Was Skippity Doo meant to be a pegasus?

[Pierlala]

I was just looking around as she's one of my grails. And I found this backcard:

http://mylittlewiki.org/w/images/c/c1/SkippityDooBackcard.jpg

:O

Was she actually meant to be a Pegasus?

[slyons]

That's super funny, Hippity Hop is a unicorn too!
They must have changed their minds pre production, I would have taken either or!

[nemubones]

 Fifi is a Earth pony like her baby!

[LadyMoondancer]

I'll bet she was, and they changed their mind after the backcard art was already done!

Hippity Hop truly has all bases covered:  she's in an Earth pony pose (Lickety-Split pose), with a unicorn horn, and her actual toy is a pegasus, lol.

I'll bet earth pony Fifi was in Truly's pose.  It looks like that pose, only tilted forward.  The artists used real prototype ponies as models.

Twist is in a unicorn pose, but the "wrong" one, with a different hair color, and is missing her unicorn streak.

I had the brochure with these ponies on it as a kid and I remember being very surprised when I got online and saw what the actual toys looked like!  I admit I am a little sad that the brochure version of Twist wasn't made, I love that hair.

[invaderhorizongreen]

It is always fun to see what might have been.

[Leave a Whisper]

That's so interesting!

[pinkkittywinks]

I love seeing this sort of thing in art work

Love pkw xxx

[SkyCakes]

I like mixed up art work its going right with my day... mixed up o.O.

[mlp4me]

I love back card artwork. So many possibilities!

[LNS]

She would have been an adorable pegasus. Really fun to see. Sort of a "this is what we planned" but things changed last minute. Wild to think things changed so last minute given they had the artwork done.

[Pierlala]

It's funny to see this indeed. But I do like her more without wings. This sort of thing would never happen nowdays with the modern MLP. Correct me if I'm wrong. But I do like the faulty/careless 80's packaging

[DazzleKitty]

I think her pose would have been a great pegasus pose. In the midst of take off!

[Pierlala]

I always looked at her pose as her jumping rope. I thought that's why they gave her that name, untill I realized that there were more Ponies with that same pose. If you read the backcard story it may actually releave that she was indeed meant to be a Pegasus. Because it says she lands on a cloud. Only Pegasi can walk on coulds, right?

[Taffeta]

I'm not sure it's as complex as that. At least, with the poses, it's irrelevant because they recoloured from set I's card and that was based on the poses of the original characters who got removed.

http://angervosponypages.weebly.com/uploads/4/8/9/2/4892642/9933003_orig.jpg

Why they put them that way around is anyone's guess. I don't necessarily think they meant Skippety Doo to be a pegasus, Hippety Hop to be a unicorn or Fifi to be an earth pony. Although the last of those would match the baby Fifi more closely, there are no FT baby unicorns so that might be unconnected. It would be nice to think that they originally intended to make those three different species, but I think that it's just as possible whoever decided to recolour the backcard rather than issue a new one completely just decided to amend the existing images and wasn't too fussy if they were exact or not.

As for Skippety's story, there are a lot of ponies without wings who do strange things, including fly. All the sparkle ponies could fly even if they didn't have wings, so I'm not totally convinced that the story proves anything.

It is possible, but I genuinely don't have that much faith in Hasbro's accuracy department, given that this isn't a new card, but a recolour, and they were fine with showing the wrong poses for Twist, Bouncy etc because they recoloured. Why would they be fussed if they muddled up the species of the others, since they always get away with the "product may vary" mantra...
 

[LadyMoondancer]

Wow, excellent point about the change in backcard to include Skippity Doo, etc.!

I still think there is some evidence that the ponies changed molds, though.  Because Scrumptious takes the place of Posey on the backcard, yet she is drawn in her correct pose, not Posey's pose.  And Fifi's pose has changed compared to Cherries Jubilee, whose place she has taken.

IIRC the old backcards were watercolor paintings so they couldn't be recolored in the way that is done now (via computers).  But I think you're right about the ponies in question being placed in a way to take over the "spot" of the ponies they were replacing, including imitating their pose. 

It doesn't seem like it would be possible to just paint over the existing ponies when watercolor is the medium.  (For example, replacing Cherries Jubilee's pink hair with Fifi's white hair seems impossible.)  I wonder if they traced the existing ponies onto new paper, painted them on the new paper, and then trimmed the new ponies out and pasted them in??   Anyone still have Ruth Bush, the Hasbro designer/illustrator's, contact info?   Maybe she'd know how the process worked.