In each set, the Pin the Tail on the Pony board was blue, and each came with two tails - one curly and one straight (both are pictured below). The UK and European sets featured Tutti Frutti, while the North American one featured Party Time. There is a notable shade difference between the board I have from my friend's childhood UK collection (left) and the one I have from Europe (right). Whether this was universal or just an accidental batch difference, I am unsure - all the plates in the set match the colour of the board for each version, but I cannot say for certain that this was an official release variation. The boxed images below suggest the European one may have been lighter in colour, but I cannot guarantee that was always the case.

The UK release also included a round puffy sticker, with Tutti Frutti on it. This was not sold in other European countries.

In Europe, the pony was neatly package with what looks like four of most accessories. This is a really pretty packaging layout, and most of the surviving Mint in Package ponies look like this one. At first glance, because the box style matches the UK release, it could be assumed this was sold in the UK. But the yellow label at the top left is from the Benelux, and indicates this was sold in the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg. This English box was also sold in Denmark.

(Releases in France had boxes translated into French, with the same box art, and the 1988 style rainbow).

Although you can't see the flap in the above picture, the actual UK box featured the old style font, in keeping with her 1987 release. You'll also notice that the UK packaged pony is...not as pretty in how she is laid out. But you can clearly see that she has six mugs, supporting the idea that she came with 'six of everything'. This is supported by the comic advert which makes that exact claim:

The UK comic advert also only shows one blindfold, whereas some other UK promotional material, including Argos, suggests that it came with two. The European set I have also had two, so I suspect the UK release did as well, although I only have one from my friend's childhood collection - the orange one shown in the picture above. The blindfolds I have for the European set are lavender and orange and I suspect these are universal across the European release too.

One final note - the original promotional text from Hasbro's trade catalogue mentioned the set coming with a present, but I have no evidence that this ever happened, and no present is mentioned in the comic advert, which would have been in print at the same time the pony was on sale. This was probably dropped before final production.

Versions of Tutti Frutti

If the accessory situation wasn't enough, there are also two versions of Tutti Frutti. One is more common in the UK, the other on the continent. This may be to do with release dates and timelines, but it's hard to be sure. But even looking at the boxed pictures, above, you can see there's one main difference - the way the hair lies in the packaging is significant, because the hair streak is rooted on a different side depending on the release. In this comparison, I am using one Tutti Frutti sourced from the Netherlands, and one which was bought new here in 1987 by one of my childhood friends.

The three key features between the two ponies are as follows:

1: Body tone
2: Eyeliner colour
3: Hair rooting style

1: Body tone. You can see it in the above comparison picture, but the European pony has a lighter body tone than my pony bought new here in the UK by my friend as a child.

2: Eyeliner. Yes, we're back to that again. As has been stated on other pages, a lot of UK sold UK ponies have black eyeliner (like the Movie set from this year). This is also true of the UK sold Tutti Frutti. The European sold one, on the other hand, has brown eyeliner. Other European releases have been found with brown eyeliner - most notoriously Truly. While I cannot be 100% certain that every UK release had black eyeliner and every European one, brown, both versions do exist and do seem to congregate in those areas.

3: Hair rooting style. This is the most distinctive difference for me. You can see from the image above that the Tutti Frutti pony from the UK has her hair falling on her non-display side. The packaged pony pictured above shows that this is how she was sold. The streak in her hair is rooted above the green to fall on her non-display side. The European pony, on the other hand, is rooted so that her mane falls on her display side. As a result, her yellow-gold streak is rooted to fall over the top of this on her display side. The below image also highlights the body tone difference very nicely.

The most likely explanation for these differences may well be because the European release was a little later than that in the UK, as with the Movie Stars and some other sets. At present, however, not enough data exists to prove this conclusively.