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UK Prototype Ponies ~*~ |
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About 8 years ago, I
bought these three ponies from a seller in the UK. They were
in an eBay lot, along with regular ponies she found at a car boot
sale (the equivalent of a yard sale or garage sale). I don't
remember the seller's name or which city she found these in, but
she was also pony collector and mentioned that she thought they
were prototypes as well. Another collector from the UK
mentioned that she also remembered seeing these ponies a long time
ago. I paid a little more than average for the lot, but
there weren't a lot of people bidding, so it wasn't an
astronomical figure!
I wasn't very fond
of these ponies, so they went into storage until now. I was
planning on taking pics of them, but just never got around to
it. These ponies resemble the UK Schooltime Ponies, however,
they are not identical. They have colored bases & appear
to be airbrushed. The paint is a little shiny. All 3
of these ponies have some paint wear.
The hair is rooted
the same way as a factory pony, where the strands are woven
together. No glue can be found inside the heads. Hair
feels like regular G1 pony hair. The manes are thick and
longer than average.
Symbols are very
intricately painted. Just look at those perfectly straight
lines on Music Time's symbol! |
Art Time
(click on each pic for an enlarged view - huge files!) |
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Someone mentioned that
her base could be Mummy Meadowsweet.
That didn't occur to me, since I don't own a Mummy Meadowsweet.
^_^ |
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Eyes are very well
done, but they have been scuffed from playwear.
This pony's eyes look like they were printed. The eyes are
"flat" and not raised above the surface of the pony's
base. In contrast, the freckles do look painted on. |
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No serial number
marks. Hmmmm. |
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Inside looks darker
than it really is. Maybe it could match Mummy Meadowsweet. |
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Non-display side has
the same symbol, just mirrored.
Art Time's head is
darker than her body paint. This pony was like this when I
bought her. |
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Woven pony hair! |
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Symbol looks like it
picked up some dirt. |
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And another display
side pic with her long hair moved to the side. |
Music Time
(click on each pic for an enlarged view - huge files!) |
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Music Time has an eye
rub. Her hair is the same color as Lemondrop's. |
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Non-display side eye
looks okay. She has freckles too! |
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Her feet have some
paint wear. |
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The inside.
Looks to be the same color as TAF Up, Up, and Away. |
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Here, you can see the
woven hair. And the airbrushed neck rim. |
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Non-display side. |
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And her symbol with
incredibly straight lines. Someone thought they might have
been stenciled. It does have some rubs, though. |
Play Time
(click on each pic for an enlarged view - huge files!) |
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Playtime survived the
years better than the other two. Her paint job is mostly
intact, with only a few rubs. She's not that shiny in real
life...it's just the angle of the lighting. |
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Nothing unusual
here. Her feet have some paint rubs. |
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Another lovely eye
painting job. ^_^ |
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The inside is a coral
pink color, much like Cherries Jubilee who is also available in
the same pose! |
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Here, you can see the
hair was rooted in "factory style". But what's
that metal shard in there? I tried fishing it out a long
time ago, but couldn't get at it and just left it there. |
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With a pair of
needle-nose pliers, I fished it out. Very strange
indeed. It looks like the tip of a needle. However, it
looks rounder than the usual sewing needle. Could this be
part of some type of rooting machine that broke off? |
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Symbols are very
neatly painted. The colors are reversed on the regular UK
Play Time pony. |
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And here's her
non-display side. The hair looks a little messy. Her
tail does look like one section got a feathered trim. |
Whew!
That's a lot of pics. My analysis: I believe they're
prototypes of some sort. Why? Well, who would go
through the trouble to make these things? The regular UK
Schooltime ponies were common, even back then. It's not like
people making Rapunzel replicas. It was inexpensive to buy a
Schooltime pony.
Being
a customizer myself, I know how difficult it would be to create
such replicas. Each one would need a full body re-paint,
then re-rooting in factory style, then careful painting of the
eyes & symbols. The hair is very thick & long, which
makes re-rooting this way tremendously difficult. And, back
then, pony hair was not easy to come by. You would have
needed to take several tails from donor ponies.
If
anyone has information about these ponies, please send it my
way. Although I'm in the process of selling these ponies now
(as I mentioned, they don't appeal to me), I'll pass along the
info. Since these things rarely come along, there really
isn't a good way to determine how much they are worth. I picked a
price that was a little above what I paid for them, to account for
inflation. In case you're wondering, this price is less than
half of what I'd ask for a custom of this complexity. It
might have been too low, or perhaps demand for odd ponies has
increased, because my mailbox is flooded with offers to buy all
three of them!
It
would have been easy just to sell all 3 ponies to the first person
who wrote in. However, I felt sorry for the other collectors
who didn't even get a chance to buy one of these ponies. So,
I've decided to sell one pony each to the first 2 people who wrote
in, and then give everyone else a chance to buy the remaining
pony. That last pony will probably be placed back on eBay or
auctioned off here. |