The MLP Arena
Pony Talk => MLP Nirvana => Topic started by: RoseNoire on November 21, 2017, 12:51:47 AM
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Hello everyone !
I live in Belgium and I realized I have lots of Italian variations among my G1's I found in various flea markets. So, for your information, if it relevant in any way for you, I think Belgium put Italian ponies in their stores during the 80's. I don't know if you already have this information. If I don't forget, this weekend, I'm going to take a photograph of my Belgian/Italian army. ^^ I know I have Italian Moonstone, 2 Fireflies (Curly and straight hair variants), 3 Ribbons, White/light mint Cotton Candy and probably others.
Have a nice day !
Rose
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Maybe I should try to get my family to go to Belgium for a vacation, lol.
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Very nice find Rose!
It is common to find Italy, France, Spanish, China and Hong Kong ponies in Belgium as they where standard release there :)
Love pkw xxx
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I would not be surprised at this. I grew up in Germany, and my childhood Parasol is the alternate-haired Italian one.
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Yup. I'm usually more excited when I find a non-Italian pony :P
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I've found lots of Italian ponies in France before too.
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Quite a few European countries got Italian ponies in the 80s :) My childhood Italy Seashell came from Denmark :)
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I almost wonder whether the reason these got created was to resolve Italy's complicated and curious laws about customs and importing toys. Maybe it was cheaper to set up a factory in Italy, make ponies...and then ship them out all over Europe rather than paying to ship them from China or HK or paying Italian import duty. Of course, though, Italy did have those other ponies as well, so I guess it was a balance between the two...?
I'm sure that the uniqueness of Italian packaging relates to those import rules and having to do everything very specifically, but I do wonder whether by taking some of the line and making it in Europe, it saved Hasbro those costs. And maybe that's why we also see such plans in Spain and in France...
What has always made me wonder is why that didn't happen in the UK, and why we didn't get those imports either. It's very odd really, when you think about it...a lot of italian ponies and spanish ponies etc were sold on card with suspiciously UK-like art styles and some are basically the same as the Uk release cards but still...that boundary was never crossed?