White-Haired Starglow Variant? More photos added!

[Ivy]

OMG! Want!!

[Filthy]

My memory might be playing tricks on me, but why do I have a feeling I've seen a MOC pic of this kind of variant on someone's ponysite? The pic was very small and blurry, the pony didn't belong to the site owner. The site had pics of ponies MOC. (That was few years ago).

[Enolaalone]

She's lovely! Like others I am kind of on the fence about what's caused the white hair, but either way it really suits her.

[Kazzellin]

I'm more inclined to cry "varient" than anything else.

She's very pretty, too. Congrats on the find! ^__^

[Elisto]

I'd guess it's faded because of how severely discolored the body is (even if there is variation in the exactly body color of this set, that difference is still very dramatic). Since it's translucent, I would expect the hair inside the plastic to fade along with the rest too, assuming it's sun that caused the fading. All the hair colors, at least all the pink/red ones, CAN fade eventually, even though it's not that common.

It is odd that the orange symbol hasn't also faded, so that makes me less certain; like others here said, it could be some kind of chemical bleaching, or a combination of chemical and sun.

One thing to check, do the stars still glow in the dark? I would expect them to no longer glow if the pony's been exposed to that much sun, although again, I'm not entirely sure.

Thanks for weighing in!  On your advice, I tested both Starglows, the regular and the white-haired one and they both still glow in the dark--equally brightly.  I'm not one to cry wolf when it comes to variants--in twenty years of collecting I've never thought I had one but now?  I don't know--it seems this might be one.  I don't think I'll ever know for sure, though.

I put the white-haired Starglow side-by-side with a unquestionably white-haired Love Token and they appear to be a color match.  (I edited my post with photographs of that comparison.)  So, I'm leaning more towards variant but still not sure how to definitively rule that way without breaking the factory seal on her neck--which I'm loath to do. 

Hmm, if they still glow fine, then I would say extreme sun probably isn't the cause, especially with the still-orange symbols (I was ignoring the yellow hair because I thought that was the last color to fade, although I might be wrong). And if people here are saying they've seen the body color before normally, then that might not mean anything.I'm also not sure opening her to look at the root color would help...like I said before, I would expect it to be white even if it was fading (sun or chemical).  Plus, are there any chemicals known to do something like this? I might change my vote to variant then.

[mlp4me]

Peroxide will change hair color. For example, sugarberry's lovely reddish/pink hair turns to yellow. However in that process hair tends to dry it out.
(Who knows, this pony could have had some type of chemical perm done to her back in the day by a collector and this is what the result is after 20 some years...) Shampoo, conditioner, vinegar, rubbing alcohol, nail polish remover... You just never know what chemicals these lovely toys have been exposed to over the years.

[NoDivision]

If she could be opened, the best place to check for original hair color would be inside the metal clip that holds the tail together - it wouldn't have been exposed to sunlight, and the hair in there is so packed together and protected that there's a chance if this was a chemical reaction some of that hair wouldn't have been reached.

[Elisto]

That's true, I guess the hair in the clamp would probably still be its original color.

(Who knows, this pony could have had some type of chemical perm done to her back in the day by a collector and this is what the result is after 20 some years...)

Except that this one was never owned by a collector. I mean, I guess the kids could have done something to style the hair, and that affected it now, and since it sounds like the original owner wanted two the same, it seems odd that she would have two that weren't the same...but I don't know. I still think it overall *looks* faded, but does anyone have other examples of faded hair to compare? (Not fading pink, but other colors?)

[mlp4me]

I agree Elisto, you never know until you crack them open. To me, just looks really discolored/faded. I spaced out the fact that this person wasn't a collector. But hey, you never know, non collectors do some wacky stuff to their ponies too.

[LadyMoondancer]

I wonder if someone put the wrong color of hair in the machine in the factory and a few of these gals got out before anyone noticed it?  Happy Glow has white stripes in her mane . . .

I find it hard to believe the reason the hair is white is chemicals, because the color is so even and the hair looks undamaged.  And I've just never seen that shade of pink fade at all . . . (Even light pink, the fading shade, usually ends up more of an off-white than a pure white.)

We have a pony mystery on our hands!

[Goldilocks]

I think it would be difficult to solve this mystery for sure without opening the pony. Anyway she is a lovely pony

[Oneleo1]

She looks like she has been left outside in the sun for a very very long time....her plastic looks very sun damaged.

[LadySatine]

Are you going to put her in the sun to see if her hair changes color too? I seriously think you should check that out. Who knows!

[nhal039]

I think variant, she is awesome!

[Pythia]

I'm going with variant. There's a biiig range in body colour for the glow n shows, so the different body colours aren't necessarily due to sun fading. And if you look in the pic of their roots, you can see THROUGH the plastic, and it looks pretty white there too.