Quote from: prancingstag on November 12, 2019, 07:53:27 PM

What’s been happening with Care Bears recently?? Is there a currently running show? I was walking through the toy aisle earlier and picked up an adorable 8 inch True Heart plushie, they also had older characters like Love-a-Lot and Birthday who I didn’t expect to see, but I love them. Trying to do some googling now to see if I can pick up all 10 original characters but the assortment listings are not giving me much joy, lots of pictures of new bears but no names!

Are these new bears? I'd love to see photos!

They seem like new style beanie plush toys. They’re small, super soft and squishy, and have a piece of felt for the tuft on their head, instead of hair strands. I think I finally figured out the assortment... wave 1 seems to be True Heart, Birthday, Daydream, Share, Cheer and Shine Bright. Wave two seems to be Love-a-Lot, Funshine, Bedtime, Sweet Dreams, Best Friend and Cheer (again).

Love him and want him dearly, one of my top 10 ponies for sure! I should have focused on collecting the pony friends years back though, prices have really gone nuts for them all recently.

I kinda like these little guys. Pinkie and Fluttershy’s eye shapes are a little weird, but the posing appeals to me. I think Twilight is very cute. When I look at them I’m like that’s not Twilight, and that’s not a pony as I know it, but whatever it is seems to be cute. The pointy ears, upright posture and spindly legs almost remind me of a fox or deer, moreso than the rounded mousey curves of G4/4.5 ever did. Spoilers for Pokemon Sword/Shield:
It remains to be seen what kind of media they’ll feature in, but I think these designs make dynamic little toy figures and I’d be very interested to see how a cartoon in this style would animate, it looks like it would lend itself well to weird facial expressions and squish/stretch gags.

The early G4’s had really soft, silky hair. It would occasionally floof out but it was still a nice texture and easy to style. The different tails and lower hair quality started when the “new head mold” came in, sometime at the end of Crystal Princess Celebration and into the Rainbow Power line in 2013-2014. As Ragamuffin said, Mrs Cake and Twirly Treats were some of the first ponies to be affected by it in the CPC line. It was spotty though, overall they would have somewhat rough quality, then you would get one or two who were really silky, and one or two who were really terrible. I remember Pinkie Pie’s Boutique - the single Pinkies I had with somewhat  rough manes and awful tails, the transparent/glittery Wysteria I had was one with silky hair and an awful tail, the fashion style Pinkie with two tone pink hair had perfectly silky mane with a slightly coarse tail, and the other kind of fashion style Pinkie had silky tail and silky pink and black mane sections, but the white mane stripe was coarse. At the time some users theorised that it was due to excessive heat treatment during production that was damaging the hair fibres.

The ones I noticed as being REALLY bad with extremely coarse, frizzy, unmanageable hair as standard across the whole line were the brushables from Explore Equestria - both the normal ponies with the bow headbands, and the transparent ponies like Meadow Flower and Seaswirl. That’s about when I stopped collecting G4.

Have her! I got her off shelf when G4 first started, so she’s a nostalgic kind of pony for me. I adore her sunset-themed hair colours.

I like these little guys a lot, I still have a row of them on the pony shelf. Out of trying to complete the regular set of 6, I ended up buying 13 blind boxes and ending up with six doubles (I pulled one of each pony plus the least-rare 1/24 Snuzzle for a total of 7 keepers). It doesn’t feel too good to buy them for $15-20 and get ponies I don’t need though blind boxes I feel are a really poor choice for G1 MLP... I never even tried selling my doubles because there was such low demand. I have an extra Sundance, Applejack, Minty and three!!! Fireflies. Seems like the Pinkie Pie of G1

Here are a couple photos of my yellow ponies, may not be the best due to lighting... Munchy is a very pale creamy white, every pony I have is darker hued. The closest I have is Snowdrop or Lemon Drop but they are both more golden. I thought Rosette would match but she is a somewhat brighter yellow too.

I got in at ground zero with the toyline and obsessively collected all the brushables, right up until Rainbow Power when a good 60-70% of the sets just didn’t come to Aus stores it was going to be a huge hassle to import and I started really focussing on what I truly wanted and what I could live without. What I loved most was new characters and those were getting few and far between... the G4’s sat on the shelf for a while without getting anyone new added in, then I packed them all away in boxes and stored them in the cupboard while focussing on other collections including G1 ponies. Eventually about 18 mths ago I dug them out and did a massive purge, hundreds of brushables and plush and playsets gone, with only my top faves remaining. I feel much happier now and I’m content to add only 1-2 new ponies a year as they release new characters (Tempest and Sandbar most recently).