The Mimic Phenomenon

[Leave a Whisper]

I think I'm going to try to make one...I have an HQG1C blank in her pose laying around, and if I can get the green dye right I'm going to give it a go. While I'm still hoping to randomly find her in the wild for like, $1(keep dreaming, right?!), I'm not paying $400 for her on Ebay.

Can't wait to see

I'll post her for sure! I'm just really leery about getting the color right...usually when dyeing a pony I have another pony to compare it to so I know I get it right...wish I had a local friend I could borrow a Mimic from for a day! And Rit dye doesn't have a real great shade of green in their Dyemore arsenal...

I picked up a neon green. Maybe if you combine it with pale or neon yellow? Mimic never seems to be one color anyway. I've seen her white tinted with green, honeydew green and a light sickly yellow.

I know, every picture I see of her looks different! The one on the wiki site looks almost neon, or at least a bright lime, but then some look whitish or almost yellow green, you are right. I chalked it up to differences in photography/lighting, like Taffeta mentioned, but fading could be a factor, too. Is your neon green Rit dye, or a different brand? I think I saw on their website they carry neon green in regular dye but not for synthetics, but it might still work. I thought about using Koolaid, but I've never heard of anyone using that to dye pony bodies, only hair, so I'm not sure. I'll have to try it on a bait pony first...

It's Ritdye.

Post Merge: April 01, 2021, 05:03:46 PM

Admittedly I've only ever had three or four in person, but I don't think there's a variation in her body colour so much as it's a really difficult colour to photograph well. It's a yellow-green colour, but the exact way to describe it otherwise, I'm not sure. I can't think off the top of my head of a pony with the same colour scheme (although I could go look...I can't think of any off the top of my head, they're all a shade or two out).

The Mimics I've had in my possession were all exactly the same colour, anyway. And I know people sometimes say she looks whiteish, but that's a trick of the lighting imo.

Only 3 or 4 she says. But yeah, I hear ya on some ponies being difficult to capture the color of.

3 or 4, including mine, in 25ish years? And honestly, all of them were at least 20 years ago xD.

4 score and 20  years ago, our  Pony Peep Founders...

[LadyAmalthea]

I think I'm going to try to make one...I have an HQG1C blank in her pose laying around, and if I can get the green dye right I'm going to give it a go. While I'm still hoping to randomly find her in the wild for like, $1(keep dreaming, right?!), I'm not paying $400 for her on Ebay.

Can't wait to see

I'll post her for sure! I'm just really leery about getting the color right...usually when dyeing a pony I have another pony to compare it to so I know I get it right...wish I had a local friend I could borrow a Mimic from for a day! And Rit dye doesn't have a real great shade of green in their Dyemore arsenal...

There's an HQG1C Mimic custom on Instagram! Maybe you could ask them what combo they used for her?

Ooh, that's exactly what I was hoping mine would turn out like. I don't have an Instagram account, so I'm not sure I can ask them. I saw in the comments they said who the artist was, but it wasn't a link, just a name. If anyone who has an account can ask for me what dye they used, I'd be eternally grateful!

[Beth3346]

wow that one is gorgeous!

[FernMariposa919]

I find Mimic to be fascinating. I have always heard that her production run was small and that's even mentioned in her Wiki page, but I have always been weary of that. Has that ever been proven? And how would anybody know if it was smaller unless there's some fact based behind it? Somehow this rumor got started that her production was smaller and that may be the case, but I agree that Quackers and Bright Eyes probably had the same number and they don't go nowhere near as much as Mimic does.

Mimic is definitely not as rare as people make her out to be. There's three listings of her on Ebay right now (going for $700, $900, and over $1,000!!!) I find there's usually at least one listing of her on Ebay. I know because I'll check periodically out of curiosity to see how much she's going for.

Mimic is an athletically pleasing and interesting pony. You never see that yellow-green color on any other pony. I almost think she could fit in with the Tropical Ponies with her colors and parrot symbol. Of course, her name would have to be changed to Rain Forest or Island Bird or something like that!

Anyone lucky to have had Mimic as part of their childhood collection? Anyone have her and are willing to disclose how much they paid for her? Anyone looking to get her and willing to disclose how much they would pay for her? I'd pay $50 for her, but let's honest: Mimic would never be up for only $50 dollars and even if she started that low, the price would climb astronomically! So basically what I'm saying is that Mimic will never be part of my collection!

[Taffeta]

I find Mimic to be fascinating. I have always heard that her production run was small and that's even mentioned in her Wiki page, but I have always been weary of that. Has that ever been proven? And how would anybody know if it was smaller unless there's some fact based behind it?

It has never been proven.

As far as I can tell, it's an assumption someone came up with to explain why Mimic was expensive. Somewhere along the line it went from, maybe she was shortpacked, to she must have been shortpacked, to she was definitely shortpacked so fewer of her exist. But there has never been anything concrete to back this up. As someone mentioned, the Hasbro catalogue talks about this set being distributed in boxes of 24. It's not stated that any of the ponies were disproportionately packed (although I have a catalogue which does specify when this happens). Mimic's set contains 6 ponies. 24/6 is 4. It makes sense that 4 of each pony was sent in each box, and to date there is no evidence anything else happened.

It's really not that unusual for something without any basis to become 'fact' over a number of years. People leave the community, new people come in, and the information doesn't get transmitted quite properly.

Wiki also is not an entirely reliable source at times. It does contain hearsay and it does contain errors. It's created by humans, and humans make mistakes.

Back in the late 1990s, when information about ponies outside the US was really a new concept, about 50% of the material circulating as 'fact' was entirely made up. Things like the existence of a white haired Posey variant, for example. There's nothing concrete to support such a thing, just a lot of faded poseys that showed up at carboot sales. People assumed they must be variants and some unscrupulous folks decided to make money off it by selling it as an actual variation. So people believed in it and paid money for it - despite it being entirely false.

I think the Mimic being shortpacked rumour is the same, only without the actively malicious intent behind it. Mimic was always expensive even back in the 1990s, and at the time the feeling seemed to be that it was because she was in the animation. But when you have a pony who has been expensive for 20+ years, and a community where most of the members have not been online for all that time, you end up with newer collectors inheriting the damage created by the previous generation xD.

And so here we are.

[Lilja]

With Transformers from the same period, Hasbro often shortpacked the characters that were reissued from the previous year. It'd make sense if they did this for MLP too, considering how uncommon the curly-haired year 3 versions of Applejack/Bowtie/Firefly/Medley are compared to other ponies from their set (even if you just account for the US market). If that was the case for the year 5 TE set, Speedy would've been the shortpacked one, Mimic was one of the new characters for the year. Then again, it's not impossible that due to her color scheme she was not expected to be a big seller compared to say, Locket (I have a feeling pink ponies were basically never shortpacked. If anything there might've been one extra of them compared to the others). But even then that alone wouldn't make Mimic special enough to warrant all this hype.

There are a lot of factors as to why things have turned out this way with Mimic, which is difficult to grasp right away when you're new to the community. Which is why a lot of new collectors always assume Mimic must've had a more limited distribution, since that's most logical, simplest explanation. So it's unfortunate that MyLittleWiki just straight up states that this was the case, without providing any evidence for it. When you've been collecting for a while you start realizing that rare doesn't equal expensive. There are some things that are incredibly rare, but not sought after by many and doesn't demand high prices. Mimic seems like a pony a lot of collectors are eager to add to their collection, but I'm speculating she's also one that quickly gets sold again when someone is in need of funds or want to downsize their collection. Hence why we see so many up for sale and being sold all the time.

[Taffeta]

Yeah, what Lilja said.

On the shortpacking of the rereleases - it's also as possible that they weren't shortpacked, but that they sold in smaller quantities because they had already been successful in a previous year and kids already had them. Unfortunately it's impossible to know with Speedy as she's not the variant, both US releases are the same across the two sets :/ but it would be interesting if there is actual evidence of shortpacking the re-releases. It would make some sense to do that...but...yeah.

I guess you could have extra of Locket because she's pink, so more Lockets than Speedys - but is Locket more common than Tic Tac Toe? Unfortunately you can't compare Locket to Mimic because unlike Mimic, Locket was sold across a more global area. So there will always be more Lockets than Mimics because of that fact. And we don't know how she was packed in those places. I do have scans for the 1987 UK catalogue for Hasbro - seems to just say 24, like the US catalogue, without mentioning separate quantities.

It's all so very muddled by this point - I'm not sure we'll ever know for sure unless someone finds an unopened Hasbro case of 1987 TEs. xD.

[Lilja]

It's all so very muddled by this point - I'm not sure we'll ever know for sure unless someone finds an unopened Hasbro case of 1987 TEs. xD.

Oh, if only!

Basically as far we know, every factor that might make Mimic rarer than any other TE also applies to Bright Eyes and Quackers. What we're left with is that Mimic was the only one out of these three to appear on the cartoon. She's not the only Year 5 pony to get a brief appearance, but there might've been something special about her depiction and the episode itself that made it stick out in people's minds. And there's been some mythos building around her in the collector community ever since it was first formed on the early internet.

[Taffeta]

It's all so very muddled by this point - I'm not sure we'll ever know for sure unless someone finds an unopened Hasbro case of 1987 TEs. xD.

Oh, if only!

Basically as far we know, every factor that might make Mimic rarer than any other TE also applies to Bright Eyes and Quackers. What we're left with is that Mimic was the only one out of these three to appear on the cartoon. She's not the only Year 5 pony to get a brief appearance, but there might've been something special about her depiction and the episode itself that made it stick out in people's minds. And there's been some mythos building around her in the collector community ever since it was first formed on the early internet.

I think so.
But all I remember my trade partner saying to me in 1997 when she acquired my Mimic for me was that she was a bit more sought after as a lot of people wanted her. I associated that with the cartoon representation because it made her stand out, but that also may be assumption.

Also the range of ponies we knew about was much less than it is now, so ponies like Mimic were existing status symbols from the dominant US line. This was still the time when european ponies were selling and trading for silly money ($300 for baby AJ anyone?), but that was pretty recent  to 1997. WHen I came online then, a lot of ponies, like the Mountain Boys etc were not widely known about and were just rumours. I have a letter from my trade partner thanking me for sending her photos of some of those ponies as she'd never seen them before. Mimic's sought after status must have come about pretty early into online collecting. And it makes sense that when people first got online, they'd maybe try to collect ponies from the TV series...

Mimic and SS Twilight both meet that criteria :/ Although others in Twilight's set are also quite expensive. Bright Eyes went through a phase of being more expensive but seems to have dropped off (unless she's gone up again?)...whereas Mimic kind of held firm.

Perhaps it's the fact she did hold firm through all the madness around international ponies that has made her such a collecting icon. But it's probably also the idiotic Church of the MOC Mimic that didn't help dispel the idea of her being special.

Edit: Pulling out my trade partner's letter - dated August 20th, 1997 - she mentions Mimic. She says,
"I have ordered a Mimic from another collector here so that I will have one for you. Unfortunately it is not in very good condition but it is one of the more hard to find ponies so I thought that I should buy it anyway."

So that's from the very early days - my trade partner considered her 'hard to find' even in 1997.

I don't know if it adds anything, but still

As I mentioned before, she actually was in decent condition - just ink on the hooves.

[Carrehz]

Hm yeah, could someone w/ an account edit that bit out of Mimic's article? I'd do it myself but I don't have an account on there; maybe it could just be rewritten to make it clear that's speculation and not proven fact?

Going off this thread, I think the Mimic "thing" is a combination of lots of factors:

- possibly lower distribution of TE wave 2 in general (shops not ordering as many since they still had plenty of wave 1 left, etc) as well as some countries maybe getting more of that wave than others
- definitely think the "Mimic is a status symbol" thing is a factor
- I could believe she was slightly shortpacked due to her colour (green toys not generally selling as well, for whatever reason), but there doesn't seem to be much evidence for that one
- self-fulfilling prophecy (we all say she's rare/desirable/pricy/etc so she is)
- time - G1s in general have been going up in price lately, I guess it's to be expected this many years after their initial release. plus again, all the years of her being touted as The Rare One are going to take their toll
- think her cartoon appearance is probably a factor too, or at least I think it was in the beginning, back in the early days of pony collector... dom (?? words), not so much nowadays

Did I miss anything?

[Eternia]

I got rapunzel before I got mimic hahah she isn’t worth the hype IMO

[Leave a Whisper]

@Taffeta Bright Eyes ping pongs all over the place. I've seen her for as low as $35, to as high as $70.

[LadyAmalthea]

Oh goodness, I hope we don't see Bright Eyes and Quackers, or even Tic Tac Toe skyrocket in the future...they are on my want list and and hope I don't regret not paying the $30-$70 people want for them now instead of the $200 they might be next year...

[Taffeta]

Oh goodness, I hope we don't see Bright Eyes and Quackers, or even Tic Tac Toe skyrocket in the future...they are on my want list and and hope I don't regret not paying the $30-$70 people want for them now instead of the $200 they might be next year...

Unintentional pun there??

I'm not so surprised about Bright Eyes. She always seemed to be hit and miss on the price depending who was buying. Quackers it usually depends on the whiteness - also don't see her come up MOC that often either?

I doubt TTT will go through the roof though. Unlike the others she had a more global release.

[Beth3346]

Oh goodness, I hope we don't see Bright Eyes and Quackers, or even Tic Tac Toe skyrocket in the future...they are on my want list and and hope I don't regret not paying the $30-$70 people want for them now instead of the $200 they might be next year...

Unintentional pun there??

I'm not so surprised about Bright Eyes. She always seemed to be hit and miss on the price depending who was buying. Quackers it usually depends on the whiteness - also don't see her come up MOC that often either?

I doubt TTT will go through the roof though. Unlike the others she had a more global release.

Yeah Bright Eyes and Quackers can be hard to find in good condition. When I was collecting last summer they were available but not in great condition. With the prices so high i doubt i'll replace the ones i've sold. I always end up selling the more expensive ponies whenever I need money anyway 

Sometimes i think it's more about the hunt for me.