After watching me struggle through a few attempts to get a symbol to look the same multiple times (it was a restoration on a Bowtie), my husband asked me if using a Cricut to make a stencil would work. I said I wasn't sure; I didn't know much about the Cricut, only that its supplies take up an entire aisle at the craft store. So I went to the website to look it up and was a bit blown away by how expensive even the little one was. In a surprising and generous offer, he said he would buy me one if I thought it would help me. I'm not sure what else I would/could use it for; in addition to ponies I am into dollhouses/miniatures, and I have a school-age child (and eventually will have 3 school-age children!) who may have projects coming up in the future...I don't want to make a big investment in another appliance if it's just going to sit around, but I admit that I'm intrigued by it.

I made an attempt at using a stencil out of paper to do Bowtie's bows, and the trial attempt on paper looked great, then the first attempt on Bowtie's rump looked...acceptable...but then they got progressively worse as the edges of the paper stencil deteriorated with use until I wiped it all off and put her aside.

Has anyone tried using a Cricut to do this? Have you used a Cricut for other things and did you like it? Or have you used stencils in general to do symbols? Tell me about your experience!
Thanks,
Lady A

I thought there was a thread about these a while back, but I can't seem to find it, and it looks like some things have gotten moved around so maybe it is locked anyway; I'll just ask here.

I had heard somewhere that the quality of the dolls has gone way down in recent years, and some rumours about attached underwear or something weird. Is this true? And if so, when did it happen? My daughters are only 2 and not old enough for an AG doll yet, but I wanted to get them for them eventually, since we got them for my stepdaughters, but I want to make sure they are the same quality doll that I grew up with. If this means that I need to buy an older doll, I will. The dolls we purchased my stepdaughters in 2009 and 2012 seem to be of the same quality of my childhood Kirsten that was purchased in 1992.

What is a fair price to pay for an AG doll that has never been removed from its box? The dolls I am particularly interested in are Julie, MaryEllen, and Kit if it matters; I believe all 3 are still in production, but I think I prefer to buy an older new one because I prefer the old outfits of Julie and Kit to the updated versions, and because of the above speculated quality issues.

There is a local seller who has 2 of the above-mentioned dolls up for sale right now for $100 each, and I'm wondering if I should jump on it and put them away until my girls are old enough. My worry is that AG will retire those characters and their prices will skyrocket; I still have my childhood Kirsten and I'm glad I do, because I looked up what it would cost to replace her and...well, I hope I never have reason to replace her!

Has anyone seen this before? I have been trying to reply to a message to a seller and a pop-up appears when I hit the send button saying, 'Sorry! Fail to add member message'. When I check my outbox there is nothing there. I've tried checking Ebay tech support and googling the 'fail to add member message' phrase with no helpful results.

I need to get in touch with this person...they said they would refund a shipping overage, but haven't done it. When I messaged them last week, they said they were out of town and didn't have access to their paypal statements, and to message them today if I didn't hear from them before. Coincidentally(?), yesterday was the last day I would have been able to leave them feedback...is it possible that the seller could have blocked me from being able to contact them?

I want to give them the benefit of the doubt, but the timing is really strange, and why won't my message go through?

So Stranger Things Applejack arrived today from Amazon. I was really looking forward to getting her, and was hoping to keep and display her in the package. But...she was packed in an envelope and the corners of the box were damaged. I was able to smooth them down a little to where I guess it's acceptable. But the most annoying thing is that there is a big, black hair trapped inside the packaging, right over the pony's face!

It just bugs me, but I'm afraid that opening up the package would damage any collectable value she might have in the future. If I had ordered her from Target or something, I'd exchange her, but I'm not sure how much recourse I have with Amazon...I know I can return her and order a new one, and I guess it probably wouldn't have the hair, but I don't really have a way to request it to not be shipped in an envelope again to avoid box damage. I noticed at least one of the reviews complained about a damaged box as well, so I'm guessing this is a common problem.

I know this is a dumb thing to post about, but I know many of you have more experience with collectables than I do, so I just wanted to see what you all would do...open the box and pull out the hair, send her back, or just live with it the way it is?

So I'm in the process of trying to change a BBE Baby Frosting into a NBBE pony. It's my first attempt at this, and I found a tutorial that uses Sculpey III to fill the eye sockets. I couldn't find that product, but I bought air dry Sculpey. Has anyone used this product before for pony customs? The instructions in the tutorial say to dip the pony head in boiling water to set it, but do I need to do this step if I'm using air-dry clay? I filled the sockets and set her aside, skipping the boiling step for now...I'm worried it might make the clay shrink up. Can I really just paint over this once it's dry?

Oh, and if anyone has done a BBE-to-NBBE before, did you remove the pony's eye shadow first? I didn't, but I noticed too late that the pony in the tutorial pictures doesn't appear to have it, but it didn't say anything about removing it. Should I try to remove it prior to painting the eyes, or will the acetone affect the clay?

Thanks for any guidance on this!

Hypothetical situation:

What would you do if you won multiple Ebay auctions from a seller who claimed to offer combined shipping, but then is nonresponsive to requests to send an invoice reflecting the discounted shipping amount? Would you keep waiting and just not pay until they do? Or suck it up and just pay the full amount to ship them individually (I wouldn't have made offers on these ponies if she hadn't had the claim of combined shipping printed in her store description)? I really don't want want these badly enough to pay almost $25 to ship 4 fair/bait-condition ponies within my same country, even though the purchase prices were cheap.

I say 'hypothetical' because while she still has time to respond, I don't think she's going to. I have sent this seller multiple messages regarding a question I had about a 5th item (a Brush-n-Grow pony I was trying to inquire whether her neck mechanism still worked, as the description was sparse and the few pics only showed her with her tail sucked all the way in...or was it cut short?) I was interested in and hoping to add to my order. She hasn't responded, but has apparently been online, as she has since sent me 2 more discounted offers for other ponies I had in my watch list.

FYI, this seller has a fair amount of negative feedback, some of which includes buyers complaining of her not returning messages...guess I should have checked this out before making offers on her stuff 

So during our isolation, my son and I have been watching the old 1986 pony movie on Hoopla (I ordered it on Amazon about a month ago but it hasn't arrived yet because it isn't 'essential'...whoever decided that movies aren't essential during a lockdown obviously doesn't have a 4-year-old!). He is a bright child who loves all things colorful and sparkly, and has taken a major interest in my recently unearthed childhood pony collection. He has inherited my collector mentality, and has learned all the ponies' names and covets all the ones we don't have in our herd! I'm having a hard time explaining why I can't just buy these toys like I could any toy that is in current production, and why the ones we have cannot be played with the way his other toys can. I did give him a couple of ponies that were in poor condition and of which I had duplicates, and bought him some G4 brushables to play with.

He has seen the Dream Castle featured in the movie, and wants it so badly! His last most recent 'obsession' was Frozen/Elsa/princess-mania, and castles are still very appealing to him. I never personally had the Dream Castle as a kid; it was out of production by the time I started collecting ponies. I don't really want to pay what it's going for on eBay, and wouldn't really want to give a 35-year-old fragile playset to him anyway, but I got to thinking about it, and wondered how hard it would be to make one!

I know there are many creative people on here, so I figured I'd come pick your brains for inspiration. My first thought was to use empty oatmeal cylinders for the turrets, but I'm not sure they would stand up to a child's play. My husband suggested some heavier-duty cardboard tubing or even PVC pipe. So what would you all use, for the turrets, the base, the straight sides, the cone-shaped turret-tops, and any other embellishments? Drawbridge suggestions? How would you attach it all together, and how would you hinge it so it could be opened up? Does anybody own an actual DC who could give me some measurements of how tall/wide/deep it is? (I don't need to follow dimensions exactly, but a basic knowledge of this would be nice, just to know I'm making it large enough to accommodate ponies)

I tried googling to see if anyone else had done this, on Etsy or Pinterest or something, and nothing came up...I can't believe I'm the only one to have thought to try this! I appreciate any help or suggestions anyone can offer!

Hello from southern Wisconsin!
I chose my user name in honor of my first equestrian love...the beautiful but sad unicorn-turned-girl in the movie The Last Unicorn. It was the first movie I ever remember watching as a kid, and was my favorite!

I'm (obviously) new here, and I can't post or view any pictures on here until I make one of these introductory posts, so I guess I'd better get on it. I'm a bit wordy by nature, and I'll try to keep it short, but then I always say that and it never happens, so no promises. I'll start with the suggested questions, and then go from there.

How old are you? 41...so I was a kid in the 80's and was likely the target demographic that the original ponies were marketed to. Yep...fell right into that trap and never climbed out! Probably too old to be collecting ponies, but lately it seems like my world is so small, and as a mom of young children, I needed something to do for myself, and restoring my childhood collection sounded like a fun project that I could get behind.

Where do you live? Wisconsin, USA. More specifically, in the woods, on a river. My husband and I just bought our first house together after moving around for the past 10 years.

Do you work or attend school? I'm currently on an extended maternity leave, which will likely last until my youngest are in full-day school.
Profession or major? Orthodontics.

Who are the most important people in your life? My husband and 3 kids; a preschool-age boy and infant twin girls.

Ponies:Am I supposed to list them all? Gosh, that would take me awhile, and I probably don't have anywhere near as many as most people on here do!

How long have you been collecting? Well, I received my first pony for my 7th birthday, a pony I named "Tiffany" (I have since figured out that her actual name was Sparkler. It was ironic that MLP released a princess pony by that name a few years later!). I was not very interested in her at the time, sadly, and I'm not sure whatever happened to her, but I guess that was the beginning of my collection. But a few months later, my sister received a baby pony for Christmas from my grandparents. This was Christmas eve night, and suddenly out of the blue, I coveted a baby pony too more than anything else that year. I'm not sure how 'Santa' was able to procure one in time for Christmas morning, (I actually asked my mom about this recently and she doesn't remember; perhaps she had the baby pony marked for one of my siblings, or just on hand as a back-up gift in case someone got invited to a birthday party?) as I had previously showed no interest in ponies until that very moment, but somehow he and his elves came through, because my Baby Blossom was under the Christmas tree. I adored her, and she went everywhere with me for a long time. Still have her, in reeeally poor condition, the poor thing; super-frizzy, yellowed, cut hair, and her body is now a strange shade of yellowed gray, but I don't have the heart to get rid of her. I became obsessed with ponies in the months (years?) that followed, eventually amassing 80+ ponies between my sisters and myself, and almost every playset, including the Paradise estate.

Which generation do you collect? G1 ponies are really the only ones I am currently collecting, as I'm concentrating on rebuilding my childhood collection; in fact, I'm really not even interested in anything produced after 1987, because that was when I stopped being interested in ponies in favor of drawing, and then, rather embarrassingly, boys and clothes. It seems like they got really gimmicky after that year anyway; I found some of the gimmick additions distracting while trying to play with them and act out storylines--like...why is this pony fuzzy and the rest of them aren't? Our 2 or 3 so-soft ponies ended up becoming grizzled old 'grandma ponies' that lived in a retirement pony home and rarely got played with, and I thought the twinkle-eyed ones looked too soulless to have a personality! However, I wouldn't mind owning one each of the mane 6 g4 ponies just to add to my collection; I've been watching the show on Netflix with my girls, and although I used to think the 'new ponies' were ugly, they are kind of growing on me. I really know nothing about g2 and 3; don't know how to tell them apart even...maybe I'll get there eventually when I have all the g1s I want, but I'm starting with the familiar.

What made you want to collect ponies? Well, of late, I was prompted by a bit of a pony tragedy. Bit of a backstory (my gosh, sorry I am SO wordy!)...my childhood ponies are now on their 3rd life. Maybe they will have a 4th, if my kids are interested in them. But when I married my husband, he was a single dad to *drumroll*...4 kids from a previous marriage. The kids came to live with us shortly after we married and I had moved into his house. We had absolutely nothing for them, and money was tight. We 'borrowed' my and my siblings' old ponies and playsets from my parents' basement so they would have something to play with. They loved them, but outgrew them, and when we moved cross-country, we returned them to my parents' basement in 4 massive boxes. A few months back, my sister inquired what happened to them all, as she was trying to bring them out for my niece to play with at Grandma's. I told her where my husband and I placed the boxes in my parents' (borderline hoarded) basement, but no one could find 3 of the 4 boxes. My mom then informed me that during a massive rainstorm, a large window well had filled up and exploded into the basement, carrying mud and floodwater in. A family friend had helped clean the mess up, and some things got thrown away. I had placed the boxes directly under that window well. It was lucky that the one box survived, I guess, but it rankled me that no one could give me a direct answer about the rest of the pony stuff, including all the playsets and at least 2/3rds of the ponies. We have searched and searched, but it can only be assumed that my dad and the family friend must have not understood the collector or sentimental value of those things and trashed them. I was upset, and set out on a mission to rehab the remaining herd and replace all that was lost, so I have been scouring the ends of the earth to track this stuff down, although quite inconveniently on a piddly stay-at-home-mom budget. I am embarrassed to admit the amount I've dropped on ponies lately; my husband and parents would be horrified! I still have many things to replace, and I think I will have to rehair some of my remaining originals (something I'm intimidated to learn, but hope I'm in good hands with some of the tutorials on here), but this has been a fun opportunity to snag up a few ponies I always wanted in the 80's but never did get! (Glass half-full, anyone?)

Tell us about your collection! The only 'completed' collection I really have so far is that I have all 6 original baby ponies. I'm working on amassing the 6 mother ponies that go to them (I have most). Then I will probably move onto the first 6 rainbow ponies, collector pose ones, year 2 adult ponies, and go from there. Most of the ones I have are all randoms. I have several sets of twins (and sadly, a few single twins...guess their siblings got lost in the flood!), which I love, maybe because I have twins in real life! I love baby ponies best, and own most of the ones I want to collect, although I'm not a fan of the beddy-bye-eye ones, so it would be awesome to find a few NBBE varieties of ones that were originally released with them (I just found out these exist!) I do have a Paradise Estate and 2 Lullabye Nurseries (I had to buy 2 to get all the accessories it originally came with, I'll probably try to sell one of them if I can manage to wrest control of it from my 4-year-old son, who has become as obsessed about the ponies as I am, to my chagrin) that I was able to find in recent months, just looking for replacement parts to complete the PE, and to the Cuddles baby buggy that remarkably survived in decent shape.

To anyone who actually read through this monstrosity of an introduction, I commend you for your patience with my rambling! I hope to 'meet' all of you soon and look forward to perusing this site often!