So as it turns out, I am not the only collector in the Cope household.
My four-year-old daughter, Allie, is big time into My Little Pony. I mean BIG time. The picture accompanying this blog shows just a portion of her ever growing collection.
I have to admit, it’s been a lot fun watching her find something that she really loves and gets excited about. And a little bit scary as she seems to possess her Daddy’s level of obsession when it comes to collecting. Her collection has already grown since this picture was taken back in December.
Not only does she have her Ponies (in both regular, Ponyville and the in-between McDonald’s Happy Meal toy sizes), but she has DVDs, books, coloring books, posters, shirts, and even odd assorted items like undies and Band-Aids. She knows who all the characters are, and even has the entire story from one of her book & records memorized…cover to cover verbatim! She loves to get on the official MLP website and watch videos and play games.
The whole thing started when my wife found an old box of some of her toys from when she was little. In it were a few of the first generation My Little Pony toys from the ’80s. She gave them to Allie to play with and that was it. Allie was hooked, and an obsession was born!
One of the first MLP DVDs we got for her was of some of the original cartoons from the 80s. My word, they were weird and pretty creepy for a cartoon aimed at little girls. One of the stories had a deranged zebra that was stealing the shadows from the ponies, turning them into shambling zombies moaning, "Give us back our shadows!". Really weird stuff. Thankfully, the more recent animated stuff is pretty much the ponies having tea parties, birthday parties, and costume parties. Much more appropriate, content-wise.
My Little Ponies, just like girls, just wanna have fun.
Of course, being surrounded by and talking about My Little Pony every day has filled my noggin with all their names and stories and whatnot. So, not only do I know my Superman from my Wolverine, and my Gorn from my Mugato but I know a Pinkie Pie from a Scootaloo, too.
Trips to Target, TRU and Wal-Mart are no longer limited to the action figure aisle…but I now venture (whether Allie is with me or not) down the Pony aisle looking for the latest and greatest items in the MLP world. Sadly, it seems Hasbro made a decision last year to focus on seven core characters in the MLP Universe so the basic product line has been pretty much repaints of those same seven characters. Much to my daughter’s disappointment we, for the most part, don’t rebuy the same characters over and over again (yeah, yeah, I know. It doesn’t stop Daddy from getting black & grey Batman, blue & grey Batman, etc) but the line is getting a makeover later this year. MLP product shown at Toy Fair showed the main line redesigned with a look more in line with their more diminutive Ponyville counterparts.
It appears there are still plenty of Ponies in our future, and I know one little girl who is ecstatic about that!
I know a little girl who just got Ponyville for Christmas. She was so excited to show it off. She doesn’t know them as well as her Justice League characters but I imagine it’s only a matter of time.
I’m still waiting for my son to find that one “gotta have it” item. He has transitioned from dominoes to marbles, to DC SuperFriends, to DCIH, to erasers, to markers (we have the ENTIRE CRAYOLA OUTPUT in a full size suitcase that goes EVERYWHERE with us). Nothing ever seems to stick more than a year or so and most of them overlap for at least a bit of time. I thought that GeoTrax would be the one, but ever since they introduced people to the line he couldn’t care less. Ugh. What is a collector dad to do when his kid just won’t get hooked …?
Collector Dad powers activate!
I have the same thing going on in my house. One minute it’s pirates…then Clone Wars…then Super Friends! Right now it’s Transformers animated and Ben 10.The boy cannot make up his mind!!
Luckily we don’t just buy him toys. In our house it’s only holidays, birthdays or from money he earns so at least his room is not full of toys yet…however when the boy gets a job (10-11 yrs from now) we may need to get another storeroom!
Enjoyed that blog, Jeff. I’m having fun watching how this type of thing is going with a coworker’s 5 year old. He also seems to bounce from thing to thing. I think he’s into Bionicles right now.
And not to worry, when I was a kid I knew (but didn’t admit to) knowing all my sister’s Strawberry Shortcake characters.
I retain some fondness for the Purple Pieman myself.
jeff – jeremy and i have been helping a couple of very young MLP collectors here in hong kong as well, and nothing, NOTHING has been more popular than the vintage baby sea ponies. get a couple off ebay or something, well worth it as they are THE bath toys for hannah and jessica every night.
Jeff,
I’m not sure where they reside anymore, but back in the day, there were links from the DC Comics message board to photos of MLPs that had been repainted to look like the JLI characters. I specifically remember the Green Lantern, Booster Gold, and Black Canary MLPs.
This is not the site I was looking for, but came up in a quick google search.
http://wiw.org/~jess/archives/2004/05/15/the-justice-ponies-of-america/
I’ve got two daughters who are into Littlest Pet Shop. They’ve even somehow managed to drag my wife into the toy collecting hobby, something I’ve never been able to do. It’s nice that we can be all co-dependent together.
Enabling is the truest expression of love!
Take a look at these:
http://www.toycutter.com/2009/01/batman-and-robin-my-little-pony.html
http://www.toycutter.com/2008/10/my-little-pony-spider-man.html
http://www.toycutter.com/2008/09/my-little-pony-stormtrooper.html
http://www.toycutter.com/2009/03/elvis-my-little-pony.html
http://www.toycutter.com/2009/02/animated-style-starscream-my-little.html
http://www.toycutter.com/2008/10/my-little-pony-jack-skellington.html