Has anyone seen the chapter which talks of My Little Pony in The Toys that Made Us? If you have not done so, we highly recommend it. The beginning of the story is a tennis match in which everyone wants to claim authorship but what is certain is that its designer was Bonnie Zachery, who worked in Hasbro's i&d department and she is considered My Little Pony's mother. She thought about what she had most wanted to have as a child, a horse, for a new line of preschool toys, so she designed a little horse, manageable and with hair to comb like a doll but she found a wall, her superiors who wanted a bigger horse, My Pretty Pony. This was unsuccessful and it was eventually proven that Bonnie was right.
In what Bonnie was not so right, as she herself admits, it was in the colors because she did not see on them pastel colors but the natural shades of horses were very limited and the idea was to make a durable and above all collectible line. So, apart from pastel hues and colored hair, drawings were added to their buttocks that gave them personality and made them something that the children wanted to collect and ... bingo, the children wanted them all.
Smells, playsets, characters and a tv series were added to a line that brings us so many memories, the generation 1 of My Little Pony.
And now it comes the death, but literally, because these little friends were made in a way that presents a challenge for the conservation and is that they were made of two vinyl closed tightly pieces that make them the ideal habitat for mould. Some fungi can be dormant for a long time and come out when the optimal conditions are given, that is, humidity, so keep them in a cool and dry place. But the thing does not end here, to give them stability a metal piece was inserted in their tails that sometimes rusts staining the tail and causing problems within the body that are only solved by opening the pony and changing that piece for a plastic washer. They are prone to collect dirt in their porous material and in many cases the paint on the marks, also called "Cutie Marks", has been rubbed off.
Still, it is worth putting the effort into rescuing as many G1 as possible.
by The Barbiest