo. They are packed up, so I can't check where the hairline starts. Both ponies had head/body mismatch when I acquired them, but I was able to sunfade the heads to match the bodies and they look better now.

[Taffeta]

My childhood majesty...least said the better. There's a reason she was cast as the senile and slightly crazy queen in our pony kingdom.

I have another Majesty. I wish I could remember where she came from exactly. She doesn't have discolouration or rooting problems re her hair...

I think she came from here, which would rule out the MO - unless Hasbro used DC here as a dumping ground for the MO Majesty doubles like it seems to have done with Baby Half Note (<---unsubstantiated theory at this point).

[JanuaryJoy]

My Majesty is supposedly mail order. She has some areas of discoloration and yellowing but it's not uniform on the head and her body and head are both equally affected.
The problem that I see isn't head/body mismatch so much as brown spots and just general poor shape.

Yeah, I don't think those aliments are the same as head-body mismatch. Any pony can get age spots, usually caused by being stored somewhere without temperature control for years, I believe. Yours was probably not looked after, and naturally fell into poor shape. But it's interesting there's still no mismatch alongside her other discolorations!

[applejackbunny]

Just checked mine and she's a Mail Order! Woohoo! And yes, she is pretty uniformly white 

[Breyer600]

I'd be very careful of determining whether a Majesty came from MO versus the playset strictly on the hairline.  While the ones with their hair starting far back between the ears are almost certainly all playset versions you can't say the same for the ones with better hair and hairlines being exclusively mail order.  Here is my playset Majesty (childhood pony so 100% certain she came with the playset) - lovely hair that starts well in front of the ears though not all the way to the horn and pretty much evenly white.

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[JanuaryJoy]

...While the ones with their hair starting far back between the ears are almost certainly all playset versions you can't say the same for the ones with better hair and hairlines being exclusively mail order.  Here is my playset Majesty (childhood pony so 100% certain she came with the playset) - lovely hair that starts well in front of the ears though not all the way to the horn and pretty much evenly white.

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I did want to find out if a thirteen-year-old book was really correct on identifying a mail order Majesty. Your info is interesting.

I wonder if Majesty's quality improved in later waves of the Dream Castle, maybe after the mail order variant was produced? I think playsets were made longer than individual ponies, but you'd know better than me. It's possible early playset Majesty had head-body mismatch, Hasbro fixed her, offered mail order Majesty as an improvement, and decided to put their better Majesty in final Dream Castle waves.

However, I don't know when mail order Majesty happened. It's after 1986; that's the only hint Summer Haye's book gives. My Little Wiki just excludes her from mention altogether...

[Breyer600]

I got my Dream Castle in December of 1984 (found a photo labeled with the date that showed me with the box).   So, if the poorer quality ones were produced first, they were fixed pretty early on well before the mail order version came out.  I'm not sure when Majesty was first available via mail order, but the earliest pamphlet I could find mentioning her is from 1988. 

[Taffeta]

I am also wary of generalising MO ponies/playset ponies by how they look. It's really hard to prove definitively with a pony that's loose and second hand what their origin is (Sprinkles is the only exception) if they also had a store release. And some store ponies also had unexpected releases via mail order in some places as well. I think this is down to batch and maybe timing more than anything else.

On the subject of the book - I love Summer, I think she's awesome, but the issue with putting pony ID info in a book is that it becomes out of date almost as soon as it's gone into print. There are points at which in the past people become convinced they've sold x mystery or closed y case, only for something to spring up later to disprove it.

I am not generally a fan of books for this reason. They're great as a basic guide to the toy, but you have to treat them with care for the tiny details. (For example,  I've seen so many people at UK ponycon using books to work out what accessories they need - despite the fact that the books only list US accessories for ponies sold globally, and that doesn't necessarily match up with what you find second hand in the UK).

Although there are gaps and errors on all the mainstream ID websites, at least for some of those there is the hope of corrections and updates. Sites like the Wiki are still being edited and that's a good thing. You can't do that so easily with a book.

This is also the reason why it's not a great idea to rely on dead ID sites like Strawberry Reef - ones where the owner has left and no longer updates. Like with a book, when information is corrected or something new is discovered, those sources get left behind.

On the subject of batches, you can see a similar situation with Starshine - in that you tend to get one release that discolours really easily and one which doesn't. It may be related to the Majesty question.

Edit: So I found the pics of my Majestys - one is not so great as it's in the playset, but still...

My nice one:visitors can't see pics , please register or login

I can't remember where she came from, I kept her as an upgrade. I have a feeling it might have been a lot of ponies from a local market here, as they were all in mint condition, but I am not sure. She may have come from elsewhere.

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My childhood one, on the throne. She's a little yellow >.>. Her hair is also not great in its rooting. She's the senile queen of my childhood games I got her in February 1986? That's her castle and as many of the accessories as I could find - I based the layout on the UK box photo.

Then there's this one, which is actually my sister's pony.
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You haven't mentioned her at all, so I assume Summer doesn't either - but she's made in China. She is yellowed and has some rusting around her symbol. But she's not in great shape - sister found her at the local carboot sale. Apparently some later DCs in Europe had Majesty made in China.

That possibly matters because of timeline, she could be as late as 1987-8.

[Leikin]

I'd be very careful of determining whether a Majesty came from MO versus the playset strictly on the hairline. 

Agree, my childhood one from the playset (in Sweden) has her hairline down almost to her horn. I dont remember when I got her, but I do have a box for the dreamcastle (not the one from my childhood though) that is swedish sold, and is marked UK 1985 (pony made in HK). I'm not sure if all boxes are marked with the same date regardless of when they where released though, or if they updated the years when they made any changes.

[Taffeta]

I am not sure if the date would be changed, but the style of font and rainbow does change between 1987 and 1988. It's most obvious on Baby Cuddles' box and Kiss Curl's vs the Peachy parlour - but the Y is especially obvious.

Though it's just as likely that the ones sold in Sweden were the same as the ones over here in the UK, if the boxes were marked UK. Did they have Bow Tie, Windy, Posey etc on the box??

Baby Cuddles' box also lies sometimes, mind you, and claims things are made in Spain when they aren't...so it can be hard to tell from the package...