Plumsweet's crumbling hair

[Keemax]

That's why we get smaller, flimsier ponies...

While I agree that most companies will do almost anything to cut production costs, it's more likely that the smaller size of the G4's is due to anthropometrics rather than a reduction in quality. Someone probably pointed out that the ponies of the previous generations were quite a bit larger than the average child's hand, so it would be more difficult for kids to get a comfortable grip on them or hold several of them at one time - how well an item fits into a person's hand features largely in product design - and so Hasbro decided to make the G4's more 'child-sized' to improve sales. Saving money and materials was probably just a bonus.

I am wondering what other factors might play a part in this degeneration process.

...has anything to do with climate/storage temperature/anything like that?

It probably does have something to do with temperature.

Metals and plastics tend to become brittle if they're exposed to constantly changing temperatures - more specifically being heated up and then cooled down several times.
So if you stored nylon-haired ponies in a room where, for example, the heater doesn't turn on at night, the nylon would then be continuously exposed to a 'room temperature' environment during the day and, potentially, cold spells during the night.

Basically any environment which undergoes daily and significant changes in temperature is not ideal for storing and maintaining the quality of plastics (or metals).

That said, unless the temperature change is frequent and drastic, it shouldn't really be affecting the nylon too much, which leads me to think that there might be something in the formula for that particular hair colour which makes the material particularly vulnerable to environmental changes over time. They would've carried out several quality checks at the factory in terms of strength and durability, but long term effects are difficult to predict and test for so it's easy for something like a gradual vulnerability to go unnoticed. I doubt they'd recall or revise the hair colour unless half of the world's pink-haired ponies suddenly went bald.

The initial quality of the hair would also make a contribution - my G3 Petal Blossom was the version which was packaged with the baby pony (Flower Flash, I think?) so I guess it sort of makes sense that her hair became brittle fairly quickly if the hair quality was lower. Although, in my case, Petal Blossom's hair being matted for a good five years was probably one of the main factors - I'm not entirely sure how her hair got to that state, but I remember I was going to re-hair her in light of how bad the tangles were and then decided to at least attempt to de-frizz it ....... and then ended up re-hairing her anyway.

In Plumsweet's case - did you buy her new from the store or loose from an ebay seller in China? I haven't noticed many differences between the two (aside from occasional missing item numbers and zap codes) but perhaps, if you didn't buy her new, the quality might not be as great?

[Baby Sugarberry]

That's why we get smaller, flimsier ponies with no quality control that break down faster than ever.

While I agree that most companies will do almost anything to cut production costs, it's more likely that the smaller size of the G4's is due to anthropometrics rather than a reduction in quality. Someone probably pointed out that the ponies of the previous generations were quite a bit larger than the average child's hand, so it would be more difficult for kids to get a comfortable grip on them or hold several of them at one time - how well an item fits into a person's hand features largely in product design - and so Hasbro decided to make the G4's more 'child-sized' to improve sales. Saving money and materials was probably just a bonus.

On the contrary, I feel that G1's were/are the perfect size for small hands.  Anthropomorphizing (attributing human characteristics) has less to do with the size of a toy, but more the features, placement, and ratio between those things that makes us like faces or find things 'cute'.

G4's are too small for any of the natural grips to feel good; even a small child can't fit more than one finger around one of the fillies, maybe two on an adult's torso, and similarly you can't wrap your hand around a single leg either, the two main ways G1's through G3's are held.  I suppose you could claim the entire toy can be palmed, but that's not very comfortable given the hard plastic of a G4.  As an adult it's even less feasible to grab a G4, at least myself I find I have to pinch them between two fingers to hold either on a leg or rump.

It's fuzzy but I seem to recall that one of the interviews with Bonnie talked about how G1's were designed soft and squishy specifically to feel nice in a child's hands. Most plastic horse toys up to then were hard.

[Motion-Paradox]

It could be that some of the hair is coming from a different supplier; I've seen a few colours that don't seem to match any of the colours on Dolly Hair, so it could be that those have a different formula that's causing the problem, or simply a bad batch. Not to mention there have been some hair colours that had issues that would show up early in the toy's life since the beginning (i.e. Fading Pink)


There are external factors as well; it's easy enough to point the finger at toy companies prioritising cost reduction over the quality of the finished product, but they are in a somewhat tricky business. Baby Sugarberry made a good point about inflation, and on top of that anything considered a luxury has a fairly rigid price point (To give you an idea how rigid, there's a chocolate company that for decades would decrease and increase the weight of their chocolate bars rather than change the price), and toys are often considered a luxury and many parents aren't willing to spend a lot of money on them, some aren't even willing to spend money on books for their children (though in some cases not even spending, when I worked in my local library parents often forced their children to choose fewer books when they could have taken out all the ones they wanted by putting some on their card).

Granted, not all parents are like that, but enough are that it can make changing the price difficult, especially since with a lot of things related to childhood people tend to use their own childhood as a benchmark; people expect toys to cost a similar amount to what they cost when they were growing up, parents give their children a similar amount of spending money to what they received, babysitters are paid similar amounts to what the people hiring them received (I know the person that used to babysit me was shocked the first time she watched me because my parents paid her more than $5 an hour, which was usually the most she received). And other factor is that these toys have to be something children could conceivably save up for.


Simply put both parties are at fault in a way; yes toy companies try to reduce the cost of their products, but the customers don't let them raise the price of their products. The toys still cost about $5, and this is what $5 buys in 2016.

Still there have been some improvements, some of the issues with G1 toys have been addressed, true some new issues have popped up but even some of those have been worked on. For example the first two generations were prone to leaking plasticisor, the chemical that makes the plastic soft, while the current toys are a more rigid plastic that still has some give. The more recent generations are also less hollow which makes them harder to damage in certain ways.

They've also addressed the issue that earlier G4 toys had of the heads and bodies not matching by molding the head in two pieces, using the same plastic for the faces and bodies with a different ones being used for the back and even within that the seem between the two it less obtrusive than it once was. They've also mostly fixed the G4 specific issue of inaccurate eye decals, some of the minor and background characters still have different eye-shapes than they did in the show, but most of the main characters have correct eyes now (The only one who hasn't been corrected is Applejack and even she has more accurately coloured irises)

[Taffeta]

The first pony I ever had with the sticky plastic problem was a G3. I have a few G1 now but yeah, I think we can say the first THREE generations. G4 is too young to really know yet.

I also used to carry the ponies by their tails as a kid. I still do, actually, unless I know the tail is loose. It's not like I'm carrying them miles, just from room to room, and it saves several trips. None of my childhood ponies suffered from this. The three that ended up with loose tails got them from overvigorous brushing...

I just wonder if it is a perfect storm situation. Right mix of temperature changes plus right mix of dye/hair colour in the factory equals meltdown in a certain proportion of ponies which meet those criteria. It means that any pony with that hair that didn't meet the storage or temperature issues would be okay for longer, as would any pony with better hair that did. But if the two elements coincided, then the hair breaks.

But with the Avon ones, it seems to just be poor quality fibre. And since they were only sold in that one way, I suspect they were all made at the same time/same place and with the same materials, thus providing so many issues in those specific ponies.

[reanna-mator]

I saw this post on the 21st and then had this happen to me yesterday! I was brushing baby Tea Lily's hair and the pink part of her mane fell right out! The Green part is fine and I tugged on her tail and the pink there didn't come out.

Poor balding baby:
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Yep, I had the exact same problem with that one. It's a shame, her colors are so pretty!

[Keemax]

On the contrary, I feel that G1's were/are the perfect size for small hands.  Anthropomorphizing (attributing human characteristics) has less to do with the size of a toy, but more the features, placement, and ratio between those things that makes us like faces or find things 'cute'.

Ah, you've misunderstood me. Sorry about that - I wasn't exactly clear in my explanation.

I wasn't referring to anthropomorphism, I meant anthropometrics; it's the study of the human body and it's movement, and it involves research into measurements which are relevant to people (i.e. average height, arm length, palm width etc.). Usually it's one of the only factors besides material cost and availability that influences the size of a product, like how wide a seat should be or the exact shape of a handle.

I only mentioned it because, I as well, am aware of the fact that the only way to firmly grip a G4 pony is by enclosing it in a fist, and I wondered if that was Hasbro's intention - that somehow they believe children have a desire to be able to wrap their entire fist completely around handheld toys. I'm not sure how they could've reached such a conclusion, I would assume that most people (regardless of age) quite enjoy being able to to actually look at whatever they're holding. I wasn't trying to imply that the previous generations are difficult to hold (because they aren't), only that the G4's might have intentionally been designed to be 'palm-sized' because Hasbro decided to take a different approach than before.

Personally I also disagree with the G4's small size, specifically because I have a bad habit of dropping things and having to resort to holding a G4 pony between the tips of my fingers does nothing to help it. Heaven forbid someone bumps into me and I suddenly have to try catching an airborne Fluttershy.

But, back to the hair issue, it is a little strange to have this kind of problem with a G4 pony, so something definitely must've sped up the degeneration of nylon. It's just a case of identifying what, exactly, happened to Plumsweet.

[Flitter]

Wow, that's terrifying. I do remember there being a hair variation with Plumweet but I don't recall exactly which strip of hair was different. Was it the front piece?

Which section of her hair was crumbling on yours,  Luxrayx, or is it pretty much all of it?


I just checked mine and her hair seems ok. I think mine was the one that came with a dvd. She has magenta up front, pale pink in the middle, and red in back of her mane.

(edit: dug up old threads on the variation
http://www.mlparena.com/archive/Forums//viewtopic/printertopic=1/t=281541/postdays=0/postorder=asc/start=0/finish_rel=-10000.html
&
http://mlparena.com/index.php/topic,318660.0.html )

[Baby Sugarberry]

On the contrary, I feel that G1's were/are the perfect size for small hands.  Anthropomorphizing (attributing human characteristics) has less to do with the size of a toy, but more the features, placement, and ratio between those things that makes us like faces or find things 'cute'.

Ah, you've misunderstood me. Sorry about that - I wasn't exactly clear in my explanation.

I wasn't referring to anthropomorphism, I meant anthropometrics; it's the study of the human body and it's movement, and it involves research into measurements which are relevant to people (i.e. average height, arm length, palm width etc.).

Ponyfeathers, that makes much more sense, I completely misread that (and this is the first time I've met 'anthropometrics', huzzah for a new word today!)  I have the tendency to drop G4's too, they're just so darn hard to get a grip on especially if they're slippery from sitting around with conditioner on their hair. T__T;

[Chi]

I remember having two Plumsweet, both similar shades of colour but not the same. The dark pink strip was the most obvious difference between the two. I no longer have either (I think????) but I do wonder which one is the flawed one, RIP.