Gypsy in the United Kingdom

Gypsy was sold in the UK set in 1986. She was the only unicorn out of a group of six ponies. More importantly, given the lack of other unicorn and pegasus sets released on these shores, she was also pretty much the only basic range early unicorn - aside Dream Castle's Majesty - to be sold in the UK until the Movie Star ponies joined the fray in time for 1987. She, along with her set-mate Honeycomb did not get released on the continent. At time of writing, it is known she was exported to Hungary and to Israel (on UK cards), but in most of Europe she was replaced by either white Tootsie or a new version of Lickety Split.

Gypsy also broke the mould when it came to early unicorn convention. Most early unicorns had a stripe of a second colour in their manes - but Gypsy does not. Her mane and tail are both the same burnt orange colour. And, although she did have glittery symbols, she also had freckles - a feature which, up to this point, had only appeared on basic earth ponies Applejack and Bow-Tie. Gypsy was a mould-breaker, and set the benchmark that the UK line would continue to experiment along its own lines as time went forward, rather than just follow the North American range. This had its positive and its negative points, but Gypsy was definitely a positive. She was only sold in 1986, in this release, and, due to her limited geographical range, is fairly sought after second hand.

The differences in cards in 1986

MOC Gypsy
(UK, 1986)

Because Gypsy was not sold in many places outside of the United Kingdom, it makes sense that there should be card variations across Europe for the various sets on release. In the UK release, Gypsy was, of course, pictured on her backcard, along with her five set companions. She was also one of the characters featured on the front of the card. The names of ponies this year in the UK were on white ribbons under the rainbow. The set did not have a specific designated set name - they are just known on Hasbro's list as "My Little Ponies", and on the insert for 1986 simply as "ponies."

While some of the ponies released in this set were sold in Europe on the cards from a previous year, Italian and Spanish made versions of Hopscotch and Snowflake were sold on a different version of the 1986 card (shown on the right, with the example of Italian Hopscotch). This page does not deal with Nirvana (variant) ponies, but it should be noted that ponies made in Italy were commonly available in many European countries other than Italy, including Germany. While the basic template of the two cards is extremely similar, Gypsy has been removed and replaced by Lickety-Split. Hopscotch's name is also not printed on the ribbon - in European countries, it was common for the basic pony sets to have actual names, even when in the UK they did not.
Thanks to StraightDealsToys for the MOC image of Gypsy.

MOC Hopser (Italian Hopscotch, German Card)
(Germany, 1986)

Gypsy's Character

Gypsy was a mystical pony in the pony comics. She had the power to make predictions and see the future, and her fortune telling skills often came in useful. She was also a musical pony who loved to dance and play the tambourine (hence her symbol!), and had an open, friendly personality that made her popular with her peers.

Gypsy's mystic powers predict the release of the next pony comic...