1991: Teeny Weeny Ponies

LITTLE GIGGLES

Lavender teeny pony with aqua blue mane and tail, dark pink blocks tied with ribbon symbol

I cannot get at my cards at the moment, but I have a strong feeling that Little Giggles' character was the most mischievous of the group.

The pony shown above is the one I had as a child, and I have chosen to head the page with her, despite her dubious hair condition, for a couple of reasons. Not least because I know her provenance and she illustrates perfectly a very very common issue with this set, especially here in the UK.

The hair.

As with many of the ponies from this year, the Teeny Weeny Ponies suffered and benefitted from a coarser fibre of hair. I am unsure whether this is unique to the release in Europe, as I do not have any US bought Teeny ponies to compare with, but the Teeny Twins from the North American release have very soft hair, and it is my conjecture that they probably had a finer quality of hair in the issue over there. I cannot at present prove this, though.

In 1994/5, when I was corresponding with Hasbro UK, they sent me two loose Teeny Weeny ponies as a "gift to my collection". The person writing to me simply said that they were "lying around the office", and, indeed, they look very normal. I do not believe they are prototypes or anything that exciting, but I do think they might have been kept as examples of the ponies they were manufacturing. They show minor differences to the ponies I had as a kid, but this is *probably* batch related. Nonetheless, I have photographed them for a comparison below:

As can be seen from the image, my childhood one has much worse hair *lol*, but other than that, the one from Hasbro's office is a shade darker, with a slightly less bold symbol. Her hair is also a purer blue, whereas my childhood one has a shade more aqua hair. The Hasbro one's head is perfectly matched to the markers on her neck, whereas my store bought one..is a bit squint.

I think it likely the ponies Hasbro sent me were from an original batch and for some reason they never got packaged for sale. They might have been examples Hasbro kept for their records, but we will never know for sure. I am unsure how they compare with the ponies sold in the US, but it is possible they originally came from there to Hasbro UK as samples.