Omg friend I can totally understand, I initially applied for membership in March, didn't get a response, tried contacting them to no response, then I applied again in April.

Not until maybe June or August did I input my details in the login page and logged me into my account, so from my experience I never received an email.

But that might just be me forgetting steps, like having to look in spam for it or something like that.

I finally got on the board!! Yay!!! I definitely didn't get any notification email (I was checking spam folder every day), just one day I could log on.  Then it took another ages to get my first post approved, and again I didn't get any notification.  It was only because I kept going in to check and then one day I was in.  I think Loa probably helped me because I alerted her on this board.

It does worry me that the MHArena is going to die completely if new people find it so difficult to join.

Most people would have just lost interest/given up.  Only the die-hards like me and Freezestime are going to get on, and you need a steady influx of fresh blood to keep a board going or everyone just runs out of stuff to say....

I apologise for the delay. For sme reason the MHA gets hit by Russian trolls and we get 200+ applications per day from them. Trying to find the legitimate members between them is a pain!

Oh wow Loa, that sounds like a nightmare!  Sorry to hear about all the extra work the Russian trolls/bots are causing you.  Thank you for letting us know, and thank you for all your time and work spent on keeping MHA and MLPA going.  We appreciate it and will try to be patient  <3

Thanks Pinkiepie and Freezestime.  I have been checking my spam folder every day in hopes of receiving registration, and also trying logging on just in case I have been activated, but no luck.  I've been PM'd on here with details of someone on here who also does admin on MHArena so I will try contactin them.
Frustrating! Glad it is not just me Freezestime!!!

I really like the look of Mattel's new gender neutral dolls and I have seen one IRL and I think it's great quality with lots of articulation.  It was the straight hair blond one and i thought it was genuinely gender-neutral and could be seen as a boy or a girl.

I@m interested that some of you find it still problematic, or is it just that the existence of these dolls in the Mattel line highlights the over sexualised/feminised appearance of all the othe rMattel dolls?

Off-topic now (sorry mods, do move to a new thread if appropriate), but what would you say was a good doll line that doesn't hyper-feminise/sexualise girls?  I love Monster High and have just got into collecting them, but I agree they are a bit disturbing with their extreme bodies and make-up aimed at little girls.  My 7 year-old daughter loves them too.  I talk to her a lot about how unrealistic their bodies are and how high heels are really painful and unhealthy in real life, and how there's more to life than just fashion...  actually I think MH is quite good for not being completely fashion-obsessed, and I like the narrative back-story and character development a lot, plus the diversity in other ways (not body type obviously!)

Despite my misgivings, MH are so imaginative in concept and execution, and I love the 'edge' they have. I don't like "pretty-pretty" dolls. I also don't think there's anything necessarily wrong with make-up. MH dolls are meant to be teenagers and goodness knows I plastered it on when I was 15!

My daughter has Lottie dolls as well, which are cute and not sexualised at all, but even they have a bit of a 'make-up' look on the girl Lottie dolls (dark eyelashes, bright pink lips) whereas the boys in the Lottie line don't have eyelashes or coloured lips. The manufacturers make a big deal about how the doll is based on real dimensions of a 7-year old child, but IRL girls don't actually have bigger eyelashes or pinker lips than boys... Plus the Lotties are all perfectly pretty, button-nosed, huge-eyed, symmetrical faced. so I'm not sure it's fair to levy that criticism at MH if dolls like Lottie are seen as completely healthy in terms of promoting positive body image, as they too are unrealistic in lots of ways.

Also, this is going to sound weird, but I even find the animation and artwork for G4 MLP to be kind of sexualised in a strange sort of way? The way they swing their hips as they clip-clop around on their hooves, those huge eyes and enormous eyelashes... Is it just me??? 

I have a problem voting here too, because technically I count three of the four as being childhood ponies. I had Snowflake from new, but as a child I didn't bond with her as much asi like her now. I didn't like that pose for a long time then. I do like it now . So I had Snowflake in 86.

I found Gypsy second hand at a school fete. I didn't find second hand ponies often until we began carbooting in 1995, so this was a rare find and I was very excited by her. I stalked the stall till it opened to buy her and I remember she cost me 30p.

And then my childhood friend had Hopscotch. She wasn't my pony, but we played with each other's ponies and had ponies sleeping over at each other's houses a lot, so she almost was. And when she didn't want her ponies any more, she gave them all to me, so that Hopscotch from my childhood is now my pony.

So which one would you vote for?

Obviously I also think Honeycomb is beautiful too xD. But she's the only one I don't have a childhood connection to...

Gypsy was (completely unstereotypically) able to tell the future in the comic. She also had some slightly mysterious magic going on, if I remember right. She was a pretty cool comic pony. Snowflake was as well, she was Pony Christmas at least once.

That's a really tough one Taffeta.  I have thought a lot about this and I have decided you should choose Gypsy.  The story about the school fete is adorable, and the detail of remember she was 30p!  How exciting.  Plus that she sounds like she was awesome in the comic and you really liked her character.  So, Gypsy for you.

Hopscotch for me, she's one of my favourite ponies ever.  I love her pose, I love her cool blue body colour, I love her deep dark purple hair (not many deep dark colours in G1s) and I am crazy about her symbol, so detailed, so cute, the lines even look like they've been chalked down on a playground.  Plus I loved playing hopscotch as a child and still do!  Hopscotch has been living with Minty on my bedside table for the past few weeks.

P.S. Also I didn't even know she was a UK pony until now, so that just makes her even cooler.

Since answering the poll I have added Lemon Drop and Minty to my CP collection and so I now have Blossom, Bow Tie, Bluebelle, Peachy, Cotton Candy, Snuzzle, Minty and Lemon Drop.

Minty and Blossom are my favourites.

Just Butterscotch and Applejack to get. I'm not going to go there with the regular Birth Flower ponies, although I would bite someone's hand off for the alternate versions if I could afford one!

I only have a very bijou collection but so far I have doubles of Posey, Blossom and Moonstone. But Posey and Moonstone probably don't really count because the second Posey (the good one, with uncut pink hair) is actually my daughter's and the two Moonstones belong to my daughter and son respectively.

Blossom stalks me a bit, she seems to be in every bundle I watch on eBay. She's my favourite and was my childhood pony so I would be happy to have an army (my husband not so much)

Wow I love your Peachy army Ashlyn (and your lemon drops! And your majesties!). I see what you mean about all the variation in Peachy. I will browse the rest of your album when I'm on my computer instead of my phone.

I'm very happy to give all the Peachies a loving home (well, maybe not ALL!), I think she's gorgeous. Love her colours, pose and symbol. Going for nirvana is scary to me as I'm a novice collector and not into spending big $$$ but I do only have limited space so that's actually not a bad idea and I would probably spend the same on a couple of nirvanas as on a whole bunch of common ones.