1989:

FANCY PANTS BABY PONIES

Well, the observant people will be wondering why exactly there is a divide down the middle of this set in the right hand link frame.

In honesty, I struggled for a long time trying to work out how best to tackle the problem of the Playtime Baby Ponies. In the end, this seemed to be the simplest way.

You see, what was two sets in the North American release was actually bits of one set in the UK.

In the United Kingdom release, there were no such things as Fancy Pants Baby Ponies. Although the concept existed, the set-name was never used to market these ponies (despite the fact that four of the six new characters DID see a UK issue). Instead, the four chosen babies were combined with two ponies from the Playtime Baby Brother Pony set - and it was THIS set name that was contracted down to form their release name - Playtime Baby Ponies. The Playtime Baby Ponies were actually sold in 1990, but it gets too complicated to start jumping ponies about years...hence I have put them here!

Playtime Baby Ponies: From Baby Splashes' Box (UK,1990)

Baby Sunnybunch and Baby Bows were not sold in the UK, and although the set were marketed with the slogan "Baby Ponies who like to play Peekaboo!", the girls from the set did NOT have Peekaboo Baby style turning heads.

Each baby boy had the same style of Peekaboo head as used by the Peekaboo Babies, but they used different head moulds and are distinguishable at a glance from the Peekaboo boys because they had freckles and the Peekaboo babies did not.

To complicate things even further, however, when Hasbro released the set of six Fancy Pants Babies in North America, they decided (for some reason) to outsource their manufacturing and have them made by a factory in Thailand. They are the only mainstream set to be made in Thailand - but as you can see by the box image above, the ones sold in the United Kingdom were MADE IN CHINA.

This often confuses people, who think the Thai versions are some kind of htf variation. (Sorry to disappoint, but if you bought a Fancy Pants Baby new in the USA or Canada, you'd get a Thai baby every time...and Baby Sunnybunch and Baby Bows were ONLY EVER available made in Thailand).

The different manufacturing locations also meant variations in the baby ponies, in particular Baby Splashes and Baby Starburst. See each individual page for more on this.