The G1 ponies, as popular toys of the age, were a part of 80s and early 90s culture. The toys existing now are all there is, there will be no more original ponies. Every baity pony that is thrown away is one less toy that can never be replaced. Because of this, even the non-minty ponies have value, as pieces of toy history. Nothing lasts forever, in time the plastic of even the best preserved ponies will begin to break down. But preserving the old toys in the hands of collectors for as long as they can last is in my opinion a worthy effort.

I have some Bayalas and some archers/crossbowmen from their knights line (don't remember what the medieval toyline was called, haven't seen them in ages so I guess they no longer make them).

I especially love the old shadow elves. They look like vampiric fairies. Wish they'd make more of them, though I understand that when making toys you have to aim to make stuff that the kids want, not what the adult collectors want. And I suppose the more bright and colourful elves must be more popular among kids.

Finland had dragons. I vividly remember getting Serena as a gift on my 5th birthday. I still have the green little dragon that came with her.

I collect a set of mini dinosaurs that came as surprise toys in easter eggs (though I've seen these sold as regular toys elsewhere too). These figures come in certain variety of colours, with the rubber basis being one colour and having a little bit of different colour paint on it (with one exception, sometimes they came full green with no layer of paint).

One of the colour variants isn't to my liking, the one where there's yellow/light green painted over green. I think it looks like someone poured melted butter on the poor dino. So I would like to remove the yellow paint and just make them full green.

Since there might be toy collectors here who do a bit of customizing, I would like to ask for advise on how to remove the paint without damaging the rubber. The rubber is relatively soft, you can bend the dinosaurs' limbs and tails (and flap the wings of the pterodactyls) but it's still pretty stiff and not squishy.

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I don't quite get the appeal of animal toys that are purely decorative. By that I mean, they are in a pose that limits how you can play with it. A horse that's laying down can't run, a cat that's curled up and sleeping can't do anything else but sleep. As a kid I even disliked toys that had their head turned sideways which made it look awkward if I tried to have that toy talk to another toy and it wouldn't look at who it was talking to. I get that some figures are meant to be for display only and not for playing, but to me, that's what differentiates toys from stuff like porceline figures - toys are meant to be played with and a toy desings that limit this is in my opinion badly designed.

Now that I'm an adult toy collector, play functionality isn't that important anymore. I certainly own some sitting/laying down/sleeping figures. But I still very much prefer figures that are standing and looking forward, as boring as that "basic pose" is in the eyes of many toy collectors.

Could it be Shadow from Golden Girl and  The Guardians of the Gemstone? Shadow's a black horse in about that pose, with pink mane and hooves, and a jewel on its forehead.

I've had a few brokentailed catwalk kitties, one was fixed by previous owner, one I tried fixing myself and one couldn't be repaired. My experience is limited, but here's what I learned.

I had a kitty, whose tailwire was broken in half, so I took off the fur that covers the wire. The tailwire is attached to the doll by a...   umm, not sure what would be the correct word...  let's call it tailbase. It's a little nub that rotates and has a hole in it, and the wire is tied to that hole. This "tailbase" is very fragile and if it gets pulled off, I don't think it can be attached back. I have one tailless cat that had just this happen to her. The wire can easily be replaced by just fitting a new one to the tailbase's hole.

I think you could try to remove the furcover (it's like a sock fitted over the wire) to wash it separately. To do this, you'll have to open some of its seam near the tailbase to make it loose. Some dolls have very loose furcovers on their tails, some a bit tighter. Be very gentle when removing the cover and when sewing it back on, because you have to work around the most fragile part, the tailbase. The furcover might not fit as neatly over the tailbase as it used to fresh from the factory but I think it's close enough.