Please do not be offended if you don't get a willing response.
I've heard a lot of hurt feelings are rising that you have begun to use work gathered over many years without credit given and it's all for you/your sites benefit.

I sincerely apologize.  It was never my intention to use anyone's pictures without crediting them or to take credit for someone else's work.  The website was only ever created to benefit other collectors.  I purposely do not have any ads nor have I ever received any compensation for the years spent on the site or the yearly website fees so I'm not sure how people would think it is all for my benefit?

My only hope was to correct any pictures that I have used without permission or to credit the person.  I am completely willing to take down any pictures or content someone is not ok with me using and I really hope someone will contact me if that is the case since that was the main point of my post.  A lot of my notes of where images came from and what permissions were given have been lost over the years.  I have been trying to maintain a spreadsheet to make sure people are credited.

If you know specific people that were hurt by this, I would ask that you please message me so I can try to make amends or determine which pictures were used without permission so I can take them down.  It breaks my heart to think that I have offended anyone when my intention was trying to help the community.

Hi! 

PERMISSIONS
I am trying to cleanup the G1 section of www.strawberryreef.com and I want to make sure that I have given credit for any images used.  If you notice I have used one or more of your pictures and you are not credited in the contributors page here... https://www.strawberryreef.com/contributors.html please let me know asap and I will either credit you or remove it if you would not like it to be used.  I know in my research days, I often would save off pictures but forget to note where they came from and I definitely want to credit anyone that is willing to contribute their pictures.  Images also will state the owner when hovered over them.  If you notice yours doesn't or has an incorrect owner, please let me know.  Everything has been manually inputted and that unfortunately leaves room for mistakes

IMAGE DONATIONS
In addition, if you notice that an image is needed or if you believe you have a better quality image of a pony I have on the site, I would love any picture donations.  Pictures in focus with hair not covering the symbols and with plain white background are preferred.  Please email pics to [email protected]

Images used and needed can be found in each section here... https://www.strawberryreef.com/Index/G1/G1index.html

I appreciate your consideration and all your help to make this a great resource for all pony lovers.

I just want to chime in and say that I have always loved the 'by colour' sections and I hope you will keep them. When I was a newbie collector it was incredibly useful to be able to search by body colour! Yes, other websites might have more detail about release patterns and whatnot, but yours was my first stop to find out the pony's actual name. I'm now pretty good at G1 ID but I still use your site when I find G3s in the wild.

Thank you!  I’m so glad to know that it’s helpful and will definitely leave the By Color Index.

Quote from: StrawberryReef on April 12, 2021, 12:04:20 PM

Thank you pkw for your insight as well.  I guess I am still a bit confused on what exactly is considered a "nirvana"?  Is it anything not manufactured in Hong Kong or china or is it just ponies that were considered "limited release"? or does it include variants? By the way... going off the deep end is my specialty.. have you seen the G3 section? lol

You should concentrate on your strongest point, which is the G3 ponies your site has always been my go to for G3 information It is your area of knowledge  I feel about G3 ponies the way you feel about nirvana

Hopefully this can help answer your question

Everything you need to know is here:

https://pinkkittywinks.wixsite.com/mlparenagallery

and

http://mlparena.com/index.php/topic,399499.0.html

Thank you. This helps a lot. I think for now I may just leave up the G1 ID by Color and remove the By Country section since there seems to be a lot of errors there.  I definitely don’t want to put out false information.  I will likely leave up the US section since I’m pretty sure that is accurate. After much more study I will consider adding the other countries back but you are right, the Nirvana and non-us releases are definitely not my strong suit.

This is the thing about your site that I like and why I still visit. It's just so easy to scroll through. So my idea is to keep the colour section as a user index that you can then link through to a kind of info card with more detail.  I love the UK Fact File so this is the style I am picturing. However, if some have multiple releases with minor differences  then you could list them separately in the info card. So having clicked according to colour someone can then choose to look in more detail.

The info card would be produced from the entries stored in a back-end database which would work as a backbone for collecting the info and would eventually make the site work well as a whole.

Thank you for your comments Artie!  I think I get what you are saying about an info card.  I have something similar to it for the G3 side... Here is an example https://www.strawberryreef.com/Index/Name/pinkiepie.html  It has the ability to switch between poses below the pony and also a menu bar on the right to search for all other ponies with similar characteristics.  Also within each pose page I have a list of all the release information.  I could do something similar with say G1 Applejack and switch between variations/countries underneath and a similar menu bar with characteristics and possibly add hoof markings or country there.

Is this kind of what you are looking for?

This will take a while but ultimately what I was hoping to achieve for all generations.  I need to study more PHP code so I can create a database that will automatically populate these pages.  I am currently having to hard code each page which as you can imagine takes a very long time.  I already have a database of info I refer to and add to but it will take a little bit for me to get the coding down to figure out how to access and cross reference all the data correctly.

What is the UK Fact File?  Do you have a link?

3. What do you feel is the best way to "group" the ponies if aside from color and country release? By Year?  By Hoof markings?

Year = NO WAY, we have very little if any concrete information on the dates/years in which the nirvana ponies were released.

Hoof markings = not a good idea either, since quite a few Nirvana countries didn't put a "made in" stamp under the ponies hooves, it makes is confusing.

4. Is there a list of ponies that were only manufactured/released in *one* country making them a country exclusive?  Or were they all released in multiple countries in a specific region?

I am unsure, quite a few "Nirvana" countries manufactured ponies for export, for example Italy manufactured and exported ponies all over Europe.

5.  What makes a pony Venezuelan or Brazilian or Greek?  Is it the hoof markings or the manufacturer or where it was released?

It is the country of manufacture, but there are grey areas.

Please see the Nirvana Gallery: https://pinkkittywinks.wixsite.com/mlparenagallery

6.  If there are collectors that only like the features of Italian or Greek ponies, what is the best way to group them if at all?  Or is there not really an "Italian" pony?

Yes, some collectors will only collect ponies made in, say, Greece. 

7.  What should be considered "Euro or International Exclusive" if any?

Best ask Taffeta that!


Since I have spent MANY years collecting information and images for the Nirvana Gallery and I am a nirvana collector, I might say that trying to build a site that encompasses nirvana ponies is going off the deep end, especially since you do not collect them.

I have beaten my brains out over some nirvana stuff and there is stuff I STILL don't understand or can confirm and I have been doing this since 2003.

Love pkw xxx

Thank you pkw for your insight as well.  I guess I am still a bit confused on what exactly is considered a "nirvana"?  Is it anything not manufactured in Hong kong or china or is it just ponies that were considered "limited release"? or does it include variants? By the way... going off the deep end is my specialty.. have you seen the G3 section? lol

1. Does the ID by pony color help this issue? It is not country specific. https://www.strawberryreef.com/Index/G1/G1index.html[/b]
I think it's useful. I try and think about people coming in with no knowledge. Being able to click a pink section and get a pink pony identiparade is helpful in my opinion. The only problem you have are the ponies people don't agree on in terms of colour (is x pony blue/green/aqua)? But if you had a link on the bottom of each page saying, if you don't see that pony here, try also...then that would work. You can't cover everything, but it's one possibility.

I have considered this so usually I duplicate those ponies on the different pages.  So like Baby Starflower should be on both the pink and orange page.  I need to go back and double check that I have done this with all ponies that could be considered different colors.

3. What do you feel is the best way to "group" the ponies if aside from color and country release? By Year?  By Hoof markings?[/b]
Nirvana as PKW has said is somewhat different in this context. I feel like for ponies in the mainstream - for which I include some ponies not sold in the US - year can be helpful. Again, it depends how you want to achieve things. There's a difference between "year 5" in the DV context of what that meant, and 1987. In the UK, as far as I know based on the list Hasbro sent me in 1995, the 'years' are done by calendar year. In the US that's not necessarily the same. And then you have different other markets where that can change again.

I wouldn't want to see ponies stuffed into the US "year" system, because that generally leads to errors. The US year system is not flexible enough to cope with international releases as well, and this idea of adding year 11 and year 12 to cover the years ponies weren't sold in the US kind of demonstrates that most strongly.

But calendar years for mainstream ponies can work.

I personally intend to revise my site based roughly on calendar year. I did begin this but got sidelined by lockdown so I can't really show you what I mean - but I also don't include Nirvana especially on my site.

I suppose at the very least I'd want to eradicate the US concept of 'years' without alienating the US collectors who rely on it. I'd want to see something more inclusive :/

4. Is there a list of ponies that were only manufactured/released in *one* country making them a country exclusive?  Or were they all released in multiple countries in a specific region?

This is a genuine rabbithole. It would take more than one post to really answer properly.

In the shortest possible response, most pony releases in the mainstream overlap somewhere. I am excluding what we consider 'Nirvana' - but that's also a blurred definition as some Nirvana ponies are part of that mainstream in other countries, especially in Western Europe.

In essence, there are no ponies which can be called US exclusives, thus none which should be called US ponies. Beyond that, it depends on how specific you want to go. Doing it by country would be hard - we don't have evidence for everything in every country anyway, as far as I know. But there isn't the same release across all of Western Europe, for example, in the 1980s. In the later years there's more cohesion but it's not exact - I have some versions of the same insert in different languages, and it shows where sets are missing in a particular country.

In the earlier years it's a hot mess. Especially in 1986.


7.  What should be considered "Euro or International Exclusive" if any?

In its basest form, a pony sold in Europe and not in other parts of the world is 'European'. I often differentiate Europe and UK because I know there are some significant differences between here and the continent, but there are variations on the continent as well - for example, Italy had Mimic, but I'm not sure any other European country did. There's also the anomaly of South Africa, which had a very similar release in places to some of the Scandinavian countries - and obviously they can't be included in 'European'.

A pony can also be sold in the UK and some of mainland Europe. Not necessarily always the same parts. The UK is technically Europe, so calling a pony European does include the UK.

International is a kind of outdated term really. It comes from a time when it was assumed there were two kinds of release, US and overseas. And that's not the reality, so breeds these misconceptions. 70% of my childhood collection is made up of ponies I bought here, which coincidentally were also sold in the US. I find it disconcerting when people call them US ponies. I've never been to the US, and neither have they :/

This is also the problem with terms like NSS and NBBE, which basically indicate that a set sold in another country is a non-version of a set sold in the US. I used those terms in the past, but now we know the actual set names, I try and discourage their use. They reinforce that idea that US ponies are somehow the only mainstream - which again breeds errors. I think I mentioned the Wiki timeline - where they try hard to force ponies into years that correspond with the US release because of that assumption that everything has to tie to the US release - and so get it wrong. That's what you need to avoid, more than being really strict on regions.

Very few ponies that are called 'UK' ponies actually are only sold in the UK. Even ones like Gypsy who don't have a mainstream European release did turn up in places like Israel and Hungary. This is kind of why I say the regional approach is a lot of work.
In terms of website access, you probably want to note that on the page featuring the pony, but not separate the pony from the rest of the range.

I've used the word 'mainstream' above. Mainstream is anything not Nirvana. In essence, the store ponies not sold in the US are mainstream. They're just not mainstream in the US. And likewise, although I live in the UK, I consider ponies sold in regular releases in the US to be mainstream, even if the UK didn't get them.

There are as I said some nuanced variations - you have some of these, like Rosette, Sweet Clover, on your site. There are some others, like Speedy.

So would it make more sense to just have two sections...  US/Euro or Mainstream Releases and Limited Releases?  Then would the Limited Release include Nirvana?


[/quote]

8.  How would YOU like to see G1s grouped together?[/b]

Honestly, Nirvana aside, by year and then by set name. Sometimes the same set has multiple names, like Precious Pocket/Pocket Friends, but that's easy to include on the same page. Ponies also have multiple names, but that's another thing easy to handle if you're interested to do it. I think the Wiki has all the alternative English names, and some in other languages depending how far you intend to go.

By including ponies by set rather than region, and making a note under the pony that it was only sold in some areas, it helps bring things together.

For example, if you had Twice as Fancy Ponies/Party Ponies, you could have both Milky Way versions on that same page. Both were actually available in the UK. One was available in the US and Canada. One was available in continental Europe. But everyone can find their version of Milky Way under the same set heading, irrespective of their location. And that means a kid growing up with Milky Way and Dancing Butterflies doesn't have to look in 2 places to find their childhood ponies, no matter where they bought them.

I would personally include them under 1987 although here they were more like 1988. But those kinds of nuances you can leave to geeks like me to worry about precisely. Many ponies had multiple years of release, so the year is not so important as the idea of keeping members of the same set together, including variations, and that should supersede regional categories in my personal opinion.

Nirvana is another matter, again, I defer to PKW entirely on that.

I will also say that grouping by hoof marking or pose or whatever is helpful in the same context as by colour, as a quick identification tool. Even if it isn't the year a pony was sold, if it can lead someone to the right information about that pony they have, it's something to consider. (Again, not necessarily with Nirvana).

I'd also avoid doing things like MLPMerch has. They've attempted to mingle stuff together, but G1 is complicated and if you don't have the depth of knowledge relating to it, it can kind of show if you try to do more than you're comfortable with. In essence, you have to be confident with the data your site puts out. Whatever system you use doesn't have to cover absolutely everything - it just needs to be accurate and accessible. There will always be other sites that cover some other aspects of MLP. I guess what I would really like from Strawberry Reef is that the data it does put out is correct and people can use it effectively.

Thank you for this info.  I will need to give the layout some thought and I think focus on a database that anyone can pull whatever data they are specifically looking for.  I thought about formatting it like this https://www.strawberryreef.com/Index/G1/sample.html so it will include the alternate names and release names and years.  It would also include hoof markings and specify "known releases" meaning it could possibly be found somewhere else as well and update as I learn more.

For now I will focus on removing any errors on the page and keep studying.  Thanks for all your help!

I think those could all be considered retro, or retro style (although I'm not familiar with Mashems).

Another set to maybe add would be the Loyal Subjects action figures, they are G1 characters in a kind of cutesy G1 style.

Thank you!  I had saved pics of those but didn't know what they were called.  I will add those to the list

And these are mashems...
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To be honest, I've been trying to reworkn my own site behind the scenes to make it more logical for everyone, with more attention to the different release dates and formats between places. I think the big issue is something like this.

Imagine as a kid in Europe you have the walking pose Twisty Tail and Pretty Vision in your childhood collection.

You want to ID them both. You bought them together.

But in order to find them, right now you have to know to go to the US section for Pretty Vision and the UK variant section for walking pose Twisty Tail.

Imagine that happening 20 times over and over as you go through your collection.

I get a lot of emails about ID from people in the UK who are confused. The thing is people on the Arena mostly have just learned to deal with the inconvenience of a US-centric system and know where to look for things, but if you don't know where to look, it's a bit of a problem to figure out.

The original pony sites were written for a US audience because that was the community. It's not the community any more, just a portion of it. Yet we're still dealing with the US-centric system rather than a more global system to make ID easy for everyone.

I've done a rudimentary list based on the pages you have up at the moment. I feel like warning you that to really go through and do the country releases, you're probably jumping down a rabbit hole you may never get out of. BUT I do think there are some fixes you can tackle easily on the existing site.

The problem is that most of the mainstream sites are built from other sites, rather than original research. And that's how mistakes perpetuate. It's hard to do an ID site from raw source material now, because a lot doesn't survive or is already in other collectors' hands. I think that's one reason people haven't attempted it, or have stuck to the US release as it's more effectively documented. But the reality is that there are no US exclusive ponies, and the various other country releases are more complex and don't fit into the US year timeline. When sites try and fit them into that timeline, you get messes like the timeline on the Wiki, which has frankly no idea when some ponies were sold or what set they belonged to.

Again, not helpful for people outside the US trying to ID their collections.

So yeah.

I'll email you the list anyway.

I'm going to make a separate G1 question regarding these concerns and hopefully we can brainstorm with others and come up with some solutions!  I got your email and will be studying it!   Here is the new thread... http://mlparena.com/index.php/topic,401141.0.html  Please give me your insight! <3


Post Merge: April 07, 2021, 06:28:46 PM

Strawb it's so good to see you!!! I love the G3 part of your site & use it regularly. I'm glad you're willing to sort things out with other areas as well xxx

so excited to have you back <3

Thank you both!  I'm so glad to be back

Do you mean the Cutie Mark Crew?
I consider it to be both. Most have eyes that are black beads with a single eyelash and were released post-reboot G4. There was a small lull, and then a few were released with G4.5 style eyes later on. I guess it's like a Ponyville situation where it bridges a gap. Unless I'm misremembering, there's only one set with the new eyes.

Yes Cutie Mark Crew! That shows you how out of date I am lol.

Thank you for the info. It helps!

Post Merge: April 07, 2021, 04:39:05 PM

I would agree with that. 

The old ones looked like this:

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The newer set looks like this:

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I think it's called Unicorn Party or something like that.  It's the only set I've found so far that has the new eyes anyway.

The only thing that's really changed on them is the eyes.  Otherwise the molds are the same. 

Very helpful!!  Thank you! 😊

I'll try and look it over soon and send you a proper list of stuff by email - the one that sticks in my mind is that white Tootsie was never sold in the UK, but I remember there are others.

The problem is that DV started the trend of badly presented international information, and since then sites have just recycled through the same mistakes without checking them back to the source material. There was a misplaced trust in DV to be correct that has had long term consequences in some cases - DV often overrode information from international pony collectors for reasons known only to them.

Although international is a disingenuous term - there's no such thing as a US pony, and international covers multiple different releases, including Nirvana - if we can at least get it so that the site assigns ponies to their correct set and year, then that would make such a difference.

I am anxious to learn any info you have and if there is a better way to distinguish between countries or releases, I am all ears.  My goal is to make this helpful to collectors so whatever makes the most sense.  Also, do you know why most sites refer to releases by "year 1" instead of "1982".  Is there an easier way?  How would you recommend I list the ponies that belong to specific countries vs non-US release, etc...?

Thanks again

Post Merge: April 07, 2021, 02:12:22 PM

Wow, it's great to see you back again! I love Strawberry Reef, use it a lot for G3 stuff ^^

Thank you