Variations and Oddities
Upon beginning this section, I have to admit that I'm
a little bit sad.
Ever since I began my Pony site, eight years ago, there have been
variants on it in a big way. The Scrapbook was the first page to
feature Italian Ponies (probably the initial online venture pony
collectors made into the variant market) and Japanese ponies, and
lumbered those known as 'Bobbie' and 'Ladybird' with their online
nicknames.
Oh yes. You can blame me for that.
But all good things do - and should - come to an end.
In the last few years, there has been a huge
explosion of variant ponies onto the collecting market. From Italians
to Peruvians, each line seems to grow bigger every day and it is no
longer right that I keep trying to follow all of these developments.
After all, in truth, my own personal area of knowledge is the UK and UK
paraphernalia. And the cold hard fact of it is, variants such as these
were NOT sold in the United Kingdom.
In short, there are many, many people out there with a far wider and
more accurate knowledge of the variant pony world.
I only included them in the first place because no
other website had delved that far, and people needed some kind of
online recourse. Today, there are experts in pretty much all the
variant fields. And so, instead of trying to pretend I know what I'm
talking about...I've compiled a set of links (reachable from the right
hand side of this page) of other sites which will likely help you a
whole lot more than I can.
What remains here are the things that have some UK relevance - the
weird Princess Ponies, Bobbie and her Happytail freak friends, and then
a few oddball ponies that knock around without belonging to any
particular set. I've also kept the Takara Japanese information up,
because, quite frankly, there is still not much known about them and
not many places of information.
So I'm left now with the briefest of introductions to Variant Ponies
imagineable :) As the name suggests, these ponies are ones that are not
'mainstream' but were made in other countries than Hong Kong and China,
and were often produced by other companies under licence from Hasbro.
(Please note that there are exceptions to this - the Fancy Pants Babies who are made
in Thailand ARE mainstream ponies, as are the No Country versions of Sundance and the Loving Family Ponies).
Variants often are based on mainstream My Little Pony
characters, but generally have differences. Some of these differences
are minor - such as a painted symbol or a different shade of colour in
their hair. Others are quite emphatic and involve full body colour
changes, different poses, and even different species.
Many variants make your life easier by having their country of
manufacture stamped on their hoof. I remember when I saw my first
Argentinian pony in 1998 that the name of the country had to be split
up to fit on her hoof. But not all variants have this convenient
tagging. Greek and Mexican Ponies often seem to be without any printing
and several ponies which can be traced to Spain generally have no
country at all on their hooves.
Below are some pictorial examples of variants from different countries that I've pulled from my own collection (all except Tornado whose image is courtesy of Lady Ruby). For more information on these different variant types, please check out the list of links via the right hand link :)
