So, Is She A Club Newborn?

This is a bit of a vexed subject, and the truth is we really don't know what Hasbro intended when they put her out there. We don't know how successful the original offer was, or, why she existed in the first place. Hasbro UK did not usually do mail order ponies  - and when they did, they were usually ponies that had other known releases. Aside from Baby Lucky, the only other ponies thought to be available through any kind of non-store special offer were the Club Newborns. Baby Ribbons and Hearts is a white newborn, and is only found in the UK. These two details make her seem like a candidate for the Club and it seems very likely that Hasbro thought about it long and hard.

It is possible she was intended to be a Club Newborn, but then Hasbro changed their mind too late into production to cancel the order. The original 1989 Club Newborn was all in white, although she was promoted with red hair in the adverts. It is not impossible that this was because Baby Ribbons & Hearts (offered from early 1990) was in the design equation. But if this is so, Hasbro still went down a different path.

Baby Ribbons & Hearts was in production around the same time as Baby Bridesmaid. Again, ribbons and hearts might be wedding themed, but Hasbro later settled on a different design to carry this year's theme. And the insert for Baby Ribbons & Hearts is similar (though not the same) as the flier promoting Baby Fun & Games with the Pony Club in 1991. All these circumstantial details make it hard to rule out that, at some point, Hasbro thought of her as a Club baby - but for some reason, didn't follow it through.

She is often included with club newborns - including by me on previous site iterations - but without any firm proof, we cannot really call her an actual Club Newborn pony.

What we do know is that in 1991, at the end of the My Little Pony Club, Baby Ribbons & Hearts was offered to members through a special offer, for horseshoe points (or possibly proof of purchase). She was not the only pony available through this offer - Magical Breeze and other items were also included. (Thanks to TicTacToe and LadyGuinevere for the information about Ribbons & Hearts' Club provenance). If the Club had existed in 1992, it is possible that she would have been clearanced through this as the fourth Club Newborn, even if that was not her original release. But this never occurred, and so we really have to think of her as a weird Mail Order pony.

Clearance in Partners.

What exactly went wrong with this release is unclear. The difficulty in obtaining the leaflet may have been a factor - but it's just as possible they don't survive because most were sent off to Hasbro to receive the pony. Overproduction is definitely possible, but if this is the case, then it was on a very large scale. The pony was offered through the club, but this was not the only way in which she was made available to the public.

Ironically, despite the flier claiming she was not available in stores, this is how my sister bought hers some time in the early 1990s. Unfortunately, we were both kids and neither of us remember exactly which year she bought this pony - only that it was sometime before 1993. All we both remember is that there was a whole basket of them at the cash desk in Partners, a stationery store that no longer exists on the UK high street today. The ponies were in plastic, unmarked bags with no accessories. If our memories serve us correctly, she was very cheap - maybe £1.50 or something like that. My sister bought her with her pocket money.

It was July, and we remember this because my sister, being contrary, decided it was a perfect time to call her 'Baby Christmas', or 'Chrissie' for short. We did not discover her original name until much later, so she definitely didn't come with any identifiers or accessories.

So, at some point, in the summer months of probably either 1991 or 1992, Baby Ribbons & Hearts was available at clearance in Partners stores -certainly in England. It is less certain whether this was replicated across the four nations, or whether it was always Partners or different stores in different regions.

This clearance release is also another reason why Baby Ribbons & Hearts' actual issue has become confused to later years. She is relatively common on the second hand market, suggesting many were made, but it is uncertain how many of those were issued through the original offer, and how many were acquired like my sister's, or through the club.