Post by Sarah-P.Pie on May 24, 2007 16:15:22 GMT
Hello to all crazy enough to read this post! 
My name is Sarah Louisa, and I have collected My Little Ponies on and off for the past twenty-two years (Showing my age there, eh? ;D) I often lurk on the Arena and Trading Post, but I'm too shy to sign up.
I met Lancer while at a car boot sale on vacation over in the UK some time ago, and we exchanged e-mail addresses and kept in touch. I also went to the last International My Little Pony Convention, but barely said a word to anybody
. Desiree finally convinced me to sign up over here, and I hope to meet some great people! Maybe one day I will join the bigger forums too. 
OK, so you probably don't want to know about my ponies, but I'm going to tell you anyways!
My mom bought me two ponies for my third birthday from a small toy store in Saskatoon (my birthplace and childhood home) - these were Parasol and Lickety Split. I adored the pair of them, and carried them around everywhere apparently. Over the next few years, my collection grew and grew until I had over 100 ponies, including the elusive Rapunzel, who we didn't mail off for, but instead found at a thrift store for just twenty cents - and in perfect shape too! My childhood was a very MLP-based one actually! I had a pony room (complete with pony bedding, wallpaper, lampshades etc.), pony clothes, pony schoolbag, pony plushies, pony books...you name it, and I had something along those lines with a pony on it! ;D
I still recall going to see the MLP Movie aged just four, and it was just so cute! I just had to have all of the movie star ponies, and that's what I asked for the following Christmas. I never did get a Shady when I was little though, and I think it stuck with me all these years that my collection was not complete...
My friends at school also collected ponies - every girl in the class seemed to have at least one actually - and a lot of them still collect too. We meet up once or twice a year and discuss the good old days...
I stayed with the ponies right up until the end, and still recall eagerly awaiting each new episode of My Little Pony Tales. Lancer was my favorite character (how dare you take "my" rightful name, Desiree?! ;D), with Starlight my favorite of the girls... I was so disappointed when I realized the ponies were no longer available in Canadian stores, and that (I assumed) none of the Tales ponies had been made.
And so, as I reached my young teen years, the ponies somehow trotted down into the basement. One day though, back in 1997, when I was still only 15, meaning my pony-break can't have been very long, Mom, Dad and I were searching for one of those electronic Tamagotchi thingemydooey's for my brother, Robert (remember the electronic "pets" that were all the rage at the time?) in TRU without much success, and I happened to walk past a cardboard bin full of...MY LITTLE PONIES! They weren't much like the equines I remembered, much thinner and with jewels in their eyes, which twinkled and kinda scared me at first, but heck, they were cute anyway! So I bought the whole range in one go! (Well, they were cut-price at the time)...
We didn't have a computer at the time, so I had no idea that an MLP community had begun to gather online! I just started up my old habit of thrifting again, although we were living in Vancouver by this time, where the ponies just didn't seem to turn up quite as often. It did come in pretty handy that I has a Saturday "job" as a volunteer at our local branch of Goodwill at the time though, and any ponies that came in would kinda "accidentally" come home with me - well, I did pay a donation to the charity first, of course!
Luckily, my ponies had been brought along when we moved house, which surprises me, since so much other stuff had gotten trashed. Maybe I had insisted my MLP's were saved, although I have no recollection of that... Or maybe the ponies just didn't want to be tossed along with all the other stuff... Spooky, eh?
Anyways, I continued with the G2 collection (until they too left the stores), and my G1 collection slowly expanded through the thrift stores, and that's as far as it went until I got online in 2002, and signed up on e-Bay...and then I guess I went a little pony-mad, buying up just about every pony in sight!
When the MLP's were set to return in 2003 for their third generation, I was practically camping outside TRU, visiting almost every night, determined to be first to see the new ponies. Of course, they didn't reach Canada straight away, so there was no way I could have been first anyhow...but I had no way of knowing that at the time.
I still remember the night clearly - I had just had my "daily pony fix" online, and saw the announcement on Dream Valley that the "New Ponies Had Arrived!" I felt disheartened, having just been to TRU once more, and found no sign of them. Just then, the telephone rang. I sadly walked over and picked up the receiver - it was my cousin. He had been working in California in June '03, and had just come back to Van that night. It was late, but he asked if he could stop around at my house to say Hi. I agreed, and about half an hour later the doorbell rang. He told me he had a little something for me, which he had left outside.
I went out into the kitchen to make us up some coffee, and when I returned to the living room, there was a small bag on the sofa - inside I found...PINKIE PIE. I must have looked like a complete and utter lunatic, jumping around, hugging her little plastic carry case tight to my chest!
I've no idea how long I was there, but when I looked up, my cousin was standing in the doorway, shaking his head sadly.
"Sarah, glad to see you're back in your pink-colored pony dream world." He smiled, and told me that Pinkie had been bought a fortnight earlier in a small toy store in LA. I like to think she was one of the very first batch of ponies to hit the shelves.
And that's why Pinkie Pie will always be a very special pony to me, and why I named myself after her.
I now have a total of 978 different MLP's, but I must have over 1500 including all my many well-loved duplicates. Which brings me around to my next topic rather nicely.
I collect together poor condition ponies (I refuse to use the term "custom bait"), and save them from customization. Even the worst condition ponies get collected together and restored or, if not too bad, left as they are. The whole thought of changing a pony's appearance to something beyond recognition as her original self sickens me, and I try my hardest not to even think about it. I thought I was the only person in the world mad enough to think like this, which was why I was so pleased when I found Desiree and her Rescue Home, caring for ponies for what they were, instead of trying to improve them with paint and dye.
All hail Desiree Skylark's My Little Pony Rescue Home - where no pony is ever turned away!
Sarah
P.S. I love the smilies, My Little Skylark
My name is Sarah Louisa, and I have collected My Little Ponies on and off for the past twenty-two years (Showing my age there, eh? ;D) I often lurk on the Arena and Trading Post, but I'm too shy to sign up.
I met Lancer while at a car boot sale on vacation over in the UK some time ago, and we exchanged e-mail addresses and kept in touch. I also went to the last International My Little Pony Convention, but barely said a word to anybody
. Desiree finally convinced me to sign up over here, and I hope to meet some great people! Maybe one day I will join the bigger forums too. 
OK, so you probably don't want to know about my ponies, but I'm going to tell you anyways!
My mom bought me two ponies for my third birthday from a small toy store in Saskatoon (my birthplace and childhood home) - these were Parasol and Lickety Split. I adored the pair of them, and carried them around everywhere apparently. Over the next few years, my collection grew and grew until I had over 100 ponies, including the elusive Rapunzel, who we didn't mail off for, but instead found at a thrift store for just twenty cents - and in perfect shape too! My childhood was a very MLP-based one actually! I had a pony room (complete with pony bedding, wallpaper, lampshades etc.), pony clothes, pony schoolbag, pony plushies, pony books...you name it, and I had something along those lines with a pony on it! ;D
I still recall going to see the MLP Movie aged just four, and it was just so cute! I just had to have all of the movie star ponies, and that's what I asked for the following Christmas. I never did get a Shady when I was little though, and I think it stuck with me all these years that my collection was not complete...
My friends at school also collected ponies - every girl in the class seemed to have at least one actually - and a lot of them still collect too. We meet up once or twice a year and discuss the good old days...
I stayed with the ponies right up until the end, and still recall eagerly awaiting each new episode of My Little Pony Tales. Lancer was my favorite character (how dare you take "my" rightful name, Desiree?! ;D), with Starlight my favorite of the girls... I was so disappointed when I realized the ponies were no longer available in Canadian stores, and that (I assumed) none of the Tales ponies had been made.
And so, as I reached my young teen years, the ponies somehow trotted down into the basement. One day though, back in 1997, when I was still only 15, meaning my pony-break can't have been very long, Mom, Dad and I were searching for one of those electronic Tamagotchi thingemydooey's for my brother, Robert (remember the electronic "pets" that were all the rage at the time?) in TRU without much success, and I happened to walk past a cardboard bin full of...MY LITTLE PONIES! They weren't much like the equines I remembered, much thinner and with jewels in their eyes, which twinkled and kinda scared me at first, but heck, they were cute anyway! So I bought the whole range in one go! (Well, they were cut-price at the time)...
We didn't have a computer at the time, so I had no idea that an MLP community had begun to gather online! I just started up my old habit of thrifting again, although we were living in Vancouver by this time, where the ponies just didn't seem to turn up quite as often
. It did come in pretty handy that I has a Saturday "job" as a volunteer at our local branch of Goodwill at the time though, and any ponies that came in would kinda "accidentally" come home with me - well, I did pay a donation to the charity first, of course! Luckily, my ponies had been brought along when we moved house, which surprises me, since so much other stuff had gotten trashed. Maybe I had insisted my MLP's were saved, although I have no recollection of that... Or maybe the ponies just didn't want to be tossed along with all the other stuff... Spooky, eh?
Anyways, I continued with the G2 collection (until they too left the stores), and my G1 collection slowly expanded through the thrift stores, and that's as far as it went until I got online in 2002, and signed up on e-Bay...and then I guess I went a little pony-mad, buying up just about every pony in sight!
When the MLP's were set to return in 2003 for their third generation, I was practically camping outside TRU, visiting almost every night, determined to be first to see the new ponies. Of course, they didn't reach Canada straight away, so there was no way I could have been first anyhow...but I had no way of knowing that at the time.
I still remember the night clearly - I had just had my "daily pony fix" online, and saw the announcement on Dream Valley that the "New Ponies Had Arrived!" I felt disheartened, having just been to TRU once more, and found no sign of them. Just then, the telephone rang. I sadly walked over and picked up the receiver - it was my cousin. He had been working in California in June '03, and had just come back to Van that night. It was late, but he asked if he could stop around at my house to say Hi. I agreed, and about half an hour later the doorbell rang. He told me he had a little something for me, which he had left outside.
I went out into the kitchen to make us up some coffee, and when I returned to the living room, there was a small bag on the sofa - inside I found...PINKIE PIE. I must have looked like a complete and utter lunatic, jumping around, hugging her little plastic carry case tight to my chest!
I've no idea how long I was there, but when I looked up, my cousin was standing in the doorway, shaking his head sadly.
"Sarah, glad to see you're back in your pink-colored pony dream world." He smiled, and told me that Pinkie had been bought a fortnight earlier in a small toy store in LA. I like to think she was one of the very first batch of ponies to hit the shelves.
And that's why Pinkie Pie will always be a very special pony to me, and why I named myself after her.
I now have a total of 978 different MLP's, but I must have over 1500 including all my many well-loved duplicates. Which brings me around to my next topic rather nicely.
I collect together poor condition ponies (I refuse to use the term "custom bait"), and save them from customization. Even the worst condition ponies get collected together and restored or, if not too bad, left as they are. The whole thought of changing a pony's appearance to something beyond recognition as her original self sickens me, and I try my hardest not to even think about it. I thought I was the only person in the world mad enough to think like this, which was why I was so pleased when I found Desiree and her Rescue Home, caring for ponies for what they were, instead of trying to improve them with paint and dye.
All hail Desiree Skylark's My Little Pony Rescue Home - where no pony is ever turned away!
Sarah
P.S. I love the smilies, My Little Skylark
