Are watercolor baby sea ponies naturally dark-ish?

[Haruna]

It's hard to know how to phrase this question, but I've noticed that all three of the watercolor baby sea ponies I'm preparing to sell (Misty, Foamy, and Seawinkle) and my own Foamy from childhood all have this dark look inside; normally when I see it, I assume the pony has mildew. I tried to get the new Foamy's head off to look inside, but her head was tightly glued on and I cut my hand pretty bad with the nail file I was using. I'd rather not have to remove their heads if they don't have a problem (they seem clean otherwise).

So . . . do watercolor baby sea ponies look kind of dark-ish inside? Does their special plastic just give them that look? I hope this question is understandable . . . 

[Baby Sugarberry]

They can discolour pretty badly... but they are also prone to mildew / grunge inside, since sea ponies were marketed as bath toys.  Is it an even all over discolouration, or does the neck seal area look lighter?  Have you tried holding one up to a bright light?  Using something like a toothpick through the drain hole to see if you can scrape off anything from the interior is another option for diagnosis.

[Haruna]

Good suggestions! I'll have to try those tomorrow (when it's daylight again). It's all-over discoloration. I really hope they don't have mildew, though I imagine a sea pony would be easy to clean, if I could only get the head off.

[hathorcat]

They tend to have rather unattractive colours unfortunately due to the plastic colours that had to be used to get the colour changing ability. So yes, muddly or darkish colours can be pretty common unfortunately.

[Taffeta]

Whenever these come up I remember my sister's beautiful goose-poop coloured Seashore xD. I think that with the exception of Foamy, who is yellow and normally ends up being yellowish when she stops changing colour, they are generally quite dark shades. I have four of these MOC and one which fell off her card so has never been in water, and they're all quite dark colours. The only one I don't have in this state is WaveDancer but she's dark blue anyway, so I would say that dark is fairly normal. My Wavedancer is NOT the same colour all over, but it's not a mould issue with her, but that her plastic has changed more in some areas than others...so uneven discolouration doesn't necessarily mean mould.
http://www.etherella.com/scrapbook2/wavedancer_wc.JPG
^^ image for example of what I mean.

But it's worth doing the things suggested to be sure just in case (checking the hole, the roots of the hair etc).

I don't have a loose Foamy to do a compare with the one I have MOC and I'm trying to remember my sister's loose one from memory but I only really remember her being a slightly off yellow?

[Haruna]

Yeah, my Foamys are both off-yellow like you mentioned, Taffeta. She's not as yellow as the minty looking picture on My Little Wiki. I'm thinking it's their (all the ponies') plastic now; they don't have dark hair-roots and they don't seem to have mildew. I guess their plastic just does that over time :/ Thank you all for the help!

[Mermaid]

It's so hard to figure out which ones you need when you don't know their names haha! I used to have a really pretty orangish red one with white hair in the looking up pose, but I can't seem to find her again!!

[Taffeta]

You can identify them easily by the colour of their fin paint xD. THey all have distinctly different colours and those don't change. The one you had was probably Seawinkle, though. She does display as a vibrant lobsterish orange quite often:
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The fin paint colours are:
Wavedancer: Dark Purple
Sealight: Yellow
Seawinkle:Aqua
Misty: Lavender
Foamy: Pink
Seashore: Orange

Seashore, Foamy and Seawinkle are also in the looking up pose, the other three are in the head turned pose.

If you don't know their names, you can therefore always hunt them via fin paint colour instead xD. Because all you need to do is note the paint of the one you have!

They do tend to end up funny colours but if you know those two things identifying them is actually a lot easier. You wouldn't believe my MOC Seashore (aqua green) and my sister's goose poop brown Seashore were the same pony, but the fin paint proves they are!!

[Mermaid]

That was her taffeta! Thank you! Thanks for the fun paint info! I would have never thought of that! I'm so so terrible with baby sea ponies and dream beauties names!

[Taffeta]

No problem! They drive everyone mad because of how many colours they can end up as, so its really handy that at least one thing is unique to each of them and constant.