Quote from: MintyMyndi on January 14, 2021, 07:57:51 PM

I've been staring things down for a while, and I think I've figured out the anatomy. That said, I've yet to actually take it completely apart. This'll make more sense with pictures, but I'm such a procrastinator... If all else fails, I'll draw a horrible diagram in MS Paint.

So the doll's head is vinyl or a similarly soft plastic; I'll be calling it vinyl. It's pretty thick, too; I shoved in a pushpin and despite being able to fully penetrate the head, it was tricky! She's gonna kill some needles for sure. The ears and horn are separate vinyl pieces which fit into holes in the head and are glued down. As previously stated, there are hair plugs under the ears, so they'll have to come of for hair removal. I've worked the glue off of the edges of the ears with a butterknife, but they still don't want to budge. The muzzle and irises/pupils are also separate pieces, which I don't think are structurally important; the eyes can probably be replaced by a skilled resin crafter, and probably not by a person whose sole completed custom is an alt reroot! The eyelashes are less rooted and more under the eye pieces, so they may be tricky to remove... I'm still gonna try, though! Mine's lashes are pretty funky!

If you flip the doll over to see the bottom of the head, you'll see how it connects to the body. The vinyl actually ends about half an inch from the neck itself, being glued (very strongly, I might add) to two hard plastic halves of what I believe to be the mouth cavity. If you curl a pipe cleaner and stick it in her mouth, you won't get very far since it has a ceiling, likely connected to this neck joint! It's not perfectly round; it has a flat side in the front to ensure the head goes on correctly.

Sandwiched between these two pieces is the actual neck. On mine, it can turn barely enough to be visible, so I'm hoping that there is a possibility for articulation. This is probably the main reason she won't just split in two! I don't have her mechanism completely removed, either- the chest still harbors the feeding/rocking switch.

I tried to pry with a butterknife after my mother expressed concern about the X-Acto blade breaking. I didn't get very far. If I can get the head vinyl to separate from the hard plastic, I may be able to get further. Next step is trying heat!

Also, for amount of hair, her head circumference is roughly 15 inches, so you should buy four times the Barbie amount from your hair shop of choice. Her hairline is pretty high and rooting pretty sparse, so you'll likely have some extra! The factory length is roughly eight inches.

I have removed the eyes from poopsie minis - the eye and the top part holding the lashes come off on their own when you remove them - you can pop them out from the inside.
Heat will definitely help! I tend to hold a lighter to my xacto knife until its scorched and it cuts hard plastic like butter then - as long as you don't mind removing some scorched plastic left over from where you cut.
You may want to try putting her head in boiling water - may make the hair frizz though.

Honestly, at this point, I don't think the hair could get much worse if I tried! The problem is seeing if I have a nuke-able container large enough to submerge this massive melon, this colossal cranium, this... Okay, I'll stop.

I did pull out her eyelashes, since they were just glued; they're less like false lashes for human use and more like those fake craft feathers you get at Dollar Tree. The base of them is probably the same material as the core of those feathers. I kinda like her without them, but false lashes are cheap if I end up missing them!

EDIT: Things started okay with the boiling water, but as you may have guessed, things have gone a bit awry. I blame myself for being impatient. But first, let's talk discoveries.

The limbs fit over joints onto the body, not between the halves as I previously thought; they pop off easily with a little heat, so I recommend removing them so they're not in the way. With them off, the only thing preventing the body being split is the mouth cavity/neck joint pieces.

The "esophagus box," as I'll call it, is a rectangular piece with a hole in the middle for the doll to "swallow." It's a separate piece from the body, but it doesn't want to go anywhere; the feeding/rocking switch is inside it, sticking out a slit in the back close to the neck. I just barely can't get the body halves far enough apart to slip the switch through. If desperate measures need to be taken, I'll just break the switch part to allow the rest through.

The glue where the vinyl meets the plastic on the head extends further than previously assumed, with a bit of the "floor" of the inside of the head being glued as well. Cutting and prying need to be performed at odd angles.

The vinyl ears are glued onto plastic pieces that are attached to the head. I didn't try very hard to get those off since it seemed tricky. The horn seems like the easiest thing on the head to remove, but I still haven't succeeded!

And, finally, the muzzle piece may well be attached to the mouth cavity and need to come off to decapitate her. I tried, but it's about as easy as everything else! I gotta hand it to MGA- these things are built like tanks!

Now for what's gone wrong... Where to begin?

Well, first of all, the neck joint is open enough that it lets in a ton of water- not just into the mouth cavity, but the head as a whole. I hope it doesn't mold, since I couldn't get the horn off to let it breathe.

Remember how I said that work on the neck joint requires odd angles? Well, I somehow didn't notice that I was scratching the heck out of the chest! I'll try to smooth it out, but let's just say I'm glad that I was planning on dressing this thing. I also managed to scratch the muzzle a bit.

Speaking of being glad, I was planning on removing the horn's glitter, painting it white, and replacing the glitter with iridescent glitter. This is relevant because the glitter fell off in chunks!

While prying away at the esophagus box (before I realized how deep it went and that it had the switch in it), I managed to chip off a piece, which went flying and stung me on the bridge of my nose... perhaps unicorn disassembly requires safety goggles! I also bent the back piece a bit, which is just great.

And now, for the part that's, to me, the worst: I ruined her eyes. They apparently didn't like the heat, the moisture, or the combination of the two and the image on the back of the clear iris piece cracked. Best case scenario I can acetone it off and paint a new one. It sucks, too, because I tried for a second to pop one out, but decided I didn't want to risk scratching the image... Perhaps this is a blessing in disguise, though; I wasn't totally in love with her eyes as-is, but decided I'd deal with them. Now I can't do that without making up some reason she has lightning in her eyes (and no, it doesn't look as cool as it sounds)!

Oh, and the hair doesn't seem to be damaged, so that's good, but MGA have warned not to get the hair wet... I wonder why? Perhaps it will explode at midnight tonight; with the way things have been going, I wouldn't be surprised! I am going to reroot her, though. And she's gonna be the prettiest dang unicorn the world's ever seen! Or not. But either way, I'll continue forward, but I need a beak for a bit!

She's so pretty! I wish I was collecting in the early days of G4 when these guys were on the shelves. They're so pricy now.

I've been staring things down for a while, and I think I've figured out the anatomy. That said, I've yet to actually take it completely apart. This'll make more sense with pictures, but I'm such a procrastinator... If all else fails, I'll draw a horrible diagram in MS Paint.

So the doll's head is vinyl or a similarly soft plastic; I'll be calling it vinyl. It's pretty thick, too; I shoved in a pushpin and despite being able to fully penetrate the head, it was tricky! She's gonna kill some needles for sure. The ears and horn are separate vinyl pieces which fit into holes in the head and are glued down. As previously stated, there are hair plugs under the ears, so they'll have to come of for hair removal. I've worked the glue off of the edges of the ears with a butterknife, but they still don't want to budge. The muzzle and irises/pupils are also separate pieces, which I don't think are structurally important; the eyes can probably be replaced by a skilled resin crafter, and probably not by a person whose sole completed custom is an alt reroot! The eyelashes are less rooted and more under the eye pieces, so they may be tricky to remove... I'm still gonna try, though! Mine's lashes are pretty funky!

If you flip the doll over to see the bottom of the head, you'll see how it connects to the body. The vinyl actually ends about half an inch from the neck itself, being glued (very strongly, I might add) to two hard plastic halves of what I believe to be the mouth cavity. If you curl a pipe cleaner and stick it in her mouth, you won't get very far since it has a ceiling, likely connected to this neck joint! It's not perfectly round; it has a flat side in the front to ensure the head goes on correctly.

Sandwiched between these two pieces is the actual neck. On mine, it can turn barely enough to be visible, so I'm hoping that there is a possibility for articulation. This is probably the main reason she won't just split in two! I don't have her mechanism completely removed, either- the chest still harbors the feeding/rocking switch.

I tried to pry with a butterknife after my mother expressed concern about the X-Acto blade breaking. I didn't get very far. If I can get the head vinyl to separate from the hard plastic, I may be able to get further. Next step is trying heat!

Also, for amount of hair, her head circumference is roughly 15 inches, so you should buy four times the Barbie amount from your hair shop of choice. Her hairline is pretty high and rooting pretty sparse, so you'll likely have some extra! The factory length is roughly eight inches.

Yup, looks just like one, with the logo replaced with flowers. I've said it many times, but the G3.5 brush is amazing. In my opinion, there's not a single better brush they could have stolen!

I hope the Mane 6 thing ends up being scrapped, but I'll make do if it doesn't. If the art style is too similar to G4, though, I'd be pretty disappointed. Not that G4 is necessarily a bad art style; I just really want to see a new style! I really hope this is either scrapped, fake (unlikely), or misleading due to lack of context. There's so much G4 and there has been for a decade. I'm ready for something new. I can just hold out hope that there will be more character variety, or at least a new cast of main characters... The latter is probably the case, if I had to pick one, but it's just too early to tell. I'd be sad to see the same universe with the same rules and the same art style...

Quote from: MintyMyndi on January 13, 2021, 09:09:38 AM

Quote from: glitterball on January 13, 2021, 07:35:55 AM

Quote from: MintyMyndi on January 12, 2021, 08:49:32 PM

And here's a bit of speculation. Here's an image that was found on Taobao (?) which seems to show not only a second wave of these, but (potentially) the G5 logo!

Spoiler

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re: the logo -
My Little Rony?
My Little Bony?   

Curious! 

I'm pretty sure it says pony, but there's just a star behind it.


I should correct myself, since I apparently can't count- there are FIVE new characters shown in that image, not six. If they're keeping the Twinkle-Eye inspiration, I'll take a guess at each. Note that this is just speculation!
Left to right:
-Pink/purple- Whizzer. She was frequently paired with Masquerade in the cartoon, so I feel she's a likely choice for a release like this.
-Blue/pink- Sweet Stuff- I'd actually be surprised if she wasn't- the body color's spot-on!
-Purple/purple- Mayyybe Galaxy? She's a unicorn and vaguely fits, I guess... I don't know who else it would be.
-Orange/pink- I'm thinking Party Time, but you can see that this one has green eyes... They weren't 100% accurate on the first wave, though, so I wouldn't put it past them.
-Yellow/aqua- Not very sure on this one, but her eyes seem to be red, so I'm thinking Tic Tac Toe. Quackers is the runner-up, but that's only if they don't do Tic Tac Toe. She'd be a stretch, but they do seem to favor the front hair color over others and maybe referenced a yellowed one... Again, it's a stretch!

It's hard to guess because of the single-colored hair and the overall inaccuracy of the first set. Does anybody have any different guesses?

If (big if!) these are all correct, that'd leave Gingerbread, Speedy, Sky Rocket, and Quackers (or, less likely, Tic Tac Toe) for a potential third wave, but I don't know if they're even keeping the theme, so grain of salt. I don't even have any first wave ponies, so perhaps I should slow down a bit and at least see if I like these before I get excited for new ones.

It says 12 to collect despite there only being 11 shown. I think there's another one not shown.

It has pictures of the first wave mixed in, so I think that's what they're referring to since those are the ones out right now. It would make sense for the waves to have the same number of characters, but that's not always the case.

the logo has a long, trailing line for the "P" - sorta like how Trixie Lulamoon's symbol has that trail of stardust or whatever - but yeah it really does look like an "R" x) I hope that's just an early logo and not the final one, lol.

How cool would it be if it still led to a star that was also the hole in the O?

Still, there's no confirmation that it's even official in the first place, so we'll just have to wait and see, possibly at the upcoming February virtual thingy.