Where are all the alicorns?

Marble Dragon

Marble Dragon

My hovercraft is full of eels!
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Aug 9, 2014
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I was just thinking that alicorns seem very rare in the toy world. I know that the G4 generation has the princess series, but I have never seen a G1 alicorn. In fact, the only 80s toy that resembles an alicorn are the she-ra princess of power horses.

Does anyone else have a different experience? Is there really no love for the alicorns?
 
I don't believe any gen had alicorns besides G4. I think they're very beautiful and would like to see more toys of them. The only alicorn pony I own besides the Princesses are some fakies.
 
I remember being perplexed by alicorns in the 80s. They started showing up in art on posters and such, and I had no mythological reference to them, so I couldn't understand why artists were portraying them. I was a weird kid.

I see a lot of stuffed alicorns now, but any brand names escape me.


Edit: Obviously still got the crud filled brain. My grammar exists not.
 
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Historically speaking, all alicorn signifies is the horn itself, a singular ivory tusk. It does not actually mean an equine that posses both a horn and wings~

However in the pony fandom and fandoms in general, alicorn has been confused as a "unicorn/pegasus" hybrid or sorts.

I know in the generation 4 fandom specifically, it is highly frowned upon for a pony to be a "alicorn" (in the sense of containing both horn and wings), that isn't a princess.

Ah well, so much for those original characters that like to be able to fly and cast magic~ *gets my wings ripped off by brony boyfriend*
 
Cool. I didn't know that about the origin of the word alicorn. Is there another name for a winged unicorn then?

I remember wishing for a winged unicorn toy as a kid and I was ecstatic to get my she-ra horse with the unicorn harness and winged saddle. I still have her. That was one toy I was never willing to donate at any point.

I've just gotten an idea to make a g1 custom alicorn....why didn't I think of this before...
 
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I bet people know this already but the word alicorn was the medieval word for a unicorn's horn. Alicorn wasn't the term for a pegacorn until pretty recently.
 
Fandom terms, I belive starcatcher would be one tho like she will be the daughter or third sister of Celestia or she is Celestia
 
HoneyCombSurprise said:
there was a scene from Escape From Catrina where baby surprise was an alicorn it could have been an image glitch or a fake horn but she appears to have a horn in that episode http://derpynews.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/surprise-alicorn2.png
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That was nothing more than an animation mistake. Animated shows in the 80s were rife with them. Here's a page detailing (a fraction of) these in the G1 Transformers cartoon, including a link to a gallery on the top right.

Alicorns/unipegs/pegacorns as it pertains to Official My Little Pony Canon (TM) were non-existent until G4 came along. There is one, single exception, but one that is also kind of... Should I say, meaningless, in the long run.

In the "Up, Up, and Away" episode of My Little Pony Tales, the Glow 'n Show ponies make an appearance, but they're all given wings to up their "strange and magical" appearance. ...Including Dazzleglow, who, being a unicorn originally, gets unwittingly turned into an, you guessed it, alicorn/unipeg/pegacorn. Here's a picture (careful, it's HUGE).

In my opinion, the omission of winged unicorns from the line makes perfect sense, since it would be kind of overpowered compared to any of the other types of ponies. Fiction-wise, an alicorn/unipeg/pegacorn is, or should be kind of a big deal and rare, otherwise you end up in Mary Sue territory. And that's exactly why G4 chose to use them in the way they did.
 
Pegacorn it is!

And thanks for the info PrincessLio. That totally makes sense, but I still wish there were pegacorns.
 
This is a bit of a cheat, but in G2 there were Copper Glow, Diamond Glow, and Golden Glow (I have a feeling those names might be a bit off) that were all unicorns that came with clip-on butterfly-style wings. So if you want to count them, they were the first pegacorn toys in MLP.

And thanks to various peopl for mentioning the alicorn terminology thing. That drives me a tiny bit nuts every time Isee it relating to a winged unicorn.

Elf
 
Marble Dragon said:
Pegacorn it is!

And thanks for the info PrincessLio. That totally makes sense, but I still wish there were pegacorns.
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No problem! ;)

Oh, crap, I totally forgot about the Glow G2s! Though to tell the truth, my brain must've skipped them entirely, because in my mind they didn't qualify. 1. their wings were clip-ons, not an integral part of the actual pony, as opposed to, say Flutters and Summerwings, and 2. speaking of which, butterfly wings =/= bird wings, which are what an actual Pegasus has, so a unicorn with butterfly wings wouldn't carry the same meaning/baggage as one with classic wings.
 
Yeah, I tend not to think of them as winged unicorns either. Just unicorns and consider the wings to be accessories. Just added them for the sake of completion. ;P

Elf
 
I call em Unipegs
 
LightningSilver-Light said:
Historically speaking, all alicorn signifies is the horn itself, a singular ivory tusk. It does not actually mean an equine that posses both a horn and wings~

However in the pony fandom and fandoms in general, alicorn has been confused as a "unicorn/pegasus" hybrid or sorts.
Click to expand...
The usage of "alicorn" for winged unicorns almost certainly predates MLP G4 by quite a bit, the early 90s at the latest. I can see how the term got reappropriated, since ala is Latin for "wing", with the prefix form ali-, as in alipes (swift, lit. wing-footed). I wonder what the actual etymology for "alicorn" (as in unicorn horn) is, since "wing-horn" doesn't make any immediate sense to me, and the only alternative I see is the ali- from alius ("another; different").

I'm fine with alicorn, since it's an example of language evolution where etymological sense is maintained -- my favorite kind! [Ali- + (uni)corn] Portmanteus like "pegacorn" and "unipeg" kind of makes me cringe inside, though I'd take the former over the latter.
 
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