1987:

Flutter Ponies

1987 saw the second release of these delicately beautiful Flutter Ponies. This year, too, they were stronger in every way - colour scheme, comic characterisation and, most importantly, wing fixings. Not that the new "tab" style wing holders meant that the wings were immune from breakages - but having had a tabbed Flutter Pony fall seven feet from a top shelf to the floor without any wing damage, I think it's safe to say that they were a touch sturdier :) Just not up to child's play.

FLUTTER PONY WING

SECOND YEAR WING FIXING

The new style wing holder is easy to distinguish from the original. Early flutter ponies had a "closed in" wing holder, whilst the new additions all had "open" holders in which you could clearly see the base of the wing as it fitted into the slot. It is relatively easy to remove and re-fix wings to ponies with this style of wing holder, making them much easier to restore than traditional style flutters.


FLUTTER PONIES : 1987 first UK Insert.

Along with the four new characters came two re-issues. In the UK, this was definitely Rosedust and Morning Glory. In the North American release, I believe it was Rosedust and Lily. Because of the disparity, I have not included photo-links of the re-released Flutter Ponies on this page.

FLUTTER PONY BOX showing 2nd set of Flutter Ponies including Morning Glory & Rosedust
(Tropical Breeze's UK box, 1987)

In the UK, Flutter Ponies persisted in having the round puffy stickers well into 1987.

Box text from UK box showing mention of sticker.(1987)

It is worth mentioning that although the French packaged versions look very much the same as the UK ones in terms of box art, they did not include a sticker and one is not mentioned on the box. There is also some dispute as to what kind of ribbons these ponies had in the UK - metallic single coloured ones in the style of the original set or gold edged ribbons in the style of the Princess Ponies.

. They are listed in the Argos Catalogue as retailing this year for £3.45 or thereabouts (although Argos did not seem to carry the new characters, and continued selling Honeysuckle and Rosedust into 1987). Argos also mentions a sticker coming with the ponies, although the fact they were selling earlier characters doesn't make this a firm source for the 1987 set. (The existence of flutter stickers from that year, however, does!)

ROSEDUST and HONEYSUCKLE
Argos Catalogue 1987 (Spring/Summer, UK)
(My sincere thanks to Retromash for providing me with the 1987 Argos scan)

It's also worth noting that some of the first-year only Flutter Ponies were released with the new style of wing holder, implying that the stronger design was brought into production half way through 1986 as Hasbro rethought their design. The fact some stores were still retailing Honeysuckle into early 1987 may explain this; it is possible that earlier characters remained in production alongside the new set, whose packaging had been updated to reflect the new ponies.

All flutter ponies pictured on these pages are from my own collection and all wings are original Hasbro wings - not repros - so you can get the idea of how they really should look in all their (Morning?) glory!

Pretty as the Summer Wing and Windy Wing Ponies were, to me they're not half as beautiful as a winged flutter pony :D