- Joined
- Jul 3, 2014
- Messages
- 126
I've heard it's customary for one's first post here to be an introduction, so let's give this a try.
I'm a thirty-something daughter of the early 80s. It's hard for me to think of myself as even remotely "girly", but, like many others, I was infatuated with fantastical horse-shaped creatures before the onset of puberty. I don't know what it is about My Little Pony, but it seized my heart firmly when I was first exposed to its Year 2 ensemble, whenever exactly that was. (Offhand, I only know that I received Powder new on a blister card in February *1986* -- which seems sort of weird now that I think about it... Just how long DID ponies linger on the walls of Jamesway, KMart, and Toys R Us before disappearing for good?) I could never have enough ponies in my herd, and the limited number of ponies I could purchase new in the store were supplemented by regularly haunting the local flea market (long since replaced by a boring yuppie mall) and garage sales. Between me and my older sister (who liked MLPs, but wasn't bonkers for them), well over a hundred were amassed by the time I felt the franchise was seriously losing steam (~1991).
I don't have any fancy "nirvana" ponies, but I do have a Mimic whom I found at the flea market, which was pretty awesome back then, too. ("Hey! It's that totally mundane TE pony that the cartoon played up as being really special for no obvious reason! Sweetness!"), along with several mail order ponies that seem to be demanding ridiculous prices nowadays. Yeah, I have Rapunzel, for one. I never thought it was a big deal. I was always distracted by the fact that Hasbro ran out of Goldilocks and didn't have one to send me, so, to my mind, Goldy's been the rare one. :LOL:
Anyway, the ponies have spent plenty of time in the attic, and most of them are consigned to stay up there, since my sister moved back into the childhood home (which I never left... *hangs head in shame* ) with her now 5-member family and there's less space than ever. While cleaning up prior to their arrival, though, I ended up going through those boxes and getting a real nostalgia kick. Now, note this didn't happen back when I first learned about FiM and the G4 revival; I needed to have my old ponies in my hands to get the juices flowing. So I've looked at them, and been reminded about the ponies from my childhood that are no longer here (ones owned by cousins or friends/acquaintances, but never me), and yet others that have eluded me further, and a collector's fury has started to burn again. Furthermore, my 4-year-old nephews who now live here now actually seem interested in MLPs, in their ADD 4-year-old sort of way, so their enthusiasm has helped fuel my own.
Of course, since I have basically no spending money other than what I've made selling old junk on Ebay (been unemployed for far too long), and no good way to store a collection currently, the timing is pretty bad. But even if my ability to collect MORE PONIES!!! is impaired, I'm at least interested in restoring the ones I have, or customizing the ones that are utterly hopeless (I was an artist... once...), which has gotten me reading a lot about the G1 fan scene and their discoveries over the years.
I hope to ride out my revived interest however long it lasts, and maybe with the help of the locals (and whatever funding I can scrape together) expand my collection with (mostly) ponies I won't feel bad about letting the boys play with. (So far, they seem to really like Princess ponies, parent/child pairs (or trios, as the case may be), and those ever-in-demand male ponies. They're also upset that I don't have the Princesses' wands anymore.) I don't think I'm the sort of collector who could ever be hands-off enough to deal with concepts like "mint", anyway. To me, these are still toys, not laboratory or museum specimens to be handled only in sterile conditions. (Though thank goodness for the personalities who can handle that, since they help preserve pieces of history for longer periods of time, and all.)
On a final note: My fandom is pretty much all G1. I was off doing other things when G2 and G3 came out. G4 was impossible to ignore, for obvious reasons. I looked into the cartoon, and it was cute enough, but I couldn't sustain interest long past the first season. Of the post-G1 toys, the only ones I find at all appealing are some of the G3s, since their look can be very close to G1, but, with my spending cash in such a sorry state, I'd achieve nothing but further frustration by attempting further investigation. The G1 cartoon still has some nostalgic value; though, when I rewatched it a few years ago, it didn't hold up well at all. On the other hand, the two TV specials are something... special, and I cannot stop lamenting that the entire cartoon didn't have the animation quality and keen aesthetic sense of "Firefly's Adventure".
Well, that sure was long and rambling!
I'm a thirty-something daughter of the early 80s. It's hard for me to think of myself as even remotely "girly", but, like many others, I was infatuated with fantastical horse-shaped creatures before the onset of puberty. I don't know what it is about My Little Pony, but it seized my heart firmly when I was first exposed to its Year 2 ensemble, whenever exactly that was. (Offhand, I only know that I received Powder new on a blister card in February *1986* -- which seems sort of weird now that I think about it... Just how long DID ponies linger on the walls of Jamesway, KMart, and Toys R Us before disappearing for good?) I could never have enough ponies in my herd, and the limited number of ponies I could purchase new in the store were supplemented by regularly haunting the local flea market (long since replaced by a boring yuppie mall) and garage sales. Between me and my older sister (who liked MLPs, but wasn't bonkers for them), well over a hundred were amassed by the time I felt the franchise was seriously losing steam (~1991).
I don't have any fancy "nirvana" ponies, but I do have a Mimic whom I found at the flea market, which was pretty awesome back then, too. ("Hey! It's that totally mundane TE pony that the cartoon played up as being really special for no obvious reason! Sweetness!"), along with several mail order ponies that seem to be demanding ridiculous prices nowadays. Yeah, I have Rapunzel, for one. I never thought it was a big deal. I was always distracted by the fact that Hasbro ran out of Goldilocks and didn't have one to send me, so, to my mind, Goldy's been the rare one. :LOL:
Anyway, the ponies have spent plenty of time in the attic, and most of them are consigned to stay up there, since my sister moved back into the childhood home (which I never left... *hangs head in shame* ) with her now 5-member family and there's less space than ever. While cleaning up prior to their arrival, though, I ended up going through those boxes and getting a real nostalgia kick. Now, note this didn't happen back when I first learned about FiM and the G4 revival; I needed to have my old ponies in my hands to get the juices flowing. So I've looked at them, and been reminded about the ponies from my childhood that are no longer here (ones owned by cousins or friends/acquaintances, but never me), and yet others that have eluded me further, and a collector's fury has started to burn again. Furthermore, my 4-year-old nephews who now live here now actually seem interested in MLPs, in their ADD 4-year-old sort of way, so their enthusiasm has helped fuel my own.
Of course, since I have basically no spending money other than what I've made selling old junk on Ebay (been unemployed for far too long), and no good way to store a collection currently, the timing is pretty bad. But even if my ability to collect MORE PONIES!!! is impaired, I'm at least interested in restoring the ones I have, or customizing the ones that are utterly hopeless (I was an artist... once...), which has gotten me reading a lot about the G1 fan scene and their discoveries over the years.
I hope to ride out my revived interest however long it lasts, and maybe with the help of the locals (and whatever funding I can scrape together) expand my collection with (mostly) ponies I won't feel bad about letting the boys play with. (So far, they seem to really like Princess ponies, parent/child pairs (or trios, as the case may be), and those ever-in-demand male ponies. They're also upset that I don't have the Princesses' wands anymore.) I don't think I'm the sort of collector who could ever be hands-off enough to deal with concepts like "mint", anyway. To me, these are still toys, not laboratory or museum specimens to be handled only in sterile conditions. (Though thank goodness for the personalities who can handle that, since they help preserve pieces of history for longer periods of time, and all.)
On a final note: My fandom is pretty much all G1. I was off doing other things when G2 and G3 came out. G4 was impossible to ignore, for obvious reasons. I looked into the cartoon, and it was cute enough, but I couldn't sustain interest long past the first season. Of the post-G1 toys, the only ones I find at all appealing are some of the G3s, since their look can be very close to G1, but, with my spending cash in such a sorry state, I'd achieve nothing but further frustration by attempting further investigation. The G1 cartoon still has some nostalgic value; though, when I rewatched it a few years ago, it didn't hold up well at all. On the other hand, the two TV specials are something... special, and I cannot stop lamenting that the entire cartoon didn't have the animation quality and keen aesthetic sense of "Firefly's Adventure".
Well, that sure was long and rambling!
:Fifi:
