Can you remember the distinctive smell when the plastic casing was taken off the cardboard backing of a fresh My Little Pony? I have very fond memories of it. I saved up so many of my allowance dollars, so I could buy one or two new Ponies on our family's weekly trip to K-Mart, Target or Wal-Mart as a kid.
I spent many hours combing their rainbow colored hair and dressing them up in outfits. Valuable dollars were spent on accessories and other merchandise of the Hasbro/My Little Pony empire. The baby pony ballet studio was one of my favorite toys; it was an oversized bonnet with rotating platforms, so the ponies could "dance" on their stage. I also have fond memories of the ice cream parlour with a special limited edition pony who worked in the shop.
And there's a home video from Thanksgiving where my parents patiently filmed me, while I paraded out each pony in my Aunt Mary's living room, introduced them to the camera and acted out some of their personality. I bet most of my relatives knew who "Twirler" was, since she was the pony with a strange wind-up dial protruding from her chest and when she was wound up, she would move in circles on whatever flat surface you placed her on. (She's the one featured in the photo that accompanies this blog post.)
My favorites were always those in the purple/pink hues and the unicorns. Flutter Ponies were special commodities, since they had thin, iridescent plastic wings that would flap, as if they were flying, but were very delicate and usually broke off in a week or so.
My neighbors had some ponies, but thankfully, my little brother indulged in my MLP insanity and would play with me. Sometimes we'd put on shows or just play with them around the house. He had a few of the boy ponies and often helped me paint the nails (hooves?) of the brightly colored ponies with a special polish. (I'm pretty sure one of the green unicorns still has remnants of the red polish on her hooves, even in my mom's storage shed.)
As an adult, I partially blame my nostalgia and renewed obsession on Lena Hall for mentioning My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic in her Tony Award acceptance speech. Once she mentioned that "friendship is magic," I had to check out the show. Then, thanks to Netflix, I was able to watch all of the first five seasons of this show and was trasnported back in time with some of my favorite characters. Some of their names might have been changed, but the premise was intriguing; instead of adventure stories, now the stories were all based around a lesson or aspect of friendship. Can you guess which ponies quickly became my favorites on this update?
Occassionally, it still feels good to break out a DVD of the first season of the Saturday morning cartoon or the movie, where the ponies were flighting the "floom" and the gloom it brought to Paradise Estates. With all of the sad children's toys (Bratz dolls) and little girls growning up too fast, at least we have the ponies to look back on with fond memories.