Question: Factory Curls

[kabent]

hi everyone! i haven't been collecting long, but i've been curious about this since i started and i thought some people here might have some insights.

essentially, i'm wondering what ponies with fresh "factory curls" look like, straight out of the box/card.

all of the ponies i've seen advertised as having factory curls have had loose, untamed, and incredibly frizzy manes & tails. i think the curls themselves are really beautiful, but i find it hard to imagine what they were actually intended to look like way back in the day!

i have a few ponies whose curls i would love to restore, but i've noticed that most curl tutorials are for achieving neat, tight ringlets. is this close to what curly ponies originally had, or is it just the preferred style? it's hard for me to tell what style they have going on in the MOC/MIB pictures i've seen, but to me the manes kind of look like one big poofy curl that loosens and separates over time?!

does anyone have photos or recollections of what brand new curly pony manes/tails look like? and is there a method of replicating the style?

i apologize if this has been answered somewhere, or if i've worded things unclearly. this has been bugging me for a while, and google hasn't been helpful, so thanks in advance! :^)

[LadyMoondancer]

The originals definitely didn't have tight curls, except special cases like the Candy Cane ponies where that was their gimmick.

In most cases the original curls were like . . . a gentle wave in the mane that sort of curled loosely.  It gave a "big hair" look which makes sense because it was the 80s, baby!

This MGR Sparkler from eBay looks to have original curls, with her tail in particular looking exactly like a curly-haired pony's would have looked like brand new.  (Except a bit messier.)

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[BlackCurtains]

I have a Raincurl army

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The one MOC, obviously, has curls that haven't been messed with. The one in the middle of the loose ones also has factory curls. They're looser and messier but still curly. The others have been rehaired by me and I did straw curls on them.

[kabent]

The originals definitely didn't have tight curls, except special cases like the Candy Cane ponies where that was their gimmick.

In most cases the original curls were like . . . a gentle wave in the mane that sort of curled loosely.  It gave a "big hair" look which makes sense because it was the 80s, baby!

This MGR Sparkler from eBay looks to have original curls, with her tail in particular looking exactly like a curly-haired pony's would have looked like brand new.  (Except a bit messier.)

wow, thank you so much for sharing, this explains quite a lot! the loose curls are SO lovely, i love the variation in size & the way they lay. i've only gotten kind of close to these types of curls by using velcro rollers; hopefully i can find a reliable way to more closely replicate the style! :^) i love your Tumblr blog, btw!!

I have a Raincurl army


The one MOC, obviously, has curls that haven't been messed with. The one in the middle of the loose ones also has factory curls. They're looser and messier but still curly. The others have been rehaired by me and I did straw curls on them.

omg i love all of them! it's actually super helpful to see the progression of how the curls transform over time, and how they compare to restored curls i'm awful at straw curls, haha. but they look so cute!! thank you for sharing! <3

[Artemesia's Garden]

@BlackCurtains Wow! That's such a brilliant army. They are gorgeous.

My preferred way is to gently wet the curls with cool water. I use hair shampoo if the hair needs a wash and rinse. The curl will be changed by excessive brushing or heat. So I then comb conditioner through it to detangle gently, then rinse again with cool water. Then I put the pony on it's side on a towel and re-style the curls with my fingers. I take sections and try to spiral the hair around my fingers by finding the way it 'wants' to go. Then I iether leave it coiled up or wrap it around a perming curler which is about the thickness of my finger. I then leave it all to dry. When dry you can tease it with your fingers to style it, or comb it and style with your fingers. If it seems dry you can use a little mineral (baby) oil. If the hair is still too frizzy you may need to straighten it with hot water and condition or a straightening iron before re-doing the factory curls from scratch using the method above, but I think you'd need to be pretty sure of what you are doing to make it look authentic. As Black Curtains said the best way to see the styling is to look for MOC (mint on card) ponies in an image search. Hope that helps.

[goddessofpeep]

I was once washing a massive pile of ponies.  I’m talking hundreds of them(10+ years of unprocessed extras), and I pulled a Sugarberry out of my bait bin. I was going to give her a quick wash just to make her less disgusting(she was “I don’t want to touch that” dirty, and her hair was really matted).  She ended up cleaning up shockingly well, and her matted hair combed right out with no breakage.

I was trying to power through those ponies, so I didn’t have time to really mess around with curls.   So I just scrunched up her hair a little bit and let her dry - no curlers, no excessive styling, just 10 seconds of scrunching her wet hair to lay against her neck and back, and leaving her to dry.  She ended up with curls that looked almost factory fresh.   They do suggest doing basically what I did on some backcards.  Apparently it works! 

[LadyMoondancer]

I was going through my old pony pics and found this Birthflower pony who has original curls.  I wish I'd taken pics of her tail too!
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Oh, also . . . the flutter ponies had a different curl in their hair.  Their hair is quite long, right?  Well, it was curled in one long (but wide) tube.

@goddessofpeep   I love the scrunching method, it can work miracles. <3  Especially in conjunction with very hot (but slow moving) water.  The hair remembers how it used to lay and goes back to it.

[pixidance]

I have a few babies that still have their factory curl.  I’m the first owner and never brushed their hair after removing them from their cards.

Most ponies had one big sausage curl in their main and the tail was usually in a spiral and wrapped around their leg on the card.

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I have quite a few more kicking around, but this one was handy for a photo shoot

ETA:  Well, it appears that my ability to add photos is not working.  I’ll have to go do a bit of research  and figure out why it’s not working for me.  Sorry y’all

ETA:  Got it worked out