The American promotional brochure showed different colours
for pendants and the woven tie (which it calls a bracelet,
LOL, I always used it as a hairtie) as well as a clip like
those sold with the
Dance & Prance Ponies,
only with no tinsel. I have never seen this accessory as
confirmed for this pony, so I don't know what colour it
might have been or whether these other variations existed.
The two gifts shown above (the heart pendant and the blue
and pink woven hair tie) were both definitely available
with this pony, but only one was supplied. They were
inside the pink patterned box when the pony was packaged
and so it is not possible to see what the gift is through
the packaging.
I am not sure how regionally these may have been
distributed. My pony ("Juli") in her German box came with
the blue and pink tie shown on the right (this is her
original tie and box). The other, however, was given away
as a freebie with one issue of the My Little Pony comic,
making it more complicated to figure out how many of the
heart pendants came from the Birthday Pony and how many
came from the comic.
I also have never unboxed a UK packaged one, so am not
sure what was more common here.
Although by this point in the UK and in Europe, the
Gingerbread pose was made out as a male pose, the Birthday
Pony is an exception. This is probably because she was
originally sold in the North American release and was a
global issue, rather than a UK and European exclusive. Her
original promotional image was in a different pose but by
the time she got to the UK, she was only being promoted in
the correct pose.
Birthday Pony as featured on UK Insert
1993
At least one version of this pony does exist with the
purple markings printed in yellow instead. This was also
the colour blend in the prototype catalogue image, albeit
the pose was different. Most likely, this pony was used in
promotion and exists only in very small numbers. It does
not seem to have entered mass production.
