Why is ice crystal rare? I wanna see yours!

[Ember1]

Heres thailand Ice Crystal.

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[Leave a Whisper]

Heres thailand Ice Crystal.

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That's Thailand Ice Crystal?! He's stunning!   Where'd you get his awesome hat?

[rybett]

I thought Thai Icy had a dark green streak?  I am confused...

[Ember1]

Only Two thai ice crystals have  been found. One with dark blue stripe and one with dark green stripe I made his hat for him

[scarletjul]

Oh, he looks so handsome with the blue stripe! 

I used to own Ice Crystal.  Sold him off awhile ago but I wouldn't mind owning him again.  He's such a handsome pony.  I really think that his color is the main part of his popularity.  That shade of green is hard to fine by, especially in g1s.

[Einhornbaby]

nice pics everybody the baby custom is adorable!! <3

Here is my boy :

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He has a few scratches and his mane has been cut. I dont know what he is currently going for but I can say I paid 45€ for mine years ago with his flaws.

[Sandi]

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[Big_Brother_Bufftusk]

I've always thought it was more of a popularity issue rather than a rarity one, granted they are more limited due to being country exclusives, but doesn't mean they're rare over there . He does have the most eye catching color scheme of all of them though, I've yet to get any of the MBP's but if I was going to splurge on one, it would definitely be him...aaaaaaaaaaand tornado, just because I like blue ponies.

[Taffeta]

I've always thought it was more of a popularity issue rather than a rarity one, granted they are more limited due to being country exclusives, but doesn't mean they're rare over there . He does have the most eye catching color scheme of all of them though, I've yet to get any of the MBP's but if I was going to splurge on one, it would definitely be him...aaaaaaaaaaand tornado, just because I like blue ponies.

I think they are rare over here now by dint of the fact it's a lot longer since the end of the line. This is geekish of me, but when I think back to when sister and I began carbooting, it was 1995 or thereabouts. If you think Ice Crystal and company came out in 1987-8...it makes sense that the kids of that kind of age would be clearing out toys in that time period. MLP were really plentiful at second hand sales back then (I can't speak for after 2002, much, because we lost our local carboot sale to building, unfortunately) and that was mostly kids clearing out old collections, sometimes little sisters selling handed down ponies and sometimes the original owners with the accessories and so on.

So yeah, I'd generally agree but the fact they were only out in one year means that anyone who began buying ponies after early 88 would not have had one, and therefore when that age group got to clearing out ponies, unless they had a sibling who handed one down, they would not have one in their collection to sell on.

Thus they begin to disappear once the original generation have got rid of them, especially when collectors have picked them up rather than them going back into the cycle of resale when the next generation grows up.

G1 ponies now more often appear online, I think, than at second hand stores. People clearing childhood collections from attics tend to list on online sales things or ebay because it's more known that they are collectable now. In 1995 there was no real internet presence and no way of doing the things that we do now. Nor knowing them, really.

So Ice Crystal and co are hard to find - now - because of that limited location and timeframe. But I suspect a lot of them sold at the time - and there are more out there. I think they must have been quite popular for two reasons. One, there are few surviving MIP items, implying not much unsold stock, and two, we had the Adventure Boy ponies right after, which suggests Hasbro felt that boy ponies were a sure thing here. They didn't give us one set and not the other, they gave us the Mountain Boys, then the Adventure Boys, then the second release with Chief and co under the name Big Brother Pony, and then the Family Ponies right after that. There was a central glut on adult boy ponies around the late 1980s in the UK...and I'm sure that if the MBs had flopped, that would not have happened.

I did wonder whether Hasbro created the MBs to test the boy pony market, as the Adventure Boy/Big Brother ponies' themes are quite Americanised (American Football, baseball, cowboy pony, etc) and I wonder if they thought they'd not connect to kids here. The Mountain Boys are all weathery, which is very British somehow. I do wonder if they were a test, especially since they had the same style of combs and brushes, and, in some cases, near identical ones.

The Adventure Boy ponies were out in the US at the time we still had stickers, but they never had stickers here, and their cards are distinctly from the subsequent year to Mountain Boys, with the coloured rim around the edge. So it does make you wonder whether Hasbro originally gave us the Mountain Boys instead, and they did so well that we got the Adventure Boys AS WELL.

[Big_Brother_Bufftusk]

I've always thought it was more of a popularity issue rather than a rarity one, granted they are more limited due to being country exclusives, but doesn't mean they're rare over there . He does have the most eye catching color scheme of all of them though, I've yet to get any of the MBP's but if I was going to splurge on one, it would definitely be him...aaaaaaaaaaand tornado, just because I like blue ponies.

I think they are rare over here now by dint of the fact it's a lot longer since the end of the line. This is geekish of me, but when I think back to when sister and I began carbooting, it was 1995 or thereabouts. If you think Ice Crystal and company came out in 1987-8...it makes sense that the kids of that kind of age would be clearing out toys in that time period. MLP were really plentiful at second hand sales back then (I can't speak for after 2002, much, because we lost our local carboot sale to building, unfortunately) and that was mostly kids clearing out old collections, sometimes little sisters selling handed down ponies and sometimes the original owners with the accessories and so on.

So yeah, I'd generally agree but the fact they were only out in one year means that anyone who began buying ponies after early 88 would not have had one, and therefore when that age group got to clearing out ponies, unless they had a sibling who handed one down, they would not have one in their collection to sell on.

Thus they begin to disappear once the original generation have got rid of them, especially when collectors have picked them up rather than them going back into the cycle of resale when the next generation grows up.

G1 ponies now more often appear online, I think, than at second hand stores. People clearing childhood collections from attics tend to list on online sales things or ebay because it's more known that they are collectable now. In 1995 there was no real internet presence and no way of doing the things that we do now. Nor knowing them, really.

So Ice Crystal and co are hard to find - now - because of that limited location and timeframe. But I suspect a lot of them sold at the time - and there are more out there. I think they must have been quite popular for two reasons. One, there are few surviving MIP items, implying not much unsold stock, and two, we had the Adventure Boy ponies right after, which suggests Hasbro felt that boy ponies were a sure thing here. They didn't give us one set and not the other, they gave us the Mountain Boys, then the Adventure Boys, then the second release with Chief and co under the name Big Brother Pony, and then the Family Ponies right after that. There was a central glut on adult boy ponies around the late 1980s in the UK...and I'm sure that if the MBs had flopped, that would not have happened.

I did wonder whether Hasbro created the MBs to test the boy pony market, as the Adventure Boy/Big Brother ponies' themes are quite Americanised (American Football, baseball, cowboy pony, etc) and I wonder if they thought they'd not connect to kids here. The Mountain Boys are all weathery, which is very British somehow. I do wonder if they were a test, especially since they had the same style of combs and brushes, and, in some cases, near identical ones.

The Adventure Boy ponies were out in the US at the time we still had stickers, but they never had stickers here, and their cards are distinctly from the subsequent year to Mountain Boys, with the coloured rim around the edge. So it does make you wonder whether Hasbro originally gave us the Mountain Boys instead, and they did so well that we got the Adventure Boys AS WELL.

Interesting! (hey, I like detailed facts about these things!) I didn't realize they came out a bit later on, so yea, makes sense they'd be a bit scarcer due to the fact their line wasn't produced for as long (or in larger quantities) as lines that preceded it. One person had just mentioned earlier on they've found three in the wild over time...*lol* guess they're just REALLY lucky. Either way, I'm still dreaming of owning one, among several other pricey ponies.

I've always been a bit baffled by the fact other countries outside of the US, were getting some of these AMAZING exclusive things that werre never seen here. I distinctly recall my disapointment as a child when I was wanted a 'playful heart monkey' care bears cousin, a person who had care bears for sale in a paper ad said "oh, they never made him!" when I had asked if he had one for sale. fast forward to the ebay years and...there he is, in the UK! Granted I'm getting off the pony topic here but that was my first experience of that sort of thing, then I come to learn a LOT of toy lines of the 80's had UK (and other country) exclusives, and it's like...whaaaaaaaa? They were the same company making them (in some cases) yet they were doing their own thing with the lines. It's just always puzzled me, being different fractions of the same corporation I guess they all wouldn't be doing the same thing but still...despite these lines popularity here I guess it just wasn't that cost effective to go all nuts with extending the lines even further.

Anywho, sorry for babbling, heh, rare or not he's still awesome!

[Whippycorn]

Thailand Ice Crystal 

The Mountain Boys are all weathery, which is very British somehow.

 

International exclusives are a funny thing indeed, it never really occurred to me that they could reflect the tastes of each country. I think Greece got the best ponies overall, lovely and bright colours!

On topic, here's my boy
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[Taffeta]

As regards the European exclusives thing, there are plenty of ponies that are either exclusive to the North American market, or ponies that were sold in other countries and the US but not in the UK. We didn't have any of the early pegasus or unicorn sets (but we DID have them in our stories, so we all wanted them!) and no early baby unicorns or pegasus ponies except Baby Heart Throb, Ribbon and Gusty. We had no So Softs, no Mimic, Bright Eyes, Sweet Pop...no yr 3 adult sea ponies, no 2nd set TAF or Princesses, no sea sparkle baby sea ponies...the list is very long. Most of the later sets of 6 in the North American line truncated to four in Europe - Candy Cane, Merry go Round, etc, although we did get some through direct store imports. You guys had 6 playtime brothers and 6 fancy pants - we had a merged set of 4 fancy pant girls and 2 boys. Basically when dealing with smaller markets, corners got cut.

But, maybe in balancing that out, there were exclusives. A lot of the later ones are Europe-wide, but in the earlier time period, there are some weird variations of what was sold within Europe. The UK are the only mainstream pony G1 country not to get the early unicorns and pegasus ponies in any form (except Gusty and co with the Movie Stars, which also were across Europe). But we did get Gypsy and Honeycomb, and we did get Mountain Boys and dragons with our Princesses.

I think the beauty and the frustration of G1 is that most countries had a distinct line in some way, and most countries also had something that was not available elsewhere. The online way of categorising gives the impression that the US doesn't have anything special in its line - but the opposite is true. I am really jealous of kids who got to grow up playing with Medley and Glory!!

(My sister collects Care Bears, mind you, and I used to collect Keypers, both of those lines have additional European items on top of the base US releases. My Little Pony isn't like that, though. In some ways the argument is amongst UK collectors, at least, that ponies like Gypsy and Honeycomb were intended as consolation for missing out on a large swathe of earlier ponies that were planned for release here, introduced into the stories, and then withdrawn and sold in Scandinavia instead.)

But continental Europe didn't get the Mountain Boys, outside of Scandinavia, so that means finding them is dependant on location.

I've had several duplicate Mountain Boys in the distant past, but I would be very surprised to find one second hand at a sale now xD.

[PeachyPie]

There are quite a few stories with the MBs and over the course of them you realise that they are all a mite eccentric, except Ice Crystal, who seems the most down-to-earth of the bunch.
Lightning has an on off flirting thing going on with Confetti. He also winks in and out and makes random flashing lights.
Sunburst never stops smiling.
Tornado butts into everything and is basically a nusiance
Thundercloud would never go out if he didn't have to
Fireball is super impatient and calls things Flapdoodles

And Ice Crystal puts up with it all with a very good humour

This is the best thing i've read all week! I so need to get a hold of the comics.... 

[Nappercasper]

I've had several duplicate Mountain Boys in the distant past, but I would be very surprised to find one second hand at a sale now xD.

They are still out here I found sunburst last year second hand