My Little Pony Annuals

[Gingerbread]

Awesome, thank you again everyone

The "85" one is actually '86.  (It was published in 1985 and people often get confused about it because there's no actual year on the cover.)  So once you get the 1991 one, your G1 set is complete.

The 2004 G3 one is really disappointing.  It's basically just two previously published G3 books and a few colouring pages. Later G3 annuals had new material in them though.

I have the 1991 one coming in the post so looks like my G1 set is complete, yay! Thanks for the clarification on the year of the first one - I always forget annuals are published for the following year

[Jemofirongate]

The annuals are a UK thing, I'm not sure if there was something similar in Europe?

As far as I know, the G1 Annuals go from 1985 to 1994. There may be a gap where an annual labelled 1995 would be, but was never released since G1 had finished by this point and G2 ponies hadn't come in yet.  If anyone knows different please shout!

The G2 annuals I don't think would have started until a cover year of 1996 but I not sure if there was an annual in 1996-98, only the 1999 one pictured. I haven't seen a G2 annual with a later year than 1999 so I presume that was the latest one of those until the G3 annuals started with 2004.

I assume G4 annuals took over from G3 in around 2010 and are still going?

Jem

[Taffeta]

I genuinely can't remember at the moment if there is or ever was an annual for 1986, now you mention it, but the yellow one is for 1985. If you look at the ponies in the annuals, they usually reflect the pony issue line from the year before the publishing date. The yellow one was published in 1985, but the cover features the ponies released in the UK in 1984:

Spoiler

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(1984 insert)

The 1985 insert features the Groom & Style ponies.

 That means the annual was likely published at the start of 1985 and thus features the ponies that were out before that point, not during that year. The pony comic also began some time in 1985, I *think* but the artwork from the comic isn't the artwork of this annual. The later annuals reflect comic artwork quite a lot, but this one doesn't, implying it's older. That would also date it to the start of 1985. If it was 1986, you'd expect to see the ponies from 1985 on the cover, and more comic related influence. You don't see any of that, so it's common sense to date it earlier.

The only pony I can think of that's involved is Cascade and it's her only story appearance. She *is* on the insert for 1985, but when you look at the date stamps in the boxes for Cascade and Sprinkles, I'm pretty certain Cascade's date is early 1985, which suggests she was out on sale as part of the autumn-summer 1984-5 line, as opposed to the 1985-6 line. Sprinkles' box has a later date and Sprinkles' production number also is higher than Cascade's, implying she probably came in and replaced Cascade during 1985, when they ran out of ponies and decided to just use the US SPrinkles instead.

So basically yellow annual = 1985. 1986 can be considered a gap. 1987 features flutter ponies on the front - the set issued in the UK in 1986, because it's got Forget Me Not on the front. The same pattern continues on beyond that - 1988 has the Mountain Boys which were out in 1987. 1989 has the Party Ponies and Adventure Boys etc, all of whom were part of the 1988 line in the UK. And so on and so forth.

General pattern rule then with the annuals and the ponies featured - yellow annual should be considered 1985, and 1986 should be seen as the gap. The yellow annual was probably a taster testing the market for a comic.

I don't know why 1986 should be missing except that they hadn't decided to go all out with the annuals yet at that point. There are a lot of story books and such around 1985-6, as well as the comic and the first pony club. Maybe it just didn't get thought of to go back to that idea until the end of 86. 85 is a weird year as we were missing a ton of ponies we should've had according to the comic. Perhaps they wanted to get themselves sorted out with that first...

[LadyGuinevere]

I've always considered the 1985 dated one to be for 1986 as they're always published shortly before Christmas with the date for the next year on the cover, so if it was before Christmas 1985 the date would typically be 1986.

[Taffeta]

I've always considered the 1985 dated one to be for 1986 as they're always published shortly before Christmas with the date for the next year on the cover, so if it was before Christmas 1985 the date would typically be 1986.

But, as I mentioned above, the ponies included in it are 1984, and this is the first annual. I think we should consider it the year of publication because otherwise it doesn't fit the pattern of the rest.

And it makes no sense that it should have entirely different artwork to the comic that came about in 1985 unless it came before the comic.

If it was before Christmas 1985, you would expect it to be promoting the ponies on sale around that time, so that kids would go out and buy them  That's the whole point of the annual, after all. The fact it advertises the 1984 set makes me think that's what was out at the time this was published, which would make it the start of 1985, and not the end

So to me it is 1985's annual. 1986 just doesn't have one.

[LadyMoondancer]

An annual is basically a large book, and Hasbro typically did not use the comics artists for the books (The Stolen Shadow, A Problem for the Baby Ponies, etc) EXCEPT the annuals.   Maybe for this first annual Hasbro regarded it more as "just another pony book" rather than a tie-in to the comics.

[Taffeta]

An annual is basically a large book, and Hasbro typically did not use the comics artists for the books (The Stolen Shadow, A Problem for the Baby Ponies, etc) EXCEPT the annuals.   Maybe for this first annual Hasbro regarded it more as "just another pony book" rather than a tie-in to the comics.

My point is that it couldn't be a tie in to the comics when the comics didn't yet exist But after they do exist, then they do tie in together. That's not an accident. The comic is all one big advertising project for MLP, just as the annuals are.

The tradition of toyline annuals in the UK is to sell the toys out at the time of the book release. Because it's an annual, not a story book, or book-with-cassette book, that's important I think. It therefore ought to be considered in conjunction with the other annuals, and annuals in general as books designed to sell what's in the stores...

I don't have the book to hand but I don't remember whether it includes the ponies we didn't get here. The books you mention definitely did include them. One of them - forget which - has an information update in a later reprint to correct the names of the Sea Ponies (but not the artwork I think?) from the US names to the UK names (among other things) so they're going through an entirely different editing process to connect to the existing toy line.

There's a significant difference in the style of packaging used for ponies that came out in 1984 and those which came out in 1985. The style of insert is different. Everything is different, really. Stands to reason that the annual would be, too. It's all experimental at this point. 1985 is one of those kinds of years in the UK anyway.

By the end of 1985/early 1986 you have more organisation going on in terms of packaging styles, storylines, marketing inserts, etc.

It's weird that there isn't a 1986 annual, but the format of the yellow annual implies its designed to sell ponies that are out in 1984-5. That makes it logical to consider it 1985, though it's also possible to just consider it a one-off from 1985 and that the proper annuals begin at the end of 1986, with the 1987 annual.

[LadyMoondancer]

I guess my point is that just because the annual doesn't line up with the comic books, that doesn't mean the comics weren't in production already.  Real life is messy, sometimes companies don't do what seems obvious or logical.

All the other annuals were published by London Editions / Fleetway, who wrote the comics, so it makes sense that they'd align.  The Applejack cover annual, however, was published by Grandreams.  If Hasbro gave Grandreams a different set of reference material than they gave Fleetway / LE, it makes sense that they both produced very different things focused on different ponies.

The 1986 annual for Transformers was also published by Grandreams, published in December 1985.  None of the other TF annuals are from Grandreams.  Seems to have been a one-year thing.

[Taffeta]

The 1986 annual for Transformers was also published by Grandreams, published in December 1985.  None of the other TF annuals are from Grandreams.  Seems to have been a one-year thing.

What line of toys is featured in the 1986 annual for TF published in 1985? The 1985 line or the 1984 line? Or a mix?

Hasbro themselves were under the misapprehension that they began selling MLP in 1985, because the list they sent me starts then, and they talk about "inception" in the letter that I have from their office from Sept 95.

We know that's not the case as there's plenty of material that predates that, some of which is uniquely UK in its design, like the Rainbow Pony cards (I had Windy in 1984), and the Sea Pony boxes.

But it makes sense to me that if Hasbro UK were building up to some kind of marketing presence in 1985, the annual in question existed beforehand and maybe went into print early in 1985, rather than later. Hasbro UK never made any other proper attempt to market the ponies from 1984 at the time they were out but that annual. They didn't have backcard stories and the insert didn't give them names, either.

In my opinion the annual was needed as a medium to promote those ponies that had no other real recourse for promotion at that time. We had a really confused period where a lot of ponies were advertised in stories but not sold here - stories like the ones you mention. Hasbro were trying to push MLP into the limelight. I would see this annual as an early step towards doing that.

1985 was a very successful year for MLP in the UK. I imagine that they didn't need the advertising quite as much then. But I don't see them wasting money on advertising ponies when they weren't going to sell them any more. So for me it had to be in production in 1984 and printed in 1985.

Nothing else really makes sense with the idea that an annual is designed to sell the ponies in stores. To me that trumps the idea that its weird 1986 doesn't have an annual to its name.

And because the TF came out in December 1985, it doesn't mean automatically that the MLP one did too. It's just as possible the MLP one came out, and then because it was successful, they rolled out the contract to other toy lines in time for Christmas.

We'll never know for sure, of course. But given Hasbro UK's marketing situation, it would be a really bad move to advertise the ponies no longer on sale at the same time as filling the story books with other ponies not on sale here, at a time when they needed to get MLP up and running as a toy.

And I tend to see this more as a marketing thing than anything else at this point. Which is why, for me, nothing else really makes a lot of sense but that this annual bucks the trend and was sold in the year of its printing date.

But as we'll never know for sure, lets just agree to disagree on the subject