my little fluster

I did take a quick run to Target. (And to the bookstore, and to JoAnn's....JoAnn's had Valentine's party lights, but they wanted $30 (!) for a string of ten, and while there are coupons, I object to the model of "let's jack up prices but then give coupons to take the price down to a normal price, to make people think they're getting a deal." So I don't have any Valentine's Day decorations but that is okay).

I heard a lot of people hacking and coughing. I tried to stay away from them. I don't know if it's the flu (I did get the vaccine this year, but there are strains not in it) or "cedar fever," or something else.

Anyway. At the Target I did find some Pony stuff. I have a small number of "sticker valentines" (and this year it is more of a comic-book style than the same old "vectors" that have been used since 2011, so). Standard operating procedure: if you want one and are pretty sure I don't have your address, drop me an e-mail and I'll send you one between now and Valentine's Day. (The envelope may have a Charlie Brown Christmas stamp on it though because I bought a bunch of those and didn't use them all on Christmas cards)

Annnnnnnd.....reboot toys are here! For those of you not as immersed in Pony as I am, they've redesigned the current generation to give littler, more tip-tilted nose (toy designer Margaret Hutchings called them "twee" noses) and rounder heads and different poses. Some are speculating we'll see redesigns of the animation in the movie. I don't know but some of the reboot figures are pretty cute (Or so I think; some people don't like them but whatever).

I particularly like the Reboot Rarity because she comes with her little reading glasses, and none of the other Rarities I've seen do. So I figured this is my "fluster" for being an adult and completing my ptr packet in good time and without any public melt-downs.

Reboot Rarity says "hello, darlings"

They are about the same size as the other brushables but a little skinnier and there's this weird "thigh gap" thing going on with the back legs (on one of the other pony collector blogs she mentioned that) so it's like they don't have normal haunches. That's my one objection to the figures - the weird back legs.

I kind of love her pose, that raised front leg. It looks like someone has just given her a present and she's surprised and happy and getting ready to thank them. Or like she's standing at the podium at some Pony awards show, and is about to burst into tears while saying "You like me! You really really like me!"


Rarity is my favorite of the reboot figures but I decided to get Pinkie, too, so she had a friend from the same "wave" of toys. Pinkie is fun too:

One thing I will say about the G4 toys - the hair is not nearly as nice as on the old ponies. I think it's a different process (Saran vs. nylon, or something like that). The older ponies I've collected usually have pretty silky feeling hair, and even the one I got with messed-up hair, washing it and putting a little conditioner in it made it go back to a silky state. The G4s have coarser feeling hair and it's often tangled coming out of the package. (I've tried, on a few, the conditioner trick, but it doesn't work nearly as well as it does on the older ponies).

Also Pinkie's hair is flatter than it really should be, and Rarity's isn't in the ringlet curls like in her drawings (they use two shades of purple, I think to simulate the two-tone effect on the drawn ringlets). I mean, yeah, to the little girls that are going to brush the heck out of the hair it doesn't matter as much, but it would be nice to have a few collector figurines with "set" hair or with the nicer grade of pony hair.

It makes me wonder a bit what the re-re-boot of Ponies (Gen 5, if you will) will be like. I know some of the pony-collector bloggers have made some rather "salty" comments (about how small the figures will be, and how limited the poses). But it does make me wonder - I've opined before that maybe they'll do a "Cutie Mark Crusaders grown to adulthood" thing. Or maybe they'll just go back to G3 and use some of the ponies from that, but with a different art style and different writing. (I think at one point they did a "fairy tales but with ponies playing the roles" once, and I could see something like that). I dunno. I'd still at least try watching it, even if it wasn't the ponies that originally sucked me in to the Pony world. (I will say though: "Not CGI. Please not CGI.")