The MLP Arena
Pony Talk => Pony Corral => Topic started by: Taffeta on September 23, 2017, 11:04:54 PM
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So this has always been a bugbear of mine, but most recently in a flurry of polls which haven't included ponies from my childhood here in the UK...it struck me again that we have an issue with the concept of mainstream.
I know that nobody making a poll ever excludes a pony on purpose. It's more about not considering those ponies as mainstream. Equally, they're not Nirvana ponies. So where do they belong?
For me, I feel sad when I see them not included in things like polls, because it makes it harder to vote according to my childhood memories. It's obviously not a conspiracy but a hangover from the early days of MLP, when the idea of non-US ponies was new, and they got filtered off into their own 'international' section.
I've said it before but 'international' does not mean non-US, it means worldwide. It makes sense to me that there are US/Canada ponies, UK/Europe ponies etc, and then there are international ponies which were sold worldwide. Majesty is an international pony. Rapunzel is a US/Canada pony. Snowflake is a European/UK pony. Etc.
Obviously there's also this big whole thing called Nirvana now as well, which has encompassed all the variant ponies from different places of manufacture. Because that happened, though, the ones that fit into the middle - the ones that aren't regulation US release but aren't Nirvana - kind of lost their place a bit. They're still tagged with negative terms like "non-" as though they are sub-species of an existing other set, rather than with the names of their actual set. People also talk about UK variant of a pony (eg Confetti) but they don't mean variant, because she's not a Nirvana pony - they mean version.
Apologies if this is incoherent, because it's early in the morning, I've been writing an article and my brain is a bit fried. But I'd like to ask people what they think about mainstream, what their view of it is, whether that is influenced by where they grew up, whether they think it matters, and most importantly, what can be done to make sure that ponies like Gypsy or CP Bow Tie don't get forgotten in future polls and discussions.
I'd like to make mainstream considered more to be all ponies that are not Nirvana, not just US/Canada release ones. I'd also like the term international to apply to globally sold ponies, rather than non-US ponies. It's actually still the case that a common UK/European exclusive pony sells for more than a moderately common US exclusive pony, because most of the time the seller of the latter doesn't know they're selling an exclusive. That somehow doesn't seem fair now that we have a much more balanced community in terms of location and availability.
Opinions?
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Yes, I agree. For example, ponies that are called "non-so-soft", but to me I never even knew of the existence of so-soft ponies until as an adult I found this and other sites. So to me, my childhood Posey is not "non-so-soft", she is the only way I knew a Posey could be!!
I like the idea of "International" being used to describe ponies that were sold everywhere.
Jules x
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Yes, I agree. For example, ponies that are called "non-so-soft", but to me I never even knew of the existence of so-soft ponies until as an adult I found this and other sites. So to me, my childhood Posey is not "non-so-soft", she is the only way I knew a Posey could be!!
I like the idea of "International" being used to describe ponies that were sold everywhere.
Jules x
The NSS term has grated on me more and more really with time, I think. In the beginning it was a useful term because everyone in 1997ish was still super confused about ponies and what versions existed where. But it's the fact that we now know what ponies like Shady etc are that makes me annoyed that the non-terms still exist.
Like you said, it makes no sense to identify something from your childhood as a non-version of something you didn't know existed as a child.
Also, I think with NBBE, the BBE term itself wasn't really used in the UK. Baby Cuddles had "Lullabye" Eyes. So again the Play and Care Set babies are labelled as being non-term-that-didn't-exist-in-the-UK even though their box, the insert and even the Argos Catalogue listings says 'Play and Care Set' in BIG letters...
It makes as much sense as calling the Big Brother ponies Non-Freckly Mountain Boys...;)
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I think I am influenced by the ponies I had/knew of as a child and it can be easy to exclude other ponies that we didn't see here in the US accidently. I only have 1 or 2 Europe exclusive ponies in my collection so I am guilty of not always considering them when making topics although I will try to do better about that in the future. :) Just because I never had a Mountain Boy or a Gypsy doesn't mean they are any less of a pony than Baby Tiddlewinks or Cotton Candy.
It wasn't until I started collecting as an adult that I found out about the European exclusive ponies like the Mountain Boys, the pearly Starlgiht Babies and the Tales character ponies. I think they Tales ponies are easier to remember that they are exclusives since the US had the cartoons but none of the Tales toys. The same thing with the Princess ponies dragons since we only got Bushwoolies over in the US.
I had Beddy Bye Eyes Gusty growing up and I remember having a lot of fun playing with her, my other baby ponies and the Lullabye Nursery. I didn't even know there was a different version until I started collecting as an adult and found out about the Love and Care version
Ponyfan
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Well, ultimately it's always going to be subjective. If someone grew up in Brazil and owned yellow, rainbow-haired Heart Throb and Baby-Gusty-Without-a-Horn, wouldn't they consider those ponies mainstream? What would make them "not mainstream" compared to other ponies that had a limited market release? I don't think any of us are surprised when Baby Gusty is left off 'who's your favorite baby earth pony' polls. But that doesn't mean that anyone here doubts the legitimacy of earth pony Baby Gusty as a MLP. It's just daunting to list every pony (and polls are supposed to be fun, not research projects), so people list the ones they are familiar with which usually happen to be the US ponies due to the US being the largest market for MLPs in the 80s.
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Well, ultimately it's always going to be subjective. If someone grew up in Brazil and owned yellow, rainbow-haired Heart Throb and Baby-Gusty-Without-a-Horn, wouldn't they consider those ponies mainstream? What would make them "not mainstream" compared to other ponies that had a limited market release? I don't think any of us are surprised when Baby Gusty is left off 'who's your favorite baby earth pony' polls. But that doesn't mean that anyone here doubts the legitimacy of earth pony Baby Gusty as a MLP. It's just daunting to list every pony (and polls are supposed to be fun, not research projects), so people list the ones they are familiar with which usually happen to be the US ponies due to the US being the largest market for MLPs in the 80s.
:iconclap::iconclap::iconclap:
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Hasbro makes it an incredibly murky subject. There were ponies only released in a certain country or countries. There are the Nirvana ponies which I never understood the logic behind (even if there are spectacular ponies). It does depend on your country of origin it seems.
I want to say only ponies released internationally (as in all or most major markets) are "mainstream" but that excludes the first two sets of unicorns and pegasi which for some reason were not released in much of Europe. Yet they are defining ponies of early G1 with appearances in book and comic media even in places they never hit shelves.
I honestly don't know what the definitive answer is or if there even is one.
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@LM - Brazilian ponies fit under the Nirvana umbrella, where there is a separate forum dedicated to them. I agree that for Brazilian people they are mainstream ponies, but they are at least recognised for what they are.
I think you're missing the point, though.
The point is that these ponies are being omitted not because of any great conspiracy to leave them out but just because nobody really knows where to put them. We're still clinging to twenty year old values from a time when the community was basically North America plus about six Europeans. The world and the community has changed since then. Back then European/UK ponies were given more of a "Nirvana-esque" status, but that's not the case now.
The argument is that if a pony is not Nirvana, they must be mainstream. Nobody would argue with a Brazilian baby Gusty being a Nirvana pony. So you wouldn't expect to see her in a Corral poll unless someone wanted to poll all the versions of Baby Gusty in some way. But the ponies I'm talking about don't belong in the Nirvana section. So where do they belong, if not in the polls here?
I think it's easy for someone from a US background to not see a problem with this, because the polls in question all speak to your childhood and your background. Some UK people won't care and others will, but the point is more about where these ponies fit in.
And how do we determine this mainstream identity if it's not simply all ponies that are not Nirvana? Is it the number of countries a pony is sold in? But if so, the Mountain Boys were sold in more locations than Tux & Tails, so that can't be the case. Is it to do with the type of release? But again, those Mountain Boys are store sold ponies, whereas Tux is a Mail Order. The same could be said for other sets - there are a lot of European ponies who were sold in more countries and locations than their US equivalents, but they're not really acknowledged as such. I think the Starlight Babies, for example, have a wider international distribution in terms of countries than the Sparkle ones, but they're seen as 'variants' of the Sparkle babies all the same. And the US fancy pants babies are made in Thailand, which ought to make them Nirvana, but the European Chinese ones are the ones considered 'variants' - which is a term generally associated with the Nirvana forum. There are a lot of inconsistencies like this.
The problem isn't about UK vs US ponies or UK vs US collectors, although I think that the polls are probably more fun for people whose childhoods are fully represented in them. It's more about wanting to know where we put those ponies and why we can't now consider them mainstream because they are not Nirvana. The resistance to doing so really confuses me, because it's not like calling CP Bow Tie mainstream makes Y2 or Y3 Bow Tie any less mainstream. It just adds variety to the family.
The use vs meaning of the word international has always bothered me. I don't think it matters any more that the US market is the biggest market, because there are easily enough known non-US mainstream ponies out there to balance with the US exclusive equivalents now. As I said before, a lot of US collectors don't know which ponies are US exclusives, either, which only adds to the problem. There's still a misconception in some areas that every US pony was also sold worldwide, which absolutely isn't the case. I think that US sellers still get ripped off because of this, but apparently nobody in the US minds if they pay 2x as much for a pony sold in 2x as many countries than the one they are selling...
I think we know enough as a community now to recognise all ponies which are not Nirvana as being mainstream. We all know what makes a Nirvana pony, but this is the Corral. Mainstream ponies belong in the Corral.
And I guess it would just be nice for me for once to feel like a poll attempted to include my childhood, not just the childhood of people across the pond. Four US only polls in a short space of time is a lot...I actually can't name the last time there was a poll where ponies not sold in the US were included alongside ones who were, so that kind of illustrates the point. Again, I know this is not a deliberate conspiracy. But I think there is more to be done as regards the 'mainstream'.
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Taffeta, calm down already. It's a fun poll, it's really not as big a deal as you're making it out to be. I understand UK ponies are important to you and that's fine, but instead of kicking up a fuss every time one is left out of a poll, maybe just make a poll yourself including the UK ponies? :)
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If only we had production numbers!!!! Oh Hasbro why couldn't you keep SOMETHING to answer our burning questions, 34 years later? :)
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Well, personally I think the "nirvana" label is silly and I don't use it. No offense to those who do, but to me it makes no sense at all. Some of the "nirvanas" are common (Italian Peachy), some are rare. So rarity alone is not a determining factor. Raindrop and Nightlight were made in Hong Kong (or China, can't remember) and are supposedly still nirvanas because they were only released in a few countries. But none of the US-exclusive Hong Kong / China ponies like Hollywood are considered nirvanas, because . . . ? Then the Thailand Fancy Pants Babies are NOT counted as nirvanas, but the Thailand Mountain Boys are--because one is common and the other isn't? But Italian Peachy is common too, lol. Yeah, I will never call any of my ponies 'nirvanas.'
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Well, personally I think the "nirvana" label is silly and I don't use it. No offense to those who do, but to me it makes no sense at all. Some of the "nirvanas" are common (Italian Peachy), some are rare. So rarity alone is not a determining factor. Raindrop and Nightlight were made in Hong Kong (or China, can't remember) and are supposedly still nirvanas because they were only released in a few countries. But none of the US-exclusive Hong Kong / China ponies like Hollywood are considered nirvanas, because . . . ? Then the Thailand Fancy Pants Babies are NOT counted as nirvanas, but the Thailand Mountain Boys are--because one is common and the other isn't? But Italian Peachy is common too, lol. Yeah, I will never call any of my ponies 'nirvanas.'
See, this is more the kind of discussion that I wanted to have in this thread. The way we classify ponies, and so on. And yeah, you make a really good point about Raindrop and company, who sit on a very uncomfortable line between European release and Nirvana for no really logical reason. That's also a symptom of the lines drawn 20 years ago, and it's also interesting how that hasn't changed either.
I always preferred the word 'variant' for ponies made in other countries than Hong Kong and China. The Thai fancy pants babies bother me on a lot of levels, as does NC Sundance, because they are almost mainstream Nirvana in a weird kind of a way. And then I suppose if you look at this from a European perspective, Italian ponies are so widespread on the continent that maybe they shouldn't really be Nirvana at all any more...although some are so rare that obviously they are. So you are right, there is a problem in this classification pool as well.
Taffeta, calm down already. It's a fun poll, it's really not as big a deal as you're making it out to be. I understand UK ponies are important to you and that's fine, but instead of kicking up a fuss every time one is left out of a poll, maybe just make a poll yourself including the UK ponies?
I respect you a lot and your opinions, even when we don't agree, but I think that was a little offensive. Maybe I wasn't clear, but the polls are symptomatic of what I'm talking about. I;m not having a little tantrum in my room about the fact Gypsy wasn't included in the unicorn poll. I actually didn't notice until someone mentioned in the CP poll that Bow Tie was left out, so I think you're blowing this out of proportion. Last time this came up as a topic I was told to make a thread about it in the Corral to discuss it, so I did so. That's all :)
My interest in this spans 20 years and the rationale for it isn't just about wanting UK ponies in everything. I ended up doing the UK thing because nobody else did, and then nobody else has ever wanted to. I love the UK ponies and their history, of course, but I am not about to go out in the streets of London with a placard demanding equal rights from the American Embassy. It's not like that at all.
I think it is an issue, though, that we're still using clunky terms and ideas from 20 years ago. The reason this is an ongoing problem for me (and the reason I don't just shut up but ask questions like this) is because I remember that there can be really big problems associated with the lack of proper information. It's not just all about marginalised UK pony childhoods - though I admit, I would like to see more inclusion of them. It's more the underlying issue as to why people don't think of those and the fact there's a kind of invisible way of categorising them that means they're not Nirvana but also not mainstream. And so they vanish.
Someone else a while back commented on how there are a lot of details that we used to know quite widely as a community but that now people tend to know more about the "Nirvana" ponies than they do the ones in the middle and that knowledge has been lost with people leaving and then coming in to the community fresh. People learn about US ponies and Nirvana ponies, but the other stuff is a bit more vague to a lot of people. I am constantly surprised at the questions that get asked about UK ponies, because most of the answers to those questions have been in community circulation for years. On the contrary, some of these same people are exceptional in their knowledge of variant ponies from other countries. This is also about personal preference. In that sense it is not a huge problem unless it impacts on trading and selling, although on a human level it does make me think there is less space now for UK ponies than there was in the past. (And, on that level, all the different pony releases across Europe because there are a lot and they aren't all the same as each other, or as the UK).
It has always bothered me that US collectors aren't able to sell or trade their exclusives at equal currency to the UK or European ones. The fact Hopscotch is worth more than Firefly is nuts to me. I also have experience dealing with that first hand. I went to war with someone some years back who was trying to convince a US person to trade their TAF baby for a Kiss Curl, as UK ponies were so rare and special that was all she was worth. I also remember the struggle to stamp out the rumours that a white haired UK posey existed and a lot of people lost money on that scam because they were persuaded that it was a real UK variation. This is why on every single pony on my site with fading pink hair I mention that the hair fades and this is not a variation, so that can't happen again. Even so I have seen people rumouring the existence of a pink haired Love Token within the last several years, and that's an OLD myth that had died a death but apparently not completely.
Of course, there was also the reverse Gusty custom scam. All of those issues were created by and perpetuated by people in the UK, but they were also facilitated by a murky information network among US collectors as well. These are only some examples. I haven't even begun with the scams of people claiming to have the "UK exclusive pony friend dolls" for sale because DV said they were UK exclusives and so everyone believed them, even though they didn't exist. I am a pretty tactless individual but it literally broke my heart seeing UK ponies and UK stuff being used as a way to scam people. There was also a backlash against UK people for "telling lies" that led to people being scammed or for "inventing ponies" that weren't on DV yet. So I made my website. And that's been my driving force behind getting the information out there and right for the last twenty years. Me making polls would achieve nothing as everyone knows how I classify ponies. It's a different problem of which the polls are a symptom, and the thing that made me think of it once again. I know none of the poll makers did anything wrong. It's a bigger thing than the choice of one person. It's addressing that group of ponies we no longer know how to classify.
I'm sorry for the longwinded explanation, but I want you to understand I'm not just an insane UK pony fangirl. I'm an insane UK pony fangirl too, but this isn't about making UK ponies shiny and top of the pile. It's about bringing them back into the awareness range so that those of us who remember them can share about them, and those of us who don't can know about them and not be taken for a ride. It's better for everyone if we stop looking back and start looking forward.
I think that is a big deal, but if you don't, that's also fine. Just I'd like to discuss the points raised more constructively if possible. Twenty years is a long time. I am pretty sure that I'll probably comment on this again in the future, but if we discuss the issues maybe at some point things will change for the better.
And yes, I admit, I have a pedantic hatred for the non-terms. We all have our geekish weaknesses. But for the record, I love Glory more than Gypsy and always will. Even though she wasn't available on shelves here ;).
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Wow, you really explained this issue well Taffeta. I agree, the U.K. ponies should be represented and not classified as nirvana. To me, the term nirvana means a pony not manufactured and designed by Hasbro but still licensed and real. The fact that we are excluding the UK ponies from the tittle of mainstream isn't ok. If you had UK ponies in your childhood, I think you would want them to be represented as mainstream and would be bothered by the fact that they aren't exactly considered that way. I think the ways to help this issue would be to use terms other than NSS, NBBE, etc and to change our mindsets. I feel like people aren't really taking this seriously. There is an issue a member is trying to talk about because it's bothering them, and we should listen.
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Wow, you really explained this issue well Taffeta. I agree, the U.K. ponies should be represented and not classified as nirvana. To me, the term nirvana means a pony not manufactured and designed by Hasbro but still licensed and real. The fact that we are excluding the UK ponies from the tittle of mainstream isn't ok. If you had UK ponies in your childhood, I think you would want them to be represented as mainstream and would be bothered by the fact that they aren't exactly considered that way. I think the ways to help this issue would be to use terms other than NSS, NBBE, etc and to change our mindsets. I feel like people aren't really taking this seriously. There is an issue a member is trying to talk about because it's bothering them, and we should listen.
Thank you <3 And cookies for being brave enough to read my post. I know it's a wall of text >.>.
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Well, personally I think the "nirvana" label is silly and I don't use it. No offense to those who do, but to me it makes no sense at all. Some of the "nirvanas" are common (Italian Peachy), some are rare. So rarity alone is not a determining factor. Raindrop and Nightlight were made in Hong Kong (or China, can't remember) and are supposedly still nirvanas because they were only released in a few countries. But none of the US-exclusive Hong Kong / China ponies like Hollywood are considered nirvanas, because . . . ? Then the Thailand Fancy Pants Babies are NOT counted as nirvanas, but the Thailand Mountain Boys are--because one is common and the other isn't? But Italian Peachy is common too, lol. Yeah, I will never call any of my ponies 'nirvanas.'
Someone told me they were called nirvanas, because it was heavenly to own them. ^.^
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Well, personally I think the "nirvana" label is silly and I don't use it. No offense to those who do, but to me it makes no sense at all. Some of the "nirvanas" are common (Italian Peachy), some are rare. So rarity alone is not a determining factor. Raindrop and Nightlight were made in Hong Kong (or China, can't remember) and are supposedly still nirvanas because they were only released in a few countries. But none of the US-exclusive Hong Kong / China ponies like Hollywood are considered nirvanas, because . . . ? Then the Thailand Fancy Pants Babies are NOT counted as nirvanas, but the Thailand Mountain Boys are--because one is common and the other isn't? But Italian Peachy is common too, lol. Yeah, I will never call any of my ponies 'nirvanas.'
Someone told me they were called nirvanas, because it was heavenly to own them. ^.^
That is probably the sweetest definition I have ever heard :biggrin:
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Well, personally I think the "nirvana" label is silly and I don't use it. No offense to those who do, but to me it makes no sense at all. Some of the "nirvanas" are common (Italian Peachy), some are rare. So rarity alone is not a determining factor. Raindrop and Nightlight were made in Hong Kong (or China, can't remember) and are supposedly still nirvanas because they were only released in a few countries. But none of the US-exclusive Hong Kong / China ponies like Hollywood are considered nirvanas, because . . . ? Then the Thailand Fancy Pants Babies are NOT counted as nirvanas, but the Thailand Mountain Boys are--because one is common and the other isn't? But Italian Peachy is common too, lol. Yeah, I will never call any of my ponies 'nirvanas.'
Someone told me they were called nirvanas, because it was heavenly to own them. ^.^
If you had to study Japanese war tales, and saw the things that my warriors did in the name of attaining rebirth in the pure land "Nirvana" ...
Though a lot of those things were done on horseback, they also often involved...erm...violent things.
I confess I also now expect to see Amida appearing in a mass of purple clouds when anyone mentions Nirvana.
Then again, when you think about what the name Sundance really means, perhaps it's not so inappropriate after all...
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I thought Nirvana was to attain the highest form of enlightenment? Yes to the Sundance. ouch and no thanks! We humans sure have had some interesting ways to express our spirituality.
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I thought Nirvana was to attain the highest form of enlightenment?
In theory...
But try telling that to a bunch of very aggressive Japanese mediaeval warriors.
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I thought Nirvana was to attain the highest form of enlightenment?
In theory...
But try telling that to a bunch of very aggressive Japanese mediaeval warriors.
True.
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I thought Nirvana was to attain the highest form of enlightenment?
In theory...
But try telling that to a bunch of very aggressive Japanese mediaeval warriors.
True.
And now the mainstream pony thread has gone from pony classification to forms of ritual related torture...
Erm, sorry mods.
Back on topic O.o.
So maybe LM is actually the one that hit it on the head by identifying the problems with that Nirvana categorisation. Perhaps because that's so blurry, this is so blurry, and it's all kind of imploded since then. Though it does concern me that some of the old rumours I thought had been stamped out of the community long ago are slowly creeping back in. It's a short step from that to the problems of the past and that's a concern to me because the information wasn't available then but it is now and we could do much more with it.
Though in credit to the Wiki, the people there work really hard to give a very cross-cultural feel to the information they include, with MIP images, and stuff. And now with Chrissytree's accessory site variations there are going to become more well known, which is awesome. I think we can still do a lot with this, but it really for me does start with something as little as just remembering ponies when it comes to poll choices...what is the old saying?
Out of sight, out of mind?
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As someone who is in Australia, this is important, too! Identifying US exclusives, and what ponies actually are available in what places naturally is super important to people that are outside the major distribution centres. Obviously there's the mail orders, but there were plenty of other supposedly common US ponies that I've found it harder to find over here, only to realise they probably weren't released here at all, and that I'd have to go to overseas sellers for. And sometimes I picked up those ponies super cheap, which to me was weird, because I'd never seen one in the wild before, but over there they were everywhere. I'd have paid a mint, but US sellers were getting peanuts, not realising it wasn't available anywhere but there! I'm actually encountering this with other things as well. Things considered plain and common in the US are getting hard to find, because the people who got them assign no value, and therefore don't sell them, it drives me crazy!
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I tend to define ponies by either where they were made or where they were sold, so I have started to refer to them in general as "made in hong kong/china", "not made in HK/china", US, Euro, and varients
I have to admit, I tend to forget ones like CP AJ and Bowtie, or I call them varients because they came out after the US shy pose ones, I think the year after?
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As a lover of G1, living in the UK, it was only last year (when I joined the Arena) that I learned about how different ponies were sold in different countries, so if you had asked me last year what a mainstream pony was I would have listed all the UK ones that I had received in my childhood; discovering that Gypsy + Snowflake were not sold in the US was an eye-opener; discovering that my beloved Honeycomb was instead sold as "Surprise" with no glittery bees, was also an "oh really?!" moment!
Furthermore, mail-order exclusives, US-only flutter ponies, I had no idea! I used to buy the comic and just assumed that certain pony characters had not made it to the toy-production stage; I remembered how hard it was for my Dad to find Cotton Candy, so ponies (for me, anyway) were always difficult to find + buy, thus extra-special to actually finally own, so I was quite satisfied with my limited herd and Dream Castle/Majesty as she was a popular character in the stories. :lol:
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Thank you for adding your thoughts!! It is comforting to know other people think about this too. It has long been an intention of mine to produce a checklist to deal with ponies in context with their global releases rather than the outdated system mostly used at the moment, but I realised that even if I did, it being hidden away on my website makes it not mainstream by association, because of this idea that non US is the periphery. I have wondered how to deal with that for a while. It makes no sense that my site is the only place that states US exclusives because it is a UK site but really it does it because nowhere else does and it ought to be better than that. While I would love everybody to use my site ;) realistically what I really want is to make sure the information is being made available for everyone.
I also would love to have a better understanding of Australia and NZ...Malaysia and Singapore...and also all the different European releases. My information on these is full of holes and so the Scrapbook probably makes tons of wrong assumptions because of this.
I guess I want to understand more about mainstream in different countries.
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Um.
To go along with what you're saying, just pointing out, if I may add...
Canada is not part of the US.
We get totally forgotten because everyone assumes we get the exact same releases as them. But in reality, saying "mainstream" ponies are US/Canada is also inaccurate. I've thought about a similar sort of thing as what you're saying. It's frustrating sometimes that no one seems to realize that Hasbro does not sell ponies in Canada. Hasbro Canada does, different company. Just like there are different Hasbros set up in other areas of the world as well. And just like those other Hasbros, Hasbro Canada may or may not pick up the rights to the various sets of ponies available. The difference between Canada (and other countries) plight and the UK's is that, unlike Hasbro UK, Hasbro Canada does not make their own sets of ponies. So we don't have anything like Mountain Boys to draw attention to the fact that our market is different too.
What's frustrating is the lack of information I have as a collector in Canada. It's exactly what Stormness said. I don't know what wasn't available here in G1. I don't know if there's things that I won't run across in thrift (charity) stores that I should be focusing on finding online. I have to just assume that my childhood ponies were the ones I find listed as 'US' now. (How's that for misplaced childhood?) But I have found things that are listed as 'international' (meaning European) in thrift stores enough times that I really question it. In the last few months I've found three supposedly European G2s. I can't know if these were presents from relatives in Europe that were sent here, or if they were store-bought here. I remember G2 coming out, being upset that they weren't like G1 and ever after not keeping track of them in stores. I remember seeing the 'US' ones collecting dust on shelves for a long time, but I didn't note if there were also 'European' ones in later years because I wasn't watching. Now, through the years, I have run across almost the same number of 'European' G2s (6) in my thrift stores as I've found 'US' G2s (7). But a sample size of just-me is nowhere near enough to draw any actual conclusions. Maybe I just have freakish luck and keep getting ponies that were originally imports? But the thing is, if Hasbro Canada could get pony rights from Hasbro US, couldn't they also have got them from Hasbro UK?
Way back when I was confused because when I went to look up a pony I'd found, she was listed as a German variant. This was purple haired Pretty Beat and at the time I found mine, there weren't enough of them in the pony community to say for sure about her. She'd only been found in Germany. The community informed me that mine had clearly been brought here from Germany because everyone knows that Canada gets the same ponies as the US. Since then, of course, she's been found elsewhere and is now thought of as European. But.... Canada is elsewhere isn't it? Why was mine brushed off and not the other ones that were discovered outside of Germany? Why was that bit of pony knowledge amended for them but not Canada? I couldn't make a big deal about it because of course it's absolutely true that maybe she was brought here by some kid moving to Canada. Maybe the fact that I've found three 'rare' blue-heart Dazzleglows and no 'common' pink-heart ones is just more of my weird pony luck. I've never actually thought to ask any of the other Canadian collectors if they've found any pink-heart Dazzleglows in store because everyone knows that Canada gets the same ponies as the US.
I remember in childhood seeing some of the 'US' mail order ponies in brochures. So I know for sure we got at least some of them. But I know we didn't get the Christmas baby because she was through Rice Krispies (even though we do have Rice Krispies, the send-aways are not the same), and yet she's listed as 'US mail order'. We certainly didn't get the Valentines babies because I'd never heard of the chain that they came from before. So what does that mean about the Chuck-E-Cheese baby? We had Chuck-E-Cheese restaurants up here, but the prizes weren't necessarily the same as the US ones. Would Chuck-E-Cheeses in Canada have to miss out on it because Hasbro Canada didn't have them, or would they be allowed to bring up ones from Hasbro US as an American chain? Or did Hasbro Canada order that one? Did we get her or not? I don't know because everyone just assumes that Canada gets the same ponies as the US. And if one turns up in a thrift up here how do we know it didn't come from the States?
You see, packaging law in Canada states that everything written on them must also be translated in French. It doesn't specify what else or where the packaging must come from, so I have seen plenty of European goods sold here legally. But most American packaging only has English, so it is illegal for them to just ship up stock and sell it here. Anything American companies want to sell in their stores in Canada have to be repackaged to include French. (This is a small part of why Target failed so dramatically. They didn't figure in all that extra cost when they promised to sell everything for US prices.) For things that get small runs (like, for example, mail orders), it's often not worth the extra cost to repackage and we just lose out. In G3 we got mixed results. Canadian TRUs carried their exclusive birthstone set, but not their exclusive birthflower set. We only had Target a short time here during G4, so we didn't get the early and late Target sets, but did get the middle stuff. Strangely, a certain Canadian chain was getting the rights to a few early Target exclusives before we had Target here and they saw a limited, non-Target release. But those are still identified as having been Target exclusives online. Canada didn't count. We were the first place in the world that certain G3 Breezies showed up, so they were called Canadian exclusives for a short period.... until they appeared in Europe and they became 'European' exclusives. But look, there it is again! We had them in Canada. They aren't European exclusives. And yet..... Everyone knows that Canada gets the same ponies as the US. And hey, did Australia get those Breezies? Did Asia? I don't know because they're labelled 'European' exclusives.
The kicker is that G3 and G4 happened when the internet meant that the knowledge was out there. Yes, Canada did have those Breezies. They weren't easy to find (I never saw them in stores). This brings two things to mind: One, what don't we know about Canadian distribution from the time before collectors were sharing all this knowledge as releases happened? If Canada had 'European' G3s, how do we know for sure we didn't get 'European' G2 and G1? Like, say, purple haired Pretty Beat? And two, what Taffeta says is absolutely true, the community is still skewing things in a US-centric way, despite knowing full well otherwise. Sites that list things as 'UK', 'European', or 'International' actually mean 'outside the US' without any regard as to where it really was. 'Mainstream' actually means 'available in the US'.
Sorry. I think I beat your wall of text length... :(
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No, your wall of text was amazing. I shall doubtless respond with a wall of my own, since it's been a long day and I'm liable to be incoherent. But what you said was important and really true. I'm glad that someone from Canada came in on this and I admit, I'm guilty of this one as well. The problem I have being in the UK is that I have genuinely no idea what was or wasn't in Canada. And I feel in this quandary where if I say US only, I feel people think I don't know Canada is not the US, but if I say US/Canada, am I making an unfair assumption?
But you made me think of something I hadn't thought about before.
Australian/NZ pony info is still a bit hazy but the bits and pieces I think I know suggests a mixture of what we think of as "US" ponies and what we think of as "European" ponies. Particularly the later years there are ponies like the Bedtime newborns, although I seem to remember they had their own release style thing there. But then Australia had some things that we didn't have. I don't know if any Australians had Flutterbye from new as a child on a European card. I know someone who has one who says she got it from Australia, but the card is marked UK. Those cards appeared in Scandinavia and in South Africa according to collector testimony in those places. They are in English, but marked UK and never sold here at all.
The relationship with Scandinavia and UK cards is a complete mystery except that it must relate to some kind of trading arrangement and the fact cards in Scandinavia in the native languages are not that common...but with Australia and New Zealand, and South Africa there is another trading relationship involved. I'm also aware that Malaysia and Singapore had some items. Someone here told me a while back they had Mountain Boys in Malaysia when she was there as a kid because she had one. These countries also fit into that trading bloc. Of course, I mean the Commonwealth. This is a trade relationship Canada has with these countries that America doesn't.
Another interesting tidbit for you. With G4, we've been turning up stock in the last couple of years here which are marked as coming from hasbro Canada. The UK are receiving your end of line stuff. Not the American end of line stuff. The Canadian end of line stuff. So that trade relationship works that way around. Why could it not have done in the past?
And as for the languages and the cards and releases, there's so much complexity there. It's one of the reasons I love cards so much. There is such a lot you can learn from them and what they say, what they show, etc. Not all mysteries are in the cards but a good few are. I'm also fascinated that Hasbro Canada's french name is Ma Petite Pouliche, I think? And France it's Mon Petit Poney. But I have what we traditionally consider US-style cards and pearly baby sea ponies on French/Dutch language cards and a Dutch collector contact who swears blind those ponies weren't sold in the Netherlands...so were those only in Belgium? We tend to assume Netherlands and Belgium, Luxembourg kind of cross-over, but I've been having interesting conversations with this collector about all the potential differences between European markets.
As for the reason why the info is there for the UK, it;s really more because I'm stubborn and I've been here since 1998, when half of the UK ponies were still not known about online. And I mean stubborn, because I got threats when I first put my site up, because it contradicted Dream Valley. I had one girl tell me that her boyfriend was in England and she had my address so she knew where I lived and basically she wanted me to take down my website, or else.The reason we have such a US centric mindset towards MLP is because that site perpetuated untruths about international ponies for a long time and it took a lot of people from the UK and Europe constantly complaining to get it changed. But if you're not an American collector, or you're not writing about things from a US perspective, you are automatically on the periphery. It doesn't matter if you're right or not. When you're periphery, you're seen as a specialist on a particular field but not considered to have good knowledge of the 'mainstream' issues. And that makes it very hard to get rid of myths and rumours, when these 'mainstream' sources are still putting them about. A good current example "UK White Tootsie", which Strawberry Reef still claims is a UK variant, even though she's not, and never has been, and that information has been available online since about the year 1999...yet people still use this site a lot and so I bet a lot of people still think white Tootsie is a UK variant. O.o. And that myth came from DV originally...another 'mainstream' source.
Lunar-scythe mentioned the CP ponies coming out the year after the shy pose Applejack and Bow Tie. Actually, they were sold at the same time as the y3 set in the US, so they're equivalent to that set. They're our versions of the Bow Tie and AJ from that set, but they're not variants. They're Groom & Style Bow Tie and Applejack. CP AJ and Bow Tie is also ok though, as they are that pose. Just they're no less second edition AJ and Bow Tie than the y3 ponies are. Just, the US ones aren't considered variants, and that's only because they're in the US line.
As regards childhood ponies and the term "US pony".
My first pony was Windy, the rainbow pony. She's spent her entire life, (since she left Hong Kong, lol, approx 33 years) in the UK. She came on a UK style vertical card that my mother, bless her, remembers. That Windy was made and packaged for the UK market, on a UK card, and sold in a UK shop for £sterling. She was played with in UK gardens, taken to UK school and now lives in a UK cupboard.
I'd really like to know what about my Windy makes her a "US" pony, just because the pony character "Windy" was also sold in other countries than the UK?
Im not really attacking American collectors or the US release ponies or anything like that with this post. It's really partly because the US people have been so forward with information that we're in this situation as well, because that information got out there. BUT there is a place now for a more balanced approach than we had back when it all began. I believe this and have done for a long time. It would just be really nice for once to not see "non-" terms being used, or "UK variant" or "US pony" for a pony I grew up with ><.
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This is a tricky subject for certain. I am not sure what the best answer is. As I am new to collecting, perhaps I am also labouring under incorrect illusions? My understanding of the term 'Nirvana' was ponies that were manufactured in countries other than Hong Kong or China, and as such had no real bearing on their rarity or lack thereof. Whereas 'variant' was a pony that was still manufactured in the same country as its stablemates (for want of a better word) of the same kind but which had some quirk or feature that made it different from them and in some way unique. Such as pink hearts vs. blue hearts Dazzleglow to use BabyIceCrystal's example.
Here in South Africa we are mainly known for a tiny handful of ponies, which are very hard to find. However we too had many of the so-called 'normal' ponies.
So I think the definition of 'mainstream' is going to be rather difficult in itself and highly subjective depending on which country a person is from. What is perfectly normal to someone living in one country, someone living in a different country finds amazing. This is true of many things. Perhaps this is where the difficulty lies: people are inclined, quite naturally, to define things by their own level of 'normal'. I am not sure what the solution is, especially as we would ideally like this term or these terms to become more widely used. As such it would have to be simple and simple can be deceptively complicated.
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Wasn't there a time when Dream Valley said the blue Hearts Dazzleglow wasn't sold in North America? My blue hearts Dazzleglow also came from Canada. As much as I loved Dream Valley for rekindling my love of ponies that I thought I would never be in to as an adult there was some wrong information on there that wasn't corrected. One page mentioned not having a confirmed account of Beddy Bye Eyes Baby Gusty's duck toy wheel colors. I sent an email to the owner of the site noting the correct duck toy wheel color as I had BBE Gusty growing up and she was the only baby pony I had that came with a duck toy. I never got an acknowledgement for the information or saw the corrected info on the website.
I have been guilty of using terms like the ones Taffeta mentioned to describe European ponies but will be more careful about that from now on. I'm happy we have so many international collectors here. :)
Ponyfan
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I should re emphasise that US collectors are not villains at all. This thread has exposed the gaps and mistakes we all make and its really interesting seeing all the different issues.
@NightGlider, the term variant predates the term Nirvana and was the term used for ponies made in other places from the norm, which is really why it doesn't make sense to me with uk ponies. Uk version is fine but variant is something else to me.
@Ponyfan...in a word yes. I guess you don't want to know how long that rumour took to debunk. A clue...I still have the info proving it is not from the UK on my site.
I had very bad experiences with DV. . I have heard similar from other UK people who remember that time.
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In Australia, we got all different stock from various countries. I distinctly remember choosing between Ruby Lips and Kiss n' Make Up in Toyworld as a child (I took Ruby Lips, she was skinny like me, I was constantly teased for being too tiny) so there were a varying assortment of ponies here. I also have G4 blind bags from both Europe and US, sometimes from the same wave, in the same store, the re-stock being from a different origin. We also got the 'euro' breezies, but not the 'euro' G2s. We have VERY strange distribution as a rule, because there is no such thing as Hasbro Australia.
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No, your wall of text was amazing. I shall doubtless respond with a wall of my own, since it's been a long day and I'm liable to be incoherent. But what you said was important and really true. I'm glad that someone from Canada came in on this and I admit, I'm guilty of this one as well. The problem I have being in the UK is that I have genuinely no idea what was or wasn't in Canada. And I feel in this quandary where if I say US only, I feel people think I don't know Canada is not the US, but if I say US/Canada, am I making an unfair assumption?
Actually same here, it seems I've stayed up all night doing pony things and now it's 1:30 in the afternoon, I don't know which end up up, and I'm still thinking about all the variables that might have been weird about ponies in Canada. So I'll just touch a few points and then likely get back to this thread in the future when I remember how to think straight.
I'm also guilty of the same thing that's an issue for non-US 'US' collectors. It's a fact that we did get a large number of 'US' things here, which is why we have to just sort of assume we use the 'US' list. Sadly I also use terms like that because I feel like it's the accepted way of doing things. Which is what this very thread is about. It really shouldn't be the accepted way of doing things.
But you made me think of something I hadn't thought about before.
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Of course, I mean the Commonwealth. This is a trade relationship Canada has with these countries that America doesn't.
Absolutely. And that is something that we in Canada tend to take for granted as normal. We're actually in a strange position here in that we're in much closer proximity to the States and tend to be lumped in with their products and culture (not just talking ponies here of course). Even more so before the internet. But we also have quite a large amount of our own culture that we assume is from the States because everything else is, AND a large amount of culture from our connection with the UK, the Commonwealth, and from other colonial sources. I was well into adulthood before I realized that there were children's shows I assumed were American that they'd never heard of. I thought Polka-dot Door was a part of Sesame Street because it aired right afterwards (it's Canadian). I thought Simon in the Land of Chalk Drawings was American as well despite the accent. Obviously that one came from the UK. Seems stupid now, but as a child I was so used to hearing Canadian, American, and RP British accents that I just never even noticed the difference. I am still completely confused when Americans say they can't understand the dialogue in Doctor Who (which, BTW, we also had in Canada growing up).
My point is, when we Canadians first started seeing places like DV, we didn't really think twice about being lumped in with the States and just assumed everything stated there was fact for us as well. Our childhood collections were close enough to those lists that we didn't question it. Yes, DV was a huge blessing plus curse. There were so few collectors outside of the US therefore the information available was almost exclusively US therefore anything outside of it's experience was considered outside the norm. Remember how long the argument about yellow Moondancer went on? It was forever before the community accepted that it was real. And yes, I remember there being numerous things wrong with what was listed on DV. But as it was the biggest, closest thing to official we had, it was the bible of the community. Clearly that still effects us to this day.
I'm also not trying to argue against the US line, or US based sites listing information, or anything like that. It makes absolute sense that US sites being the foundation of the pony community means that what was built on from there was US-centric. The catch is that now that these ways of thinking are so ingrained in the information stream, how do we allow for expanding that view to include other experiences? The reason I use SS Magic Star and NSS Magic Star is because that is the code that grew up in the community and we all know what it means. If I just put Magic Star on my trade list, how do people know without having to ask if she will be standing on all fours or will be flocked? If I don't want to use the term NSS because it doesn't match half the communities' childhood (which makes perfect sense), how then should I efficiently make it clear that this is what I have? If I say UK Magic Star, now it excludes other countries. I will admit my ignorance here and say I have no idea what the collection this pony was in is called, and I'm probably not alone in that. Should we now expect that the community in general stop using SS/NSS and universally learn a different code? Perhaps whatever that collection is called? Although that would be ideal, such a mass re-education does not happen easily.
Another tangent.... this reminds me of reading a German talk years ago about first hearing of SS versions of all these ponies. SS of course having an entirely different non-pony meaning for her.
I'm also fascinated that Hasbro Canada's french name is Ma Petite Pouliche, I think? And France it's Mon Petit Poney.
Uh oh, you've noticed a dirty little not-so-secret! Now, I'm not French Canadian, so I might not be relating this in quite the correct way (where's drucilla?), but here's some light on that for you: the Québecois are fiercely protective of being French! So much so that a number of French words weren't French enough. Poney just happens to be one example. The France French word poney was too close to the English word pony, so Québecois developed a more French sounding French word for it, which is Pouliche. This all happened long enough ago that the French they speak in France and the French they speak in Quebec (Québecois) have branched off into their own dialects. Now they're different enough that the two might not always understand each other. A French Canadian friend of mine with a very thick accent told me he went to visit Paris and had such difficulty speaking to a Parisian that they both switched from their native French to English because it was easier!
Oh, one other spanner in the works..... import stores. We have a large number of British import stores here because we have a large number of British ex-pats. They bring in direct imports, which they are perfectly alright to sell as long as they follow the packaging rules. If ponies were to have been brought in this way, they would have bypassed Hasbro Canada entirely, yet been legally sold in stores here. What would that mean if that were the case? I don't know if MLP specifically was ever brought in in this way, but who knows? More recently, we have a big chain called Starsky's which is billed as a European Import grocery store. They bring in a large amount of products from various countries in exactly the same way. I used to buy Turkish hand soap from there.
If we have so many of these things here, I can't imagine why other countries wouldn't have them as well. So maybe the whole idea of official products belonging only to certain countries is flawed right from the start.
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That explains why I did 9 years of (European >.>) French and never saw the word Pouliche except on a pony card. So cool to know. I think the same happens with different forms of English. I have a good friend from Michigan who I lived with for a year during my Masters' degree and she and I had some hilarious conversations about the words we both use in our respective countries...and the way they're interpreted overseas. She announced very loudly one day that she was just putting her pants on so we could go out. Fortunately she didn't do that in public, but we were much amused. And so was she, ten seconds later, when she realised what she'd said where ;)
...I digress. I'm heading to bed in a second, but I guess my point is that some things are lost in cultural translation even within the same languages.
Re: Magic Star - Movie Star pony.
The way I see this is that basically, most sets go online by the US name default. As a UK person who grew up with different names, I have had to learn all the US names for ponies and sets in order to communicate with people. Like you said, how else will people know what pony you mean? For example, the POTD recently is Li'l Pocket, the Precious Pocket pony. For me, growing up here, her name is Jingle Pocket and she's a Pocket Friends pony. But I see Li'l Pocket and I know what that means, because I have to in order to know what's going on. Collectors from overseas where their ponies were sold in different languages and with different names have the same problem as well only on a bigger scale. Einhornbaby mentioned in the Cookery pony thread the German names from that set the other day.
It makes sense for there to be a default through which we can communicate about pony names and set names, although I love the UK names and am proud of them, so I will use them. Still, when it comes to sets not sold in the US, those set names are still valid. Cookery Pony. Romance Pony. Schooltime Pony. Nobody has any issue with those. So for me Movie Star Pony and Play and Care Set Pony are the same as those. The only reason those names aren't used is because the US also had versions of the same pony. Nobody refers to FT Baby Lickety Split as NBBE Baby Lickety Split. Technically she doesn't have BBEs either, so I don't really understand why Play & Care Set Baby Lickety should be singled out for not having a feature. It literally is only because the US already has a version of that pony, and that isn't to me a logical reason to classify a pony as a non-pony. In the past we didn't have all the data for their real set names and stuff available online like we do now, but even the Wiki uses Play & Care Set, I think. It's not that the information isn't there. I've been using those terms on my site for years. It's more about changing the mindset and habits and unfortunately that's really hard to do.
On another subject, and in regards to both Canada and Australia and weird import, the UK had a lot of weird import relationships through stores as well. Woolworths used to import US MLP sets en masse as store exclusives. So we had the weird issue of the Candy Canes which appeared in most stores in the European style box with the borders, and then in Woolworths in the US box. The European set consisted of four ponies. The other, six. So Mint Dreams and Lemon Treats were Woolworths' exclusives. And yet even though she didn't officially exist here, Lemon Treats is in the story for Sugar Sweet on the UK box. And I thought I never saw any Candy Canes in stores, but I must have done, because I found a childhood christmas list of mine on which I wrote the name "Molasses". Her name in the UK is officially Gingerbread, so I must have seen her in the US box in Woolworths.
I still don't 100% know how the Happytails Ponies got here. I know they did. They were in US boxes, though, so they mustve been imports. And we also had a similar odd relationship with the Brush & Grows. As a kid, my Braided Beauty came in a box. I never thought about it at all until I was talking to another UK person and she mentioned them being on card here. They were. They were on card AND in box. The same six ponies, except the walking pose Twisty Tail on card and the Love Melody one in box.
These little details make things a lot more complex. It's also what really persuaded me that the only way to make sense of all the 'mainstream' G1 is to really look at them all together, because otherwise you're making unnatural separation. I mean, with the B&G, they were all sold in the US in boxes. The same ones were all sold in the UK in boxes. The walking pose Twisty Tail was also sold in the UK on card, all the others were sold here on cards as well. Are we going to segregate just Twisty Tail for having a different version? That really doesn't make any sense at all.
And then there are other oddities like Buttons and Baby Heart Throb. Buttons here has two different versions. They're sold on the same card. Same release. Just one has the US SS pony's symbol, and the other has buttons and stars. Ironically the buttons and stars symbol appears on the card for SS buttons, who doesn't have this symbol. The three large buttons symbol appears on the Movie Star card, and the pony doesn't always have that symbol (but can in the UK and doesn't in some other countries. So much so that some people in Scandinavia think all large button symbol Buttons ponies are deflocks.) There are so many of them here and we didn't have SS ponies that that's unlikely...but why only in the UK? How did they happen? And the Heart Throb - ours has just hearts, like the BBE baby, but in some European countries she has winged hearts, which is how she's always drawn in the UK.
I could add tons of other complications like this. The comic always drew Baby Splashes with purple hair, for example, although she always came here with pink and blue. That means they worked from a US promotion image to draw the pony, and that happened with our promotional stuff a lot. (Blue heart Dazzleglow another example).
And at the end of line we had a lot of continental end of line imports in French, Spanish, German packages. Which makes the idea of a strictly "UK" line kind of ridiculous really...
And a lot of the ponies which get called UK are UK/Europe but not necessarily all of Europe, and maybe Australasia as well, though not necessarily. And some that are called UK/Euro are actually UK only...as far as we know right now >.>.
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This is definitely a challenge as the pony collecting community becomes more globalized. I was born in the U.S. but spent part of my childhood and my teen years in Germany, so I saw both early U.S. releases of MLP as well as some of the MLP available in central Europe. I didn't realize until I became an adult collector that I had a Nirvana pony (neon-hair Italian Parasol) in my childhood collection and that my Princess Tiffany, who I remember buying packaged on a card in a German Toys'R Us store, was released differently than she was in the U.S. (no box, no bushwoolie, although she has white hair unlike the rarer yellow-haired release). My sister remembers seeing a dark blue rainbow pony in stores as a child (sadly she bought a different one, or we were shopping but not buying at the time), but in the early years of the Internet, U.S. collectors had never seen Nightlight and didn't believe such a pony existed.
We do need a common language to describe variations in pony releases, however, and the existing terms ("NSS", "NBBE", "Euro", "Nirvana", etc.) may be too ingrained in the community to change easily. Can we accept some of these for now, understanding that they were developed with a bias toward regarding U.S. releases as "mainstream" but are still useful, and having a tolerance for the evolving provenance of our terms?
Perhaps the first step in addressing these concerns (as it is in social issues in RL) is to raise awareness so collectors are aware of and can share information about the differences in distribution and variations on a particular pony across the world. I would be interested to hear from Canadian and Australian collectors, for example, what ponies they remember seeing in stores as a child and how they were packaged, since it does appear that their G1 and G2 pony distributions were different, both from the United States and from parts of Europe where the distribution patterns are slightly better documented/understood. Goodness knows, the G4 distribution is outrageously crazy to make sense of, and that's even with collectors able to upload screenshots to the Internet real-time when they find something new in a local store!
I like that ponies of all generations are featured in POTD. I think this helps collectors see beyond the generations/categories where they normally collect. Perhaps in a similar way interested collectors should post polls and pictures and foster less technical discussions to share information about non-U.S. variations and distribution patterns.
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@Raindrop, I think you make a lot of sense with what you said.
Re: terms - I don't know what other people think or feel about those. I know that things like Euro, Nirvana, and even "variant" for non-US versions of ponies I can tolerate, but I genuinely find NBBE and NSS offensive because they are generally targeted only towards ponies who are "foreign" and not all ponies who meet the same characteristics. You don't hear people talk about NSS Cherries Jubilee, for example. In a global community there should be no "foreign".
I think though that the terms are only really offensive to me because it's a symptom of the fact that everything has to be looked at from the US perspective rather than from different perspectives. I think if there were more discussions about that, more awareness in polls - even POTD not using "US version" in polls for ponies sold globally would help. I sort of feel like if I can learn all the US names for sets and ponies just to be able to communicate about ponies, though, it's a very little thing for people to stop using negative terms like NBBE and NSS. Even calling them regular versions would be better, if the set names are problematic. Still, if the community didn't feel so US-centric about everything, I don't think I'd notice quite as much. I admit that the terms have become more offensive to me as time has pushed pony stuff into either being US release or Nirvana than I did in the years past when people were talking about other stuff more and still finding out information. I have been in several discussion in the last few years when I've been told what the accessories were for a pony or a playset because that's what the US had, but as Chrissytree's site is proving, there are a lot of cases where different locations have different accessories. It's hard to ID the stuff you have when your country's release and the official information network don't match up. But it's only by challenging the assumed view of pony releases and ponies in general that we find out that stuff. Getting rid of NBBE and NSS is just a step in that process for me.
The term Nirvana may be problematic but at least it is a positive term. And as for Euro...I genuinely don't know how we tackle that one because of the number of permutations. But we can stop calling globally sold ponies US ponies, and reclaim the international term to mean what the word actually means, rather than using it as a byword for stuff not in the US.
I also really want to hear more stuff about Canada and Australia, and also the different releases across Europe in different parts. There are too many forgotten areas of the world which we haven't bothered to find out about yet :/
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@Raindrop, I think you make a lot of sense with what you said.
Re: terms - I don't know what other people think or feel about those. I know that things like Euro, Nirvana, and even "variant" for non-US versions of ponies I can tolerate, but I genuinely find NBBE and NSS offensive because they are generally targeted only towards ponies who are "foreign" and not all ponies who meet the same characteristics. You don't hear people talk about NSS Cherries Jubilee, for example. In a global community there should be no "foreign".
Actually, right now every pony with "NBBE" in the title on eBay is Cuddles or Tiddly-Winks. ;) I've seen ponies like Sundance and Surprise get advertised as NSS. IMO it's just a way to quickly get across "this is the one without flocking" / "this is the one with normal eyes".
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Wow, what a great topic. From my Canadian perspective I would like to second everything BabyIceCrystal said. I also hate being lumped in with the US because things are very different here. Unfortunately there isn't very much information about early distribution. I can tell you from current distribution of both ponies and other brands that we get a lot of toys showing up here that the US didn't get but Europe or The UK got. From researching other toy lines and brands there has been speculation of Canada getting UK only items for example UK Care Bears. I'm not very involved in that community anymore but I remember lots of debate back in the early 2000's about some people swearing they had those bears in their childhood collections in Canada. I have found UK bears in thrift stores here and my high school boyfriend remembers having Playful Heart Monkey. In my research on my Unicorn and Pegasus Puffalumps I've discovered they were Canada only releases. In current toy lines I've found G4's here in store that were never found in the US. There are tons of US items that I have never been able to find here in store. I would love to know more about Canadian G1 distribution but there really isn't any information anywhere.
As for the terms used, it's all about perspective. Most of the ID sites are American and that is where we learn the terms and where we learn what was available where. Like BabyIceCrystal said, I have no idea if there are US sets that weren't sold in Canada that I should be buying on ebay because I'll never find them in a thrift store here. I love UK and Euro ponies and I have done lots of reading on them and shopping for my collection. But I have no idea which ponies from the US were not available in the UK or Europe because these ID sites don't tell me that. I have used terms like NBBE in the past but as a positive, more desirable term. Making sure that people know I do NOT mean the BBE version, it's the NBBE I want, don't mess that up, lol. Since I've known that is offensive to you I have changed how I describe ponies so I use the term regular eye version. I don't know all the set names, not UK or US so I won't always remember what is what or I worry the person I'm talking to will have no idea what set I'm talking about so Regular Eye version is safer. So I think sometimes people simply aren't as knowledgeable on the topic and go with the commonly used terms that they see.
There was much more I wanted to say but after reading 3 pages of posts, plus it's 1 am, I'm forgetting my points. I do want to say that I love these topics because it is eye opening for people and very informative. I learn a lot from these conversations . I think your checklist is a great idea Taffeta and I look forward to it. I did know that your site has better information on different country releases but I seem to always default to the US sites. I will be reading through it to refresh my memory and will be referencing it more now since country releases is something I'm very interested in.
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@Raindrop, I think you make a lot of sense with what you said.
Re: terms - I don't know what other people think or feel about those. I know that things like Euro, Nirvana, and even "variant" for non-US versions of ponies I can tolerate, but I genuinely find NBBE and NSS offensive because they are generally targeted only towards ponies who are "foreign" and not all ponies who meet the same characteristics. You don't hear people talk about NSS Cherries Jubilee, for example. In a global community there should be no "foreign".
Actually, right now every pony with "NBBE" in the title on eBay is Cuddles or Tiddly-Winks. ;) I've seen ponies like Sundance and Surprise get advertised as NSS. IMO it's just a way to quickly get across "this is the one without flocking" / "this is the one with normal eyes".
Ebay is not the pony community. If you do a search for these terms on the Arena you will see what I am talking about. There are very occasional moments where what you say is correct, but if you do a search for those here, you'll see that it's very heavily weighted towards the ponies not sold in the US. You're implying it's not really a term still being used, and maybe it's not being used so much on ebay, but I don't really care what people put on ebay. Ebay is full of nonsense. I care what people put in the pony community, ie here.
Incidentally, when I do a search on ebay, the first ponies that come up for nbbe and nss are Baby Gusty and North Star respectively. I even found a Baby Lickety called Non First Tooth, which was just plain weird.
@ShyViolet, the olny thing I can suggest re G1 in Canada is that Canadian collectors start a discussion about what they remember, what things they had, what things they have found second hand. It sort of begins there. I started my site with my own memories and the stuff I had from hasbro but I had a lot of people as time went on who'd email me and say, I remember this, or I remember that. And it still actually happens. I had it happen just a few weeks ago, people in the UK remembering things from their childhood. It's hard to prove things entirely but there are Canadian inserts in both languages which give some idea of releases. There may or may not be surviving Hasbro booklets but I have seen Canadian ponies MOC appearing online. I think some of my Megan and Sundance wear is actually Canadian packaged. It really just takes a focal point into which to put the information all of you have from your own experiences to make a kind of general hypothesis about ponies over there.
My site's been almost 20 years in the making and even now I still have gaps and there are still things I am looking for to resolve. I'm a backcard freak which has helped a lot and I have amassed a lot of inserts and comics and leaflets and things over the years too but here as well there's a lot missing that didn't survive. I still don't really know how CF Minty was sold here. I know that the Hasbro booklet for the start shows the FF ponies for here and I've heard it from people here as well, but while I can track releases for all of the other five in CF form (even some weird ones for Snuzzle), I have no idea with Minty. :/ I just know she was here and in some quantity.
Another thing that I've found helpful are old store catalogues. A lot of people online collect those in scan form or physical form. I actually got a whole bunch of catalogue scans for Argos from the eighties from someone online for free and that means I have some information about ponies in stores with prices and what and when they were out. It's only one store but it's better than nothing. And then backcards that have price labels on indicate things like the US boxes being the ones in Woolworths. Thankfully I have some very diligent childhood collectors who kept all of their cards which has made it possible to prove things like that and also things like the Watercolor baby sea ponies being sold here, even though they are not on Hasbro's list or in any of their promotional material.
I think your checklist is a great idea Taffeta and I look forward to it. I did know that your site has better information on different country releases but I seem to always default to the US sites.
It has been a to do thing for me for a long time. I still want to do it, but probably it waits until my PhD is done now, because the sheer amount of research required to make it correct is quite a big deal. Based on the fact that really, only the US story is very easy to access aside from what I already have for my own site, there's a lot of gaps still to fill in terms of trying to map distribution on any kind of checklist.
The frustrating thing for me is that my site is probably now the oldest MLP ID site still online. It's certainly one of them. In spite of that, I'm still struggling with getting some of this information across as common knowledge, because UK information is considered niche and peripheral and therefore not connected to the bigger picture in any relevant way. I don't expect people to use my site obsessively, that's not the reason it's there - but it bothers me that other newer sites when they've begun haven't always bothered to go and look at all the existing information. Mostly ID sites base themselves on Dream Valley, which is, to be blunt, the site that caused most of the ID problems relating to ponies outside of the US in the first place. It's basically a vicious cycle.
Again, with credit to the wiki, I think they have made a real effort there to do that in a lot of ways. There are always gaps in every ID site but the wiki is the only mainstream site still live that has attempted to bring some of those ideas together. But the Wiki is still structured in the old system of years defined by DV, which means that somewhere along the line there's going to be a problem in terms of categorising what came out where and when. And, symptomatic of that, the Wiki categorises ponies like Shady as "non so soft" rather than as Movie Star or regular release versions.
Just to illustrate this problem in a more tangible way, this is from the Wiki's international release page:
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- North Star and Gusty are listed under the wrong year, and categorised under different labels although they belong in the same set. The rest of the set are missing.
-The above are deliberately referenced as alternate versions of the US ponies, rather than ponies in their own right, subordinating them.
-Tutti Frutti has been put into 86 because the Birthday Party set in the US was then, although she's actually 1987.
-The long list of ponies mixes UK only ponies like Gypsy with ponies not sold in the UK, like Baby Cherries Jubilee. These also were not all available the same year.
-The Rainbow Ponies listed above are all from 1987 but have been put into this year to parallel with the US set (I assume).
This is one tiny section of a huge site :/ Adhering to the old DV framework and pushing ponies outside the US line to the edges means that mistakes and muddling happens. For the record, on Buttons' page, the Movie Star release version appears right at the bottom, even below the Nirvana ponies. And yes, she's also labelled NSS.
I am not picking on the Wiki, this is common to ID sites and it's also a feature that always comes up every time someone says they're starting a new site. It's always structured on this same framework because that's the expected way to do it. I'm using the Wiki here because it's a very popular G1 ID site I also use from time to time and thus I've noticed these things. I just want to make it really vivid for people how big an issue this is and how endemic it is to the community. My site's been there long enough that I know the information on these sets, their names, their releases, their years etc are easy to find with the help of Google. But clearly that's not happening because, as I said, UK stuff is specialist and niche and has no bearing on the mainstream.
And the UK is just one country in a whole lot of countries.
Oh! Going back to Canada a second (I wish I could, I've always wanted to visit Canada!) I remember years ago there were quite a lot of year 3 adult sea ponies coming out of that part of the world. More so than in the States. I remember there was a discussion about it on a mailing list. I remember this only because at the time I was obsessed with these ponies - I actually think some of my shells and ponies came from Canada, although Sea Breeze I know came from the US.
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Once again, I'm being terrible and letting ponies distract me too much. I really have to put this aside and focus on union stuff today if I wish to continue being employed. Again, a lot of points I want to get to in this post at a later date, but for now....
@ShyViolet, the olny thing I can suggest re G1 in Canada is that Canadian collectors start a discussion about what they remember, what things they had, what things they have found second hand. It sort of begins there.
This is exactly what I was thinking of doing in the next couple of days. It might be arrogant of me to say, but I think I'm in a strong position to start the discussion off. I am old enough to have been collecting from the very start. I was always very obsessive about ponies and fussy about keeping accessories. I always went to study them in stores even when I couldn't buy. I moved quite a lot and saw many other kids' collections. My own childhood collection numbers just over 50, all but 2 of which I still have. There have been times when I'm not active in the online community, but I have always, and always will be, actively collecting on my own. I've now got 20 years of watching thrift shop stock. Which is why I tend to get a little frustrated when I question things like release years and accessories not lining up with my experience and am forced to assume that I must be incorrect because it doesn't match 'mainstream' knowledge.
Oh! Going back to Canada a second (I wish I could, I've always wanted to visit Canada!) I remember years ago there were quite a lot of year 3 adult sea ponies coming out of that part of the world. More so than in the States. I remember there was a discussion about it on a mailing list. I remember this only because at the time I was obsessed with these ponies - I actually think some of my shells and ponies came from Canada, although Sea Breeze I know came from the US.
Here's my weird pony luck again... I agree with you even though I have not once personally run across an adult sea pony in thrift. It seems like other collectors here do. More weirdness: I had 2 White Caps in my childhood. That was the only doubled pony my sister and I had. Relatives made sure we got different ones from the same collection, but in this case we both got White Cap because that's all they could find. I quite distinctly remember seeing them in stores because the big boxes took up a lot of room and I was worried that it meant stores had fewer non-sea ponies. I have a very clear memory of looking over two shelves worth of lined up White Caps. All White Cap. At the time I didn't think much about how they were all the same one when there were six in that set. But now thinking about it..... what kind of bizarre distribution shenanigans were going on there?? Unfortunately, I have no reference for the exact year this happened.
Off topic: You really should try to take in Canada some day. But make it scattered. The landscape and culture here are wildly varied depending on where you go. Gosh, wouldn't it be great to have some kind of pony community exchange program? I've always wanted to go to the UK!
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I also have to get back to murderous Japanese warriors from the middle ages, but just a quick note on what you said above with White Cap's clone army...
Argos in the UK during the 1980s would sell one single pony from a set, not the whole set. For example, they sold Snowflake, but not Gypsy or Honeycomb. They sold Wind Whistler, but no North Star or Magic Star. They sold Princess Sapphire and Smokey, but no other Princesses. They had two Flutters, one set of Newborn Twins from 1988 and so on. So it's possible that store you remember had a similar import relationship. Weird as it sounds, sometimes stores just picked one. Absolutely no clue why, but what I've learned over 20 years of doing this stuff is that pretty much nothing G1 makes any sense anyway...;)
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BabyIceCrystal, I'm in full support of you starting off the discussion and taking charge of this. I am super interested and can contribute as much as I know from my childhood collection. I also find a lot of ponies second hand so hopefully we can start getting an idea of what releases we had here and I can't wait to hear from other Canadians. I'm not a very organized person but I'll help as much as I can.
Taffeta, I'm very grateful for your site, your hard work and all the questions you continuously bring up. I think if it weren't for you we wouldn't have half the knowledge that we do about releases in the UK and how things differ. It makes us as a community think about it and want to fill the gaps and gather more information.
I also had Whitecap (and Sea Mist) as a child but the shells I had don't match what I see on US ID sites. Unless we had another sea pony I'm not remembering. I'll have to ask my sister but she's not into ponies so I'm not hopeful she'll remember.
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Taffeta, I'm very grateful for your site, your hard work and all the questions you continuously bring up. I think if it weren't for you we wouldn't have half the knowledge that we do about releases in the UK and how things differ. It makes us as a community think about it and want to fill the gaps and gather more information.
Thank you :) Although as I said before it's more about creating a focal point. A lot of the info we have now and a lot of work has been done by a lot of people in the UK to pass on information, or images, or scans, or do research into things like Lady G did Princess Accessories. So it really is the case that I've done what I can and dug up what I can and collected stuff but without all the other UK people putting stuff in to help me there would be a lot more gaps in knowledge.
Again with the weird and your shell comment - Lady G's research and surviving MIB examples of Princess Amethyst and Spiny (2/2 known) show that she was sold mostly here with Princess Sapphire's hat, not the one she was pictured having or that she had in the US. There are some examples here with the pink hat, but mostly she had Sapphire's hat. And all the wands are also quite muddled up - my childhood Sapphire had an aqua wand, the MIB one Lady G has had a blue one. I know that wand belonged to Sapphire as I had one Princess and one wand and it was the aqua one...and since then we've seen French MOC Sapphire with an aqua wand. But I have the dragon, so I definitely had mine in a UK box. And the Hasbro logic continues...
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I only had two sets of petite ponies growing up, one set of Twinkle Petites and one set of glow in the dark. All of the information online at the time listed a different petite in that set than the one I have. For a long time I asked if anyone knew if the yellow petite with slippers had been packaged with the others but I had finally decided that either it was a packaging error on Hasbro's part or that somehow I had mixed up my petites with another friend that I played with. Recently I found MIB photos of the same petite set and there was the yellow petite with slippers packaged with the others proving that they were packaged that way sometimes. It was nice having confirmation of what matched my childhood petites. I still haven't figured out if it was a packaging error or not.
Ponyfan
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Thank you :) Although as I said before it's more about creating a focal point. A lot of the info we have now and a lot of work has been done by a lot of people in the UK to pass on information, or images, or scans, or do research into things like Lady G did Princess Accessories. So it really is the case that I've done what I can and dug up what I can and collected stuff but without all the other UK people putting stuff in to help me there would be a lot more gaps in knowledge.
Again with the weird and your shell comment - Lady G's research and surviving MIB examples of Princess Amethyst and Spiny (2/2 known) show that she was sold mostly here with Princess Sapphire's hat, not the one she was pictured having or that she had in the US. There are some examples here with the pink hat, but mostly she had Sapphire's hat. And all the wands are also quite muddled up - my childhood Sapphire had an aqua wand, the MIB one Lady G has had a blue one. I know that wand belonged to Sapphire as I had one Princess and one wand and it was the aqua one...and since then we've seen French MOC Sapphire with an aqua wand. But I have the dragon, so I definitely had mine in a UK box. And the Hasbro logic continues...
You're right, a big thank you to everyone that had put hard work into getting the right information. What I meant though is it's your questions and always pointing out the differences, make people think about it. I'm excited to start getting some more information from the Canadian community.
And alas my non collector sister has filled some gaps in my memory. She remembers having Wave Dancer after all and I only remembered the green shell. I only have Sea Mist and Tiny Bubbles and 2 floats left from our childhood but she was able to confirm my memory of the 8 sea ponies plus floats and shells. And they match the US ones as far as I can tell. Our memories are a little fuzzy on 3 of the floats but the rest is confirmed between the 2 of us. Anyway, that's a conversation for another thread.
To answer your original question I would agree that main stream should be ponies released worldwide but unfortunately most of us don't know which ones those are. I think there's a lot of confusion on both terms and just general knowledge. Most of my knowledge came from Dream Valley and I imagine it's the same for a lot of people. One of the focuses of my collection is UK ponies and some of the Euro ponies. So as I've been searching for information I found out things like Baby Cherries Jubilee is not from the UK whereas in the early days I thought she was. So unless you're actively searching out this information you wouldn't think to look past what you know from your childhood or the US sites. That's my perspective for why it's still an issue even though the info is now available.
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Can I just say how much I am enjoying reading this thread! *sidles off back to watch*
Jules x
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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).
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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.