Next weekend I'll be selling at UK Ponycon, which is a convention that has been going since its debut in 2004 and is dedicated to all things My Little Pony! The con started as purely a collector's con, way before My Little Pony had its viral resurgence in the form of the new cartoon, Friendship is Magic. There, collectors would trade and sell their extras and generally use the weekend as a chance to meet other like-minded fans. In 2010, the new cartoon would bring a whole new group of people to the convention, fans of the show who called themselves 'Bronies' and who shared our passion for silly colourful horses.
Since then, UK Ponycon has grown into a mid-sized convention that collectors and new fans alike flock to from all corners of the globe. People dress up in pony cosplay, sell sell handmade art and customised ponies and take part in all the fun events Ponycon annually has to offer. I have attended nine of the thirteen (!) Ponycons so far, and I'd like to think I've got a pretty good handle on what to expect from the event, so I thought I'd write up a little guide detailing the sort of thing you might expect to experience if you attend UK Ponycon!
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Last weekend, I attended UK Ponycon up in Leicester. It was the first year in a while that I wasn't on committee in some form, so the whole weekend was an excuse to let my hair down, dork out with some wonderful friends, and spend a lot of money on plastic ponies.
Ponycon is a convention that started life as an event for collectors of Hasbro's My Little Pony. It was the perfect place to trade and sell ponies with other collectors. Nowadays, My Little Pony is really popular again with the 'Friendship is Magic' revival, and the convention has taken on a whole lot more. Bronies (adult fans of the new cartoon specifically) and children both joined us oldschool collectors this year and it meant the convention was a lot busier and varied than usual - and it was great! The actual con had some pretty huge hiccups for me. An after party was advertised, but it was actually an 18+ event which boggles my mind since this is a My Little Pony convention that always put 'family friendly' at its highest priority. What's worse was that the 'after party' was little more than a room with the band in - fully lit, no dancing area, no party lighting. This might have been a little better had the band not been playing for free all day during the convention. We were mislead that the 'after party' ticket included karaoke and a late night panel, two things we found later to be free and available to all. There was a panel (basically introducing oldschool ponies to Bronies, and explaining the new Brony influx to the collectors) that I attended which was informative and fun - it's always nice getting discussion between Bronies and collectors. I also watched My Little Pony Mr & Mrs, which is always a delight, took part in the traditional Pub Quiz (and our team won!) and watched a bit of karaoke. Generally, panels and events were a little thin on the ground this year. The past few years have featured screenings and video games as well as a full schedule of panels aimed at both collectors and Bronies. This year, I was hard pressed to find something to do with all my time, and spent most of Sunday just sat around mingling with folks. There were three panels scheduled on Sunday but for some reason they were all on at the same time of the day, so I could only attend one (Mr. & Mrs.) The cosplay masquerade was huge and disorganised and there was no raised stage for them to stand or walk on - even the auction was difficult to watch since there was no stage for the auctioneer to stand on. Another really disappointing thing was that Ponycon was billed as a two day weekend con, but everything was done by 4pm on Sunday. We forked out a lot of money for a hotel room Sunday evening when we could have probably gone home and saved a lot of money. Considering the convention was selling Sunday Only tickets, this seemed like a really huge oversight and I feel sorry for anyone who purchased one. BUT, don't let my gripes put anyone off Ponycon! These were all little niggles that are easily fixed with a little organisation next year. The con as a whole was so much fun! I only bought two 'ponies' myself -Baby Pockets and Cha Cha the Llama (who cost a whopping £70 but she's the last one I needed of that set!) My friends Laura and Archer joined me in a Cutie Mark Crusader trio cosplay and we spent half the con just dorking out. We managed to get involved in an adorable art swap on our hotel corridor when somebody left a lovely sketch of Luna outside our door. We started sending art back and would wake up every morning to a new by our mysterious trade partners! We managed to ruin the tone during Mr. & Mrs and I was up until about 4am reading terrible fan fiction out loud to a bunch of people and laughing so loud that guests on the 3rd floor of the hotel could hear us. It was an amazing weekend, all in all. I absolutely can't wait to go back! I'll probably be helping out in some form next year and I'll certainly have a table to sell some doubles and MLP inspired artwork - this con was busy !
Photo / art credit: - top banner Tinrobo for UK Ponycon, second photo Zbaracki atCute Horny Unicorn
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Guys. I have a confession to make.
I like My Little Pony. A few years ago, that statement would have been met with a mildly confused raised eyebrow. Years before that, it was met with playground teasing - My Little Pony, skinny and boney, indeed. Nowadays, I'm one of many, many people who enjoy the colourful toys. The 'Friendship is Magic' revival brought cult status to the brand, with a fantastic new cartoon that captured the hearts of children and nerdy adults alike, and with that came a whole slew of new fans, from all corners of the globe. It's not really unusual at all to like My Little Pony anymore. But it sure used to be. My 'herd' never started as a 'collection', of course. When I was a little girl, My Little Pony was par for the course, the iconic toy of the 1980s (yes, I'm that old.) I'm reliably informed by my parents that my first pony was Sunshine, with rainbow hair and a glittery symbol. I'm also reliably informed that I wasn't at all interested in her, and into the cupboard she went. I've never been one for dolls (my rant about Megan, the human companion Hasbro introduced to MLP, or the latest 'Equestria Girls' reboot, are blog-posts for another time!), so I grew up with animal toys and boy was the 1980s full of them. Carebears, Gummi Bears, Wuzzles, Popples, Sylvanian Families, Glow Worms, we had tremendous variety for pretty much anything your heart desired, and through my childhood I had a bunch of 'em. But one day, I went into my cupboard, and found Sunshine. The other toys just didn't cut it. I realised quite certainly that Sunshine 'needed a friend' And that's where the madness started. Her one friend (Posey) became two friends, and soon became twenty friends, and then two hundred friends...
The funny thing is, during my childhood I remember very clearly wanting 'a collection'. I collected thimbles for a while (did I mention I was the coolest kid in school?), but it never occurred to me that the growing mass of plastic horses devouring my shelves and cupboards was a collection in and of itself. I was bought ponies, given ponies, and bought pony things myself. Long forgotten were the Wuzzles and Popples and Carebears. It was all about the ponies. I had MLP wallpaper, MLP bedding, a MLP lampshade. I owned MLP roller-skates, walkie-talkies, headphones, clothing. I had every video released and watched them over and over, learning every lyric to every song. I had hundreds of ponies as a child and knew every one of them by name. I was a member of the MLP Fanclub.
My Little Pony was such a huge, fundamental part of my childhood. I used to write letters to the pony queen, Majesty, asking if I could visit Ponyland. I remember very clearly how my dad tried teaching me how to dive in our local swimming pool, telling me he'd write to Majesty if I did it, and how she'd be so impressed that she's bound to let me visit Ponyland. Hah! I remember mum telling me to go outside and wish upon a star (wishing on the first star at night remains my only superstition, and one that so far has never let me down). I wished for a Big Brother Pony, and sure enough, one appeared at the door. Magic! Or a little parental persuasion, perhaps. And that's really what My Little Pony was. It was magical. I had a very special childhood full of love and magic and fantasy and everything a child should believe in, and My Little Pony was so very much a part of that. As I grew older, my love of the toys never really went away. I was given second hand ponies from my classmates who had long moved onto makeup and boybands. I slowed down buying them, absolutely - in the mid 1990s I discovered video gaming and my heart turned to Sonic the Hedgehog and other, expensive, pursuits, but ponies remained a very important part of my life. It hurts to think that I actually stopped buying new ponies often right around the time the UK got a bunch of exclusive ponies unavailable anywhere else in the world, making them rare and, of course, valuable now. Typical, really! But let's not dwell... And then The Internet happened. Back when the internet was new and scary (and here I further cement the fact that I am a Dinosaur), our school was the first place locally to get access. We had one PC dedicated to the internet, and I'd pretty much spend every lunch break and after school on it. I don't even know why MLP entered my mind, but I remember searching "My Little Pony" and finding 'Dream Valley', one of the first MLP websites that ever existed. I couldn't believe it. There were other people who liked My Little Pony? Grown ups? Adults, mostly American, it seemed, who collected them. And had hundreds of them. I was absolutely flabbergasted. I was suddenly, after years of being 'the weird kid who liked My Little Ponies', thrown into a community that was made entirely for me. It was unreal. I found The MLPTP - The My Little Pony Trading Post - a guestbook dedicated to trading, selling and discussing all things My Little Pony. Eventually it became a forum, and I made a bunch of friends there. We'd chat nightly in Dream Valley's Chatroom, and eventually even started meeting up IRL (once we realised that British collectors existed, too!) I was even contacted by the BBC to talk about my collection on a show called 'I Love Toys' - here's that clip in all its embarrassing glory:
Eventually UK Ponycon existed, a convention dedicated to My Little Pony! My first Ponycon was in 2006. I actually went on to be a part of the committee for a few years and Ponycon became a really important part of my life, mostly because it introduced me to some of my now very best and absolutely craziest friends (hi guys!)
When the 'Friendship is Magic' revival hit with a brand new cartoon and a new line of toys, it was very strange for us oldschool collectors, because suddenly it wasn't just ours anymore. Suddenly hundreds of new people loved MLP as well, and they were incredibly passionate and dedicated in their love. Fanfic, fanart, animation and songs started pouring out from the fans. Sure, we used to write pony fanfic back in the day, but that community got smaller and smaller as the years went on, the focus turning almost entirely to just collecting the toys. The oddest part I suppose was that guys fell in love with the show, too, calling themselves Bronies, and a whole new line of conventions, events and communities grew. There's some animosity between Bronies and oldschool collectors, from both sides. I can understand why there is, I suppose, but it annoys me that so much of it is down to sheer ignorance. Some Bronies figure all oldschool collectors to be 'elderly' (actual word used to describe us!) and boring, only interested in the original generation of toys and not given to the new fandom. Some collectors, meanwhile, distrust the Bronies because they're unsure of their motives, because they've made My Little Pony their own and some older fans don't like the direction they've taken the fandom in. I think this is all probably a blog-post for another time, so I won't dwell on it here, but personally I think the Brony movement is the best thing to happen to the MLP world, and I've only good things to say about it. My Little Pony is more than just a collection or a hobby. It's a community. It's a lifetime spent around colour and magic and friendship and yes, My Little Pony is also awesome silly little toys, daft cartoons and empty pockets. Sure, some of the new fans will dwindle away when the fad and hype wears off, but there will be those who stick around for the long haul. I don't think my parents ever imagined, when they picked up Sunshine for the very first time, that I'd still own her, and over a thousand like her, decades later. But I do, and there's no sign of this stopping any time soon.
And that's pretty damned awesome, really.
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I was so surprised to see this stationary in Wilco when Mum and I were shopping in Reading the other day! I'm used to seeing the occasional bit of MLP stationary in stores but of course it's usually G4 stuff from the latest series. My heart actually did the little beat-skip of a collector who spots a vintage My Little Pony in a box of toys at the carboot sale, and I dove towards the shelves to see what they had to offer!
The set is lovely, the packaging itself even looks like the vintage packaging of yore. It features Starshine, Snuzzle, Glory, Gusty, Confetti, Cotton Candy, Powder and, bizarrely, a random Birthflower pony. There were a couple of other bits and bobs, but I picked up the things I thought I'd actually use (though I'll take the erasers out of the packaging because I wont use them for fear of making them mucky! And the packaging is just so retro and lovely!) Tags:
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Hi! I'm Selena an artist, blogger and gamer!
Dream Somehow is my little corner of the internet where I talk about life, the universe and everything! Here, you'll find travel, adventures, vintage style, life in the South West of England, a little bit of Disney dreaming and a whole lot of geeky nonsense. If you'd like to learn a little more about me, click here! Instagram
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