White Windy with Blue symbol?

[poniesthatsparkle]

In July, I purchased a Windy from a collector at a toy show for $10. She was in pretty rough shape, but everything was fixable. The worst was the surface dirt, and when I cleaned it all off, she was white!!! I also noticed that her symbol is blue. Isn't Windy supposed to be lavender with a purple symbol?

I have some pictures of her, although they aren't very good.

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[lunar_scythe]

Yeah, the blue symboled one is considered either a minor variant or an odd version of fading, depending on who you ask.   It is similar to my white Bluebelles, but it's much harder to figure out if she is actually white or just a victim of regular fading, since the light color of regular Windy fades to a greyish white color, unlike Bluebelle where it's really obvious something is going on, haha.

[LadyMoondancer]

Windy is a very, very pale lavender, and it sometimes will bleach out to near-white or white.

The blue symbol is also from pigment leeching out.  I don't know why, but red pigment seems more unstable than other pigments.  Purple is a mixture of blue and red.  So when the red leeches out, it leaves the blue. 

(The thing with red paint also happens outside of pony-paint.  The post office in my hometown had a mural of postage stamps painted on it, and over the years all the red paint turned blue.  So now there's a cow with a blue tongue, lol.)

[poniesthatsparkle]

Yeah, the blue symboled one is considered either a minor variant or an odd version of fading, depending on who you ask.   It is similar to my white Bluebelles, but it's much harder to figure out if she is actually white or just a victim of regular fading, since the light color of regular Windy fades to a greyish white color, unlike Bluebelle where it's really obvious something is going on, haha.

Well, I did open her up to clean some rust inside of her, and she was completely white on the inside, too. When a pony fades, does the inside get affected, too?

Windy is a very, very pale lavender, and it sometimes will bleach out to near-white or white.

The blue symbol is also from pigment leeching out.  I don't know why, but red pigment seems more unstable than other pigments.  Purple is a mixture of blue and red.  So when the red leeches out, it leaves the blue. 

(The thing with red paint also happens outside of pony-paint.  The post office in my hometown had a mural of postage stamps painted on it, and over the years all the red paint turned blue.  So now there's a cow with a blue tongue, lol.)

Ah, I see. The only thing that's confusing me is that the little information I can find of this "white Windy" claims that she's a UK variant of some sort. So everywhere I look, I'm finding different information.

[LadyMoondancer]

Yeah, that rumor has its roots in the late 90s when variations of US ponies turned up all the time, so some people thought, "Well, this Windy looks different, must be another UK variant!"   She's found all over the place though (not just in the UK / Europe) and there's no evidence that she was "intended" to be white (unlike, for example, white Tootsie.) 

Here's a topic on her from January 2016: http://mlparena.com/index.php?topic=376184.0

[FantasticFirefly]

Ah, I see. The only thing that's confusing me is that the little information I can find of this "white Windy" claims that she's a UK variant of some sort. So everywhere I look, I'm finding different information.

Yep- find an unusual pony, call it a UK varient is something that happened a LOT when I started reading collectors speak to each other online. There's still a lot of leftover inaccurate pony-lore still being passed down.

LM explained the issue with her pigments quite well. These windy's are from a goofy batch, and can be found in the US/Canada/UK. likely elsewhere.

[Taffeta]

Ah, I see. The only thing that's confusing me is that the little information I can find of this "white Windy" claims that she's a UK variant of some sort. So everywhere I look, I'm finding different information.

Yep- find an unusual pony, call it a UK varient is something that happened a LOT when I started reading collectors speak to each other online. There's still a lot of leftover inaccurate pony-lore still being passed down.

This. Couldn't put it better. You have no idea how annoying it was back then, and how annoying it still is now, when ID websites make grandiose claims about something being "UK" in order to make it sound more exotic (or because they don't actually know that there is a whole continent of different countries in Europe that don't constitute member states of the UK!)

...Ahem. Sorry. Almost 20 years of bitterness came out then.

Windy. I think she's a batch issue, personally, but I am wary of ones with blue symbols. This is because it is very common for purple to fade to blue in ponies. I am more inclined to consider pale Windys with purple symbols as being a legitimate batch variation, but they are not specifically rare variants, just a different batch with a different colour mix in the plastic. If you look at a lot of ponies, not just Windy, you can make a comparison and see slight shade differences in plastic colour. Windy is no different. Parasol, Starshine, Skydancer...all also have this. So does Moonstone, I think. The thing is that Windy catches people's attention because of the myth of the UK variant, and it's stuck.

So in my opinion as a UK person, there is a paler Windy batch, it is just a batch, there are also lavender Windy batches. To me they are all the same, just different batches and if anything they give a clue to the number of times these ponies were on release rather than any kind of rare item. The blue symbols make me wary of fading but if the colour is even all through the pony it is probably just part of the paler batch.

It isn't a UK variant, it isn't really a variant. White Tootsie, that's a variant. Yellow Moondancer, that's a variant. White Windy is down to batch, imo.

I did some comparisons with my ponies a while ago, just to give some idea. Some people will pay more for the whiter Windy, but personally I think it's a waste of cash since she's not really all that rare...

http://www.etherella.com/scrapbook2/windy.htm