But now I have actually started collecting MLP G1. So what changed? Well, I think it might come down to one pony ... Fizzy.

Fizzy is a lovely pony to begin with! My sister's first pony was Fizzy. She had her second hand, on her third birthday, all wrapped up in paper and she was so excited because she had her own pony for the first time, instead of just playing with the handful I had.

Erm, going back to the question in hand.

I always had MLP growing up. I had my first pony (Windy) when I was 2 so I don't really remember not having them. We didn't have tons of money when I was growing up, so generally I got a pony either at Christmas or birthday, or occasionally if I saved up money for them or my grandparents decided to spoil me or something.

Pony buying was therefore a pretty significant event for me.

In the early days I was influenced a lot by my parents as to which ponies I had. You can tell, looking at them xD. My Mum chose Windy, Baby Blossom, and I think Cherries Jubilee. My Dad chose Masquerade, Snowflake and Shady xD. I think he also had a lot to do with me getting Tropical Breeze with my birthday money when I was 6, too.

As time went on I would pick a pony from each set that I wanted, since there wasn't really a chance to get all of them, but almost always the one I wanted from the set did not for some reason show up in the local stores here (bad distribution). I had a pony (Sunburst) when my sister was born, and another (Rainbow Magic) to cheer me up when my mother was in hospital. Pretty much ponies marked every significant event for me as a young kid.

I never totally stopped with the ponies, but I did put them away for a bit when I started secondary school. It really didn't last, though, and we began carbooting a while after that (1994?) when I discovered that MLP were no longer being sold in shops. My first carboot ponies were Lickety Split and Parasol. A school friend of mine also gave me her old ponies, which I had grown up playing with enough to think of them as my own, somehow. (Well, they sort of are now )

In 1997, I discovered the internet, and Dream Valley, and all the ponies I didn't have and hadn't heard of. When I found that, somewhere in the world, Medley, Powder and all the ponies that had been in the comic growing up really existed, I was so excited. I'd leave posts on the old pink TP but I had no email so could only leave my phone number.

Then, one day, an American collector actually phoned that number. We wound up trading a lot of ponies and I was lucky enough to meet her and her grandkids in the Summer of 1998. She has since, sadly, passed away, but I will never forget the memory of that day, and all these ponies that I had never seen before in real life. I still know which ponies they are in the collection.

My sister and I always collected together. Some ponies we both have, some she has, some I have. I like it better that way. It was something we did together.

I collect on and off these days, among many other interests and commitments. My passion was opening up the UK information to the global community, and it is still looking at the UK's history, the variations, the oddities and such like. I find the Nirvana really pretty, but I am not driven to try and get every one of them. Maybe one or two, if they are affordable. You said about it being such a demanding thing to collect - but I don't think so. You choose your niche and collect what makes you happy.

To date, my collection is missing only one mainstream pony - Baby Sugarcake - but there are still things I'd like to add to my collection, especially MIP things from my childhood on UK card.

I'm glad I collected as a child, and even more glad I had the opportunity of carbooting and collecting online in the late 1990s/early 2000s. I think it's a harder collectable to begin now, because of rarity - but also a nicer one, because the community is so global now, and it really wasn't back in 1998.

I hope that sort of answered the question O.o. I guess the summarised version is that I don't really know what life would be like without a pony somewhere in it, since they've always been there, one way or another. I graduated both times with Rainbow Dash (G3 and G4), so they literally have been involved in most every important event of my life

Ah, such nice first ponies to have, too! Congratulations

I had ponies since I was a kid so my first pony technically was Windy the Rainbow Pony, but when I decided to properly collect (I was 12, LOL) the first ponies I got from carboot sale were Parasol and Lickety Split. I never had either of them as a child, so it was really awesome to have them since I love the older ponies the most.

The other big memory I have was when I was 16 and the first US collector/online collector I ever met came over to the UK to see her grandkids and came to see my family, too. We traded lots that day, and up till then some of them I had only seen in drawings, so getting them was really exciting.

That feeling is brilliant, but be aware, they do multiply and the feeling never does really go away...

There are quite a lot of ponies out there sealed on cards with the wrong name. I have seen a few Baby Night Song/ Stella mixups, and since 1993 ponies here had sticker nametags, it isn't so rare. I think there are also misprinted Rollerskate boxes. I also havecFizzy mint on the UK card for Baby Sunshower. None of these are prototypes but they still made it past UK quality control. And lets not forger Bobbie and friends in US Princess pony boxes!

With all that said, though, I agree that prototypes in packages in stores are peobably unlikely.  And it is possible she would keep her accessory, but the odds are pretty astromical.

Ah, brilliant Thanks for digging that up, BlushingBlue

I wonder, then, how many of them there are floating around.

From that picture, it also looks as though she doesn't have hearts, only stars - but surely that's just her opacity vs the image??

Or I'm hallucinating.

If the MOC one came from the Delaneys in 2013, good chance it came originally from Helen (pinkember)'s collection. If I'd known, I'd have spoken to Helen about it back then, but sadly the subject never came up :-/

Quote from: Taffeta on March 20, 2015, 12:57:12 AM

BlushingBlue, it seems there are at least 3 of them in the collector community, since Eurocoin also seems to have one,  but I am sure there are more! Can I ask where you would have bought yours?

I can't say for 100% certain, but she was very very likely just an ordinary US release. We occasionally saw ponies on Canadian cards in the toy stores around where I lived, but I don't think my Brightglow was even that special. 

That helps. It's my general theory that ALL the different "variations" on the GnS ponies were released in the States, whereas only a few of those variations were issued in Europe/UK because we got them later after the experimentation had mostly been done!

The image LM posted is the one I was thinking of. Hathorcat mentioned she knew ofsome loose ones, but I confess I have only ever seen the MIP one, I've never seen a loose one up on sale which is why I assume her to be a one off. I did hope someone would have one when I raised this discussion, since the Arena community is so huge and wide ranging, ad we might learn more about her or of any others, but not so far.

Remembering that DazzleGlow can have fading pink hair or normal pink hair, Starglow can have coral pink hair or magenta pink hair - but what if they made a factory error and Starglow got the pale pink hair instead? That might have faded since it is possible for a MIP pony to fade. I was hoping someone might shed light on it, but I guess nobody in the community currently owns her, which is a shame!

This is of course, true, but since so much was made of the ponies, their names etc in the comic as well as on the card, it would be more likely I think that they would know the pony's real name.

Mind you, that pony was quite badly treated all round, and we can't know if that happened at her original hone.

Wow. You did a lot of work on restoring her, considering her condition O.o. Obviously she was played with by kids, judging by all the ink. And, if they gave her their own name, it also suggests she maybe didn't have a proper issue name. Which might imply an employee got her as a freebee and took her home for their kids to play with, without packaging or anything of that ilk?

I don't know anything at all about why she might have been like that, since, like Susie and Billie, she seems properly finished for issue, but Sunny Bunch's name is floral, and so is her cape...and while I THINK Sunny Bunch was used as a poster pony on packages in that year in the UK, she was always as you would expect.

Her provenance is a bit like my Baby Susie. Sold on UK ebay without any fanfare, yet something completely impossible to explain. My only suggestion is that it connects to us not having the diamond pose MGR ponies in the UK, and whether this was a test to decide whether or not to go for it. I got very annoyed with Hasbro when I discovered how many sets in the US with 6 ponies the UK only got 4 of, so it seems weird to me that they'd do this with a pose we never had unless it was a trial or they ran out of the right colours for Sparkler/DD and so used Sunny Bunch colours instead and she got pulled off the manufacture trolley as a "defective" pony because she wasn't standard. An employee might have claimed her in those circs, too.

She is a mystery for sure, and proves there's a lot we still don't know about Hasbro's mind during MLP production.
Is she missing eyelashes or was that a consequence of her previous punk lifestyle?

You're lucky to have her, though .