The My Little Pony Scrapbook: Schoolhouse

Pony Data
Set	Schoolhouse (1991-3)
Asst. Number	4349
Accessories	two pink desks (with e-e legs or u-u legs), two pencils (blue and yellow) two rulers (blue and yellow), one xylophone on purple stand, two purple beaters with aqua heads, blue globe on yellow stand, aqua weathervane, aqua glasses, blue skipping rope with pink handle and grip, one blue book featuring sums, one blue book featuring butterflies, two aqua window frames, bell with green string (string sometimes not included).
Pose	No Pony Included
Distribution	UK, most of Europe, Australasia
Other Versions	-

Schoolhouse is our very first stop...

The Schoolhouse playset is one of two later playsets produced only for the UK and European market (it may also have seen a release in Australasia, but never in North America). It is best known for being one of the settings of the My Little Pony Tales series, but it was originally released with the Schooltime and Playschool babies in mind. The box pictured Musictime, and even the 1993 insert features Sportstime rather than a new character.

The school came with a wide array of accessories, which somewhat reflected the themes of these eight school-focused ponies. Among these bits and pieces was a xylophone for Musictime, a skipping rope for Playtime, and some sums for Baby Count-A-Lot. It also featured a neon pink 'blackboard' which kids could write on (if you happened to speak uninitelligble line-squiggle, because actual words rarely showed up on the board!), a bell with a rope and a clock which produced a blue cuckoo when the hands were turned to three. Some sets did not include a rope. Mine was one of these. The pink window also opened up as a slide which was decidedly less impressive thgan that in the animation (but throwing baby ponies down it was still quite satisfying for me as a kid!)

The Schoolhouse, as featured on the original 1991 insert
UK, 1991

The school was originally sold in 1991, and continued to be sold through 1993. The box style remained the same, however, and its earlier release year is evident from the bordered style of box design.

The Schoolhouse Playset
Click on the image to see more pictures

The above photo is from my own childhood collection, and is complete except for my window frames, which, for some reason, I found three years later at the bottom of my hairbrushes box. These should be aqua and fit over the outside of the window.

The playset was made in Spain, which was also standard for later European playsets.

Lady Lessons

The Schoolhouse never came with a pony, and most people who have only seen the cartoon probably think of Miss Hackney as the appropriate schoolmistress (being that she was the tutor for the Seven Characters). But in fact if there was to be a pony produced with the school, it would more likely have been Lady Lessons.

Lady Lessons
My Little Pony Comic, 1991

Lady Lessons was a character introduced into the pony comic around the same time as the school. While we have no evidence that a prototype existed, there are good clues to suggest her production was at least considered at one point, even if she never made it to manufacture stage.

Firstly, until the switch to My Little Pony Tales-style stories in 1993, the pony comic never featured a pony that did not exist. Every single other pony that appeared in the comic was sold somewhere in the world, and by 1991, every single pony featured was sold in the UK - aside Lady Lessons. The illustration above also places her in the Schoolhouse, given the style of the window, the blackboard, the clock and the desk with pencils. If you think this is reaching, let's not forget that a similar blackboard with a similarly simple sum appeared in the promotional image for the Schooltime ponies.

Secondly, the school comes with some round rimmed glasses. Lady Lessons was always drawn wearing these, and so the suggestion is that they were meant to be hers.

Thirdly, her symbol, the globe, is exactly like the one in the Schoolhouse playset.

While there is absolutely no suggestion that Miss Hackney was anything other than a cartoon character, Lady Lessons seems like a pony for whom production was considered but pulled at some point before trade catalogues were put out. (This would mean that she was pulled at an earlier stage than Paradise with Paradise Estate, but Paradise does provide a precedent for a pony being withdrawn from a playset prior to release).

Some collectors have observed the similarity in her colouring to that of Love Token from the Romance Ponies in 1992. While this may be complete coincidence, it's nice to think that perhaps some of the idea of Lady Lessons lives on in the later line.

My Little Pony Schoolhouse

Because pony school is more fun than real school

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Schoolhouse is our very first stop...

Lady Lessons