The Name Muddle
As mentioned on the set page, there is a complicated name
muddle that exists with Baby Night Song and Baby Stella in
this set.
This is because the comic has the orange baby as
Baby Stella, whilst surviving mint on card examples have the
orange baby sealed on Baby Night Song's card.
How Reliable is the Comic?
It is easy to just assume the comic got it wrong, but it's
not that simple. Name mistakes in the comic are
extremely unusual. Major name mistakes generally came about
because of information from Hasbro - there is a
detailed papertrail showing the Sundae Best Ponies with the
wrong names in Hasbro's publicity. These mistakes
match those found in the comic - when Hasbro corrected
them, so did the comic. It is otherwise extremely
rare for the comic to misname a pony actively in production.
The comic artwork is not always as accurate as the naming,
but in many cases the colour schemes or hairstyles of
particular ponies - even mistaken species - can be traced
back to Hasbro sources, whether prototype images or pictures
of the American release. All of this shows that the comic
was not just making things up - but was actually receiving
information about ponies and their appearances and names
from Hasbro directly.
That means that, almost certainly, the comic names for
Stella and Night Song came from Hasbro UK.
The fact the comic never corrected them also suggests that
Hasbro never told them that there was a name mistake, nor
made the correction themselves.
And it's not just the UK comic.
More proof that the name came from Hasbro is found in a
storybook from 1991, which features various ponies from that
year's range. One of these is the orange baby from this set,
which
it also calls Baby Stella.
"Baby Stella"
The Sparkling Show Stable Show (Chad Valley, 1991)
This book, "The Sparkling Show Stable Show" was
published by a different UK publisher from the comic. It is
very unlikely that two story-based publications randomly got
the names wrong at exactly the same time.
A third piece of evidence comes from Germany, where
the advert that appeared in the German comic presented the
orange baby as Baby Sternschnuppe - which translates as
"Baby Shooting Star", while it promotes the white one as
Baby Glitzer (baby Glitter). Sternenschuppe is clearly the
German equivalent of Stella. This advertisment, like those
which appeared in the UK comic, would have come from
Hasbro's promotional department originally.
Clearly we can't just blame this on a 'comic mistake'.
What about the backcards, then?
It is an unavoidable fact that surviving examples of the
orange baby Mint on Card are on cards marked 'Baby Night
Song', and those for the white baby are "Baby Stella". For a
lot of people - including both those who grew up with the
babies from new, and those who simply look at the toyline
for identification, this is case closed. But when you read
the stories associated with the two ponies, and consider the
names and symbols, there's something a bit odd going on
here.
According to the backcard story, Baby Stella - whose name
means star - has a backcard story which is all about a
stellar performance, being starstruck, and a shooting
star. These all seem to tally with the baby pony with
the star on her symbol - which is the orange pony. The white
pony has planets and moons on her symbol, which makes a lot
less sense.
Unfortunately, the backcard stories from 1991 do not name
the ponies individually on the photo on the back. If they
did, maybe we'd have a better set of clues.
What information do we have from Hasbro?
Unfortunately, I do not have the UK 1991 Hasbro store
catalogue, nor do I know where scans exist. Comparing
existing promotional photographs of this set from the
Spanish equivalent and the list of names sent to me by
Hasbro UK in 1995 is not especially conclusive, as the
Spanish catalogue has no names on the photos (and it is
possible that the store catalogue in the UK was the same).
The order in which the names appear in the list sent to me
by Hasbro UK in 1995, compared with the Starlight Baby
promotional photograph, makes it more likely that Hasbro
intended the orange baby to be Stella. But this does not
preclude the possibility that Hasbro had their own
production images that we do not know about, or that there
was a naming shift and the ponies were ultimately changed
over at a late date.
So how should we name them, then?
