The definition of "mainstream"...

[Taffeta]

I am going to scuttle off to bed in a minute too but I also wanted to thank everyone in the discussion for making it super interesting. I've learned a lot from this discussion, especially about the Canada thing. I really hope there's information that can be put together from that. If you do manage to get stuff together of any quantity, I don't mind adding a page on my site to encompass your findings. I mean, it's just the UK pony site, but I'm kind of getting used to including all kinds of things there just because they're nowhere else and I feel like they should be, even if people don't take them as seriously :/

I'm also grateful that for the most part people have been really respectful in this. I am totally cool with anyone who thinks this isn't relevant to them and that's fine. Just, it is a trivial thing, but when you think about it, we are talking about plastic toy horses. The whole thing is trivial. If you put it into that context, though, I think it should be a basic right of all collectors to go online and find out information relevant to the place they are collecting in. If they went to a second hand shop and found a pony, they want to know that what they learn about that pony is true and valid no matter where in the world they live.

[Elfpony]

Very cool discussion (especially for those of us with insomnia).

Baby Ice Crystal: yes, let's get that Canadian pony conversation started. I admit to using the "common" terminology of US vs everyone else for ease of reference, but I'm rethinking that now. Also, I've never thought about the Dazzleglow question, but I've had four pass through my hands (all bought secondhand) and not one has had pink hearts. Fascinating.

Back in the G3 days I kept a list of what was and was not available in stores in Canada. I've not done anything with it, but this conversation makes me think I should. I wish I'd kept records as carefully for the G4s.

Elf

[Al-1701]

Admittedly, I prefer to use the U.K. names a lot of the time.  I find them better.  Sweetie sounds better than Sweet Stuff.  I also prefer the U.K. princesses with baby dragons than the U.S. version with bushwoolies.

[Taffeta]

Admittedly, I prefer to use the U.K. names a lot of the time.  I find them better.  Sweetie sounds better than Sweet Stuff.  I also prefer the U.K. princesses with baby dragons than the U.S. version with bushwoolies.

I genuinely don't think it is (or ought to be) a matter of what is 'better', we all have our own perspectives on that. I think what I am pushing for is something closer to 'equivalent' or 'equal' whereby you don't have the mainstream and then the peripheral other sets that happened in other places. If a set was sold everywhere then people should know that. If it wasn't, people should know that, too. Knowing your own exclusives too, in my view can only help trading and also help people to make judgements as to whether to spend the money on ebay on an overseas purchase, or look closer to home.

 I found it really easy to trade for US (by which I mean sold in the US, not sold in the UK, I have since learned that some of these were sold in parts of Europe) ponies when I started out, though my main trading partner knew that what she was trading me was not available in the UK, because we had long conversations about it and I sent her a lot of hard copy photos of ponies that the internet hadn't heard of in Summer 1997.

Basically she saw it as a good way to get the ponies she wanted and I saw it the same way and we traded exclusives for exclusives a lot of the time...in any case, we were both happy. When she came over in Summer 98 and we went to the local carboot sale, she wouldn't buy any ponies there unless I said it was ok, because it was my "home turf", if you like - but for me it was more important to let her buy ponies she couldn't get back home and take them home with her, because if I had been let loose on a US flea market around the same time, I would have found it really hard to hold back.

But on the other hand, another really early overseas trade I did was baby Squirmy for another pony that was a pony sold in the UK. I just hadn't found it yet. Neither pony in that trade were exclusives, but both were ponies needed by the other.

My point is that, at that juncture, ponies between two countries were equals. And people in one could trade with the other without worrying about monetary value, only in terms of rarity. And that was how it SHOULD have continued. But it didn't. And that's the problem we still have today. People outside the US lost the chance to be considered equal in terms of mainstream pony release and people inside the US lost the chance to capitalise on their exclusives. It's a lose/lose situation but we are still clinging to it. I don't really know why, except that Dream Valley said it should be so. And even though almost all the wrong information about pony releases outside of the US came originally from Dream Valley, people would still rather cling to it because of the nostalgia factor of it being the first, rather than putting it in its proper place as a trailblazer and a milestone but a piece of the past that couldn't and didn't keep up with the constantly changing influx of information over that time period.

DV stopped being properly updated in about 1999, at least in terms of international information. The international sections were taken down some several years later (I wasn't here at the time so don't know exactly why but heard that she had come under a lot of pressure from UK and European people to correct the mistakes). In a sense those errors sat there, were allowed to linger and then were not corrected but taken down, leaving the impression of them still lurking around today. I should add that it is only the international sections that were not updated in this time period. The US sections were updated and the pictures replaced with photos and so on and so forth.

 For me, therein lies the real problem with everything that's happened since. DV was always a US pony ID site, not a mainstream global one. DV's own decision to remove the International sections and focus on the US proves that. It should not be dictating how we see all ponies worldwide today. Those values and ideas and such may have made sense in 1999, when so much was still new and confusing but they really don't make sense here today in such a global and connected community. We know the answers, now. It makes me wonder why we are still ignoring them.

[Al-1701]

I was speaking of personal preference.

We do need a definitive list of countries each pony was sold.  Like you can just type a pony in and get all countries including what variants were where.  My Little Wiki is working towards that, but they treat made in the U.S.A. as mainstream.

So, maybe we should just nix the term "mainstream" in general.

[Taffeta]

Nixing the word only works if you also nix the state of mind behind it, which is the real problem.

And as progressive as thewiki is compared to older sites, that exclusive pony list and all the issues horrified me. 20 years on and here we are. Sigh.

[Al-1701]

Getting rid of the word would help start getting rid of the mindset.  If a pony is a pony instead of mainstream, exclusive, or nirvana; then we can talk about where they were released (and in what form) more objectively.

However, it would be a major lift.  It is a mindset that has been the way of thinking for two decades.

At least there is your site.  When I got back into pony, I found your site and I was amazed how much more there was on than cartoon I had watched twenty years before.

[Taffeta]

Getting rid of the word would help start getting rid of the mindset.  If a pony is a pony instead of mainstream, exclusive, or nirvana; then we can talk about where they were released (and in what form) more objectively.

However, it would be a major lift.  It is a mindset that has been the way of thinking for two decades.

Perhaps, but I think more needs to be done. It took two or three years to stamp names like Baby Pearl out of the community. That's just one tiny detail. It takes a lot of work, believe me, to change people's ideas.

At least there is your site.  When I got back into pony, I found your site and I was amazed how much more there was on than cartoon I had watched twenty years before.

I appreciate the vote of support, but it really shouldn't be down to me. And it's not an easy position to be in. I don't get crazy people threatening to send their boyfriends to my address any more, thank goodness, nor some of the other unpleasantness, but I do still get people who categorically don't understand the amount of work and stress that has gone into this. And reality is my site was never there for that purpose. It shouldn't be the only source of information about what was sold where and under what name and what year. It's a site about UK pony history. I don't like the extra pressure of being relied on to do that job as well. Bigger sites like the Wiki are better organised to do that kind of thing. I find it really frustrating that there are still issues. I don't mind set names, release dates, countries of release being looted from my site if it helps make the situation better. People in countries other than the US deserve the same right to the most accurate release information possible about a pony. That ought to be an automatic. We all ought to expect that, just because we find Posey in London or in Holland or in Australia, we can find something out, however brief, about the fact that yes, that pony was sold here, and what year, and what set. I know the Wiki is working on this, but in order to really fix it, they need to change the structure a lot to eradicate the old DV model which no longer is fit for purpose in a global community and reintegrate sets and names of sets and their actual releases in a more globally minded way.

Most of the pony pages probably wouldn't have to change, but the way they were networked would. And that is a LOT of work. And the people at the Wiki are hardworking, but also busy. It takes a lot of energy and time to maintain a website and update it. That said, I would really love to see it. It's demoralising seeing questions about UK ponies that are answered on my site but which wouldn't be asked if the answers were on a bigger website with a bigger audience.

And if one day I can't afford to pay to keep my site going, or can't find the time to keep it going, that information dies. I think it's taken for granted my site will always be there, and people can just go to my site if they want "foreign" info, but I don't think it should be that way. I'm proud to write about UK pony history, but I am tired the only person working from a global release perspective.  To me it's nuts, because we're a global community - but it really seems like all ponies are equal, but some more than others when it comes to accurate online resources.

[Al-1701]

I was talking more about the history as well as the Lore in the U.K. (I love the pony comic now that I've read so much of it).  I wish I could do more, but sadly time and money are resources I do not have in much supply either.  I've done what I can in regards to the animated series (and I plan to redo it at some point), but that is probably the extent of my contribution.

[Taffeta]

I was talking more about the history as well as the Lore in the U.K. (I love the pony comic now that I've read so much of it).  I wish I could do more, but sadly time and money are resources I do not have in much supply either.  I've done what I can in regards to the animated series (and I plan to redo it at some point), but that is probably the extent of my contribution.

But the problem isn't really about pony lore or canon. It's about pony identification and classification and the information online. Each country/canon has its own media and I think people are aware of that much more in some ways...even if they don't have comic access (some people in the US have a more complete comic collection than I do, as well xD).

[Al-1701]

Well, I'm a lore junky, I must admit.  I've grown to love the toys, but the media will always be what was a part of my childhood.

Part of the issue is also there was no regular release template between countries.  What is commonly called "Year 4" is a mess.  It only fits North America, and even then there were several changes midway through it with the previous year ponies giving way to six new ponies, three new Twinkle Eyes being released in North America (while two of them would not be released in the U.K. until the following year), and the Flutter ponies having the improved wing design.  That rules out a neat little chart.

So, ending the use of years to organize the ponies might be an improvement.  Put the release dates in the page itself.  And listing the countries released would also be an improvement.  Ponies like Moondancer and Glory should have notes that they were not released in the U.K.

It all makes my brain hurt when I think about it.  Everything is so muddled.