At least 15 years ago I was on a "cutting-edge" email news group list. Yah, I just dated myself. :p I was there when the first White Windy popped up and everyone LOST THEIR MINDS. Pony Collecting history is a beautiful thing to look back on.
Was that list ponypeople or dreamvalley by any chance? (I think there was one other but I can't remember it's name, darnit. I'm getting old!)
@ Kitkatvintage, we've discussed it before but I love that story of yours about Helen. She was a very special collector, especially to my sister and I when we were starting out, and her collection was amazing. I think it fitting that she be remembered even now she's not here and her ponies are spread all over the world.
@LM, I also miss that time! The fact there are still questions, mysteries and such relating to the UK release means I still have something to get my teeth into, but I miss the time when I realised that half the ponies I grew up with were still unknown to the world at large and that there were still mysteries about the US release, let alone other places. LM, I have you credited on my site (and this must go back to about 1999 and I just have kept it there in various upgrades) for formally identifying the name of TAF Sundance, because if you remember DV and other places had her as "Sunshine Sundance" and there was all this confusion as to whether TAF Sundance and Sunshine Sundance were different ponies.
I also remember the phonecall with Helen where I first mentioned Snowflake and she was like, "who's Snowflake"? It was such a different time - I had to go take photos of my ponies, send them to her in the post and half of them she either had only heard rumours about or didn't know about. I remember having to try and ID pose variations from drawing inserts on DV for the baby sea ponies and confetti in order that I knew what to look for for Helen, and then the Scrapbook came out of that. I remember everyone telling me my plush Honeycomb was a fake (hah) and I remember people thinking that Italy Surprise and Peachy were maybe fakes too right back when I first asked about them.
There were so many things to investigate then and while there still are now, it's swung a long way away from where it began. I'm quite happy now confining myself to the UK stuff, but I still remember the excitement of the "weird" ponies that kept coming out of the woodwork. (Of course to my sister and I, carbooting in the time before and around the discovery of DV in 1997, some of the weird stuff turned up at sales - including the first SS pony we ever found (Hippety Hop) which, I confess, we kinda stared at blankly for a long while, trying to figure out WHAT she was!)
Still, there are some things I've firmly placed in the UK chronology only this year, so there's still work to be done. One thing I will always love about the UK line is the fact that the information is still, in some areas, mysterious and hidden in the mists of time.
To bring the story back to where it began, I now finally own blob baby (Peru Baby CC) thanks to SaveThePonies at ponycon. She is officially my most recent Nirvana pony.
Although in a way it's not the same as the one Helen brought, it's a little piece of that memory coming around full circle. I guess one day I'll have to get the other two as well
the first true "Nirvana" ponies I ever met, back in May 1998, when our internet was a very new thing, the scrapbook barely thought of and the word Nirvana a long way away from collector minds.
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