I'd love to buy a copy of the My Little Obsession Documentary, but they are all sold out on http://mylittleobsessionmovie.com/copy.html.  Does anyone know if there will be a re-release of it? 

The mold thread and sun fading thread have made me think that it would be fun to do experiments to test factors that affect plastic breakdown.  Can exposure to UV light accelerate the formation of pony cancer or plasticizer break down?

I remember that BlackCurtains performed extensive experiments regarding pindot and pony cancer, which were awesome (MLP Preservation Project Website has linkies to them http://www.mlppreservationproject.com/goals.html)! I'd really like to build on that.  I work at a microbiology lab and have access to some equipment that can help including UV-C lights, mold cultures, incubators and digital microscopes that will

One of the questions I would like to address is whether or not mold can stain ponies.  MiRaja recently discussed mold in a few threads and I absolutely agree that mold doesn't want to grow in plastic due to the lack of nutrients.  However, if the pony is perforated with dirt or has grease or other organics that have permeated the pores, I do think it is possible that mold would grow.  A few years ago the air conditioning unit in our building had to be repaired and it became very humid in the lab as it is in the basement.  At this time we had a tremendous growth of mold on the walls where people put their hands and left oils behind for the mold to feed on.  It was so gross!  We also have had issues in our old walk in cold room with mold covering every surface including test tube caps, plastic test tube racks and causing stains that remain even after the racks were washed multiple times.  Given these experiences, I wonder if there could be some cases where mold could infect ponies and cause staining? 

So here are the experiments I propose to do.  Please let me know what you think and if there are any you'd like me to try.

Can Mold Infect Ponies and Cause Staining?

• Experimental Subjects: I will obtain dirty musty smelling fakies from a seller at the flea market who has very dirty ponies.  I will also use cleaned bait fakies or common ponies. I will take one clean fakie and lightly rub oil on it with a sterile swab to simulate greasy, well handled ponies.  All subjects will be photographed thoroughly prior to experimentation
• I will try to culture a mold from the dirty musty smelling fakie by swabbing it with a sterile cotton swab and swabbing it on a petri dish of mold growth medium.  This will help find if there are molds actually growing on the ponies that are dirty.
• If mold is cultured from the fakie I will make a saline suspension of the culture and then swab this all over a different dirty fakie, a clean fakie and an oily fakie.  These ponies will each be put in a sterile beaker covered with sterile foil to prevent outside contamination. If mold cannot be cultured from the fakie, I will use one of the lab's stock cultures of Aspergillis, Rhizopus or Penicillium (which is an incredibly common environmental mold, even though it is commonly thought of as only bread mold)
• Observe the ponies over the course of a month to see if mold growth is evident
• After one month, the ponies will be cleaned and photographed to observe if there has been any staining.
  

UV Component of Sun fading

• Obtain several bait ponies and fakies
• Remove the heads and clean them thoroughly.  Make a highlighter mark and pen mark on head of each.  Expose heads to UV-C light for one hour and leave heads on bench.
• Take a photo of head and body every fifteen minutes.  Examine results to determine effectiveness of UV light at sunfading.  If no result expose longer than 1 hour.

UV Effect on Plastic Breakdown

• Obtain several bait ponies with cancer, regrind and plasticizer breakdown related hardness
• Remove the heads and clean them thoroughly.  Expose bodies to UV-C light for four hours and leave heads on bench.
• Take a photo of head and body every thirty minutes.  Examine results to determine effect of UV light on plastic softness and cancer spots. Then leave heads in UV light overnight and examine differences in the morning.

I also plan to take slices of cancer, regrind, pin dot and the ponies from the mold experiment (if I can get any to grow mold) and examine them under the microscope and take pictures.  I don't think the mold will readily grow on any of the ponies except the one that has oil and maybe the one that is dirty as it may make use of nutrients found in the dirt.  I do think I will be able to culture mold from the ponies, but I don't think that this is an indication in and of itself that mold will infect ponies as mold spores are everywhere, even on lab bench tops where there is obviously no active mold growth.  Even so, in these cases I think that the mold will still not cause staining as seen in pony cancer or pin dot.  Regardless of my expected outcome though, I think it will be a neat experiment.  The UV ones will be neat too. I will post the results here and on a special page on my pony blog.  After testing mold I want to do the same experiments but with bacteria.

So, what do you think?  Can anyone think of anything else I should try or modifications to these experiments?

Every time I stop by Toys R Us I check out the Funkos but I can never bring myself to buy one from there because every single one is either dirty, has a mold defect or a paint smear or big scratch    This goes for Wal*Mart as well, though its not as bad.  I'm not very picky either- but these are major problems, not little scratches but big gashes, smears, dents.  Most of them have surface dirt or grease on them, which would be okay if that were the only problem because I can clean that.  But it's the non-repairable, visible from across the room, defects that put me off them.

I've bought four Funko's from Hot Topic and they are all much better in terms of quality- they aren't dirty at least but Big Mac had a huge smear on his NDS symbol.  They display the Funkos so high up on the shelf though that there is no way to examine each one of them to make sure it's good without bothering the employees to get them all down and I hate to ask them to do that.

So, is there a trick to finding a good Funko?  Is Toys R Us just notorious for having low quality Funkos or do they all typically have these issues?  I'm out of the loop with these as I don't really go out of my way to get them.  There are just a few more that I'd like to get. 

I got a few Megan dolls at my last trip to the Flea Market.  Sadly they are all naked, but that got me thinking that it would be cool to collect all the outfits from the Megan and Sundance Pony wear line and then get enough Megan dolls to model them.  Does anyone have any idea of what these sets run?  Also, is there a chance of damaging Megan dolls by keeping them in the clothes long term?  I know some of the Pony Wear can leave marks on ponies if left on too long (the infamous saddle sores) and wonder if the same thing could happen to the dolls.

Thanks for your help!

Skittles is based on the Unicandycorn of that name which was originally designed for Wreck-it-Ralph.  While she was ultimately cut from the movie, she lives on in the deleted scenes and sketches and in the hearts of everyone who likes slightly psycho fire breathing, man eating colorful ponies.  Skittles is made from a G4 Pinkie Pie which was re-haired using Brilliant Black dolly hair.  Her horn was made using wire and Apoxie sculpt so it is firmly held in place on her head. Her eyes and horn are both sealed with Golden gloss triple thick sealer.

Here's the deleted scene from YouTube.  I really recommend it if you haven't seen the cutscenes.  I so wish she had made it into the movie!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOscAmCmuvQ

And here's the G4 version of Skittles.  I'm working on a G1 version using a cotton candy bait.  I think the shape will work better with Skittle's design.


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Sooooooooooo this may be old news to some, but Disney is making a Chip n' Dale Rescue Rangers movie!!!   
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3539988/ coming in 2016. 

I hope it will be good!  I'm really excited.  I LOVED this series as a kid.  It could turn out very badly, I know.  But hopefully it will mean a great reboot for the series.   Supposedly the movie is supposed to be live action (and CGI I would guess) and feature a back story for the main characters. 


What do you think about it?  Have you heard of Rescue Rangers?  Did you watch it as a kid?  Do you think you will check out this movie when it comes out?

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Hello all!  I'm pleased to introduce my take on World of War Craft's Celestial Steed, made for Wyndstar for Saja's Things with Wings Swap.  Wnydstar had the WOW Celestial Steed as one of her things with wings.  I'd never seen the Steed before and fell in love with the design so I decided to use it as my inspiration to create her custom.  The G4 Celestial Steed is made using a Fashion Sized Sparkle G4 Rainbow Dash base..  Her wings are made from wire and apoxie sculpt and two layers of blue fantasy film (turquoise on top and royal blue on bottom) with pale blue, white and dark blue swarovski crystals added to replicate the glitter of the stars in the WOW Steed's wings.  Her helmet, saddle and breast plate are also made with apoxie sculpt and have been painted to match the inspiration Celestial Steed.  I also made "stars" from glow in the dark sculpey and suspended them on clear fishing line inside the custom so that she glows in the dark with a constellation pattern, just like the WOW Steed.  Her tail is made from Dollyhair nylon my little pony hair (I can't remember the exact colors of the top of my head, but can look them up if anyone is interested).  She was an absolute blast to make and I'm so happy Wyndstar was my partner so I could create this pony for her!

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And in the dark:
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I wanted to share some big and exciting news with everyone.   All my life I've been obsessed with fossils and extinct creatures.  I used to hunt for them near the lake in Kansas where I grew up and every place that had sedimentary rock (and even stream beds for eratics) that I visited.  I went into biology with the view of being a paleontologist but was told that a degree in geology was required and as the school I went to didn't have a geology program, I put the idea on the back burner.  My mom dying made me take a hard look at my life and the goals I wanted to accomplish in it.  I decided that I should stop dancing around my goals and instead pursue them actively. 


Soooooo I applied to a paleobiology M.S. program and was accepted    It means a downsize in pay and a corresponding downsize in house (my pony room will be downsized and boxed up again and put in storage  ) but I know that it's worth it because I know it's not forever and I'll be doing what I love every day and it will lead to further education (PhD in paleontology) and *hopefully* a job in Paleontology. 

I'm so excited!  My job as a lab manager has been very stressful and these past three years have been a time when I felt like my life wasn't going in the direction I wanted but I felt helpless to do anything about it.  So to be back on track feels amazing!  Also, there is a good possibility I will be able to go to the Society for Vertebrate Paleontology in Germany this October and present a poster.