Horses in the Wild 1

January 29, 2023.

This entry will discuss a couple ponies I saw at various stores. To try and mitigate the volume of my collection getting out of hand (too late), I will start photographing some ponies on the shelves. Some ponies are low-quality or just sort of run of the mill knockoffs which deserve to be documented, but don't fit on my shelf.

The Cutie Friend was found on the shelves at a Toys-R-Us popup store. The shelves were chaotic-- boxes were knocked over, broken, and placed seemingly randomly. Cutie Friend made her home among the official My Little Ponies that were stocked at that store.

According to the box, Happy Line Toys made this pony, a company founded in Hong Kong and based in Chile. The package references "2 assortments" with little context, but the phrase seems to reference the two colorways that the pony comes in (seen on the back of the box). The particular Friend I saw is purple with dark purple hair. The pink variation was not present. The Friend has a yellow mark shaped like a flower behind its eye. It's cute. It's weird. That's it.

The Pretty Ponies were at Five Below. They have an uninspired name that they share with another set of ponies that they seemed to replace on the Five Below shelves.

The set includes a yellow earth pony, purple unicorn, and pink earth pony, which is larger than the other two. The purple pony has a pink streak in her purple hair, and the yellow pony has hair the same color of her body. The pink pony has an orange-ish mane, betraying the depiction of her with pink hair on the box. They've got unique faces. Their lips are trembling, and they have wide, pleading eyes. Like the other Pretty Ponies at Five Below, there is seemingly unrelated rainbow horse clipart on the box. You can release them from the box and style their hair, should you find parting with five dollars a fair trade for having these ponies in your life.