Musictime

Here is another pony related to one of my favorite topics: music. This time, the notes in her symbol are all facing the proper direction, although there’s something missing: a staff.

  

The odd element is the triangle. This is obviously a musical instrument, but not a solo instrument. I went to My Little Pony Wiki for a backcard check on this pony, and there is a really strange story going on. I quote:

Musictime's favourite lesson is Music of course! She can play any musical instrument but the one she likes best is the triangle. Sometimes she plays a tune on her triangle, blinks her eyes... and the other musical instruments play the same tune all by themselves! Sometimes, Musictime plays her triangle in the middle of another lesson! Then, the other Schooltime Ponies say: "This isn't music lesson, Musictime!" But whenever Musictime's around... it's time for music! Listen carefully, can you hear a triangle?

How can someone play a tune on a single-note percussion instrument? One can’t. But this is not the only bizarre thing in this story: “…and the other musical instruments play the same tune all by themselves!” Whoever wrote this story probably shared Musictime’s delusions. The only way a normal musical instrument can play by itself is through sympathetic resonance. And since you can’t play a tune on a triangle, the other instruments cannot resonate sympathetically to it. Musictime is also obsessed with her triangle, so that she plays it in other lessons. I think that is reason to be worried. 

The proof Musictime and the backcard story maker shared the same obsessions and delusions is in the last sentence: 

Listen carefully, can you hear a triangle?

No! I do not have tinnitus or endomusia! Not even synesthesia! I do not hear geometric shapes and I do not believe plastic ponies can be serious musicians!

Wave Runner

Wave Runner

This is a Sunshine Pony with a strip of frizzy white hair that becomes pink with UV exposure.

There are, however, two interesting features that make this pony special: 1) the fact his main colors are complementary, and 2) his symbols: seahorses.

He is magenta and green, two colors labeled as complementary, because they create a strong contrast and reinforce each other; and when combined in the right proportions, they produce a neutral color. There's yet another interesting fact: these colours are each other's negative color. This means if we invert the pony's colors as a photographic negative, we'll realize the body's color becomes the hair color, and vice-versa. Here are the pictures for the original and the reverse:

This pony likes to shift between alternate realities, yet keeping the same colors.

The symbols are seahorses, in other words, several green and yellow simplified representations of hippocampi. The hippocampus is also known to be an anatomic subdivision of the brain, belonging to the limbic system and crucial to the processing of memory. Wave Runner's symbols aren't there by chance. They exist to remind us that we shouldn't forget seahorses, because we've got them in our brains.

Wave Runner's seahorses are on his body. He doesn't have a hippocampus inside his hollow head. We do.

Sweet Pop

This is a Twinkle Eyed Pony, which means she has sparky jewels instead of normal eyes. These jewels are lapidated in a octahedral shape, with a pinkish hue. This gemstone is unlikely a diamond. Pink diamonds are extremely expensive. And corundum (ruby and sapphire) is probably not the case either. I allow myself to conclude that this pony's eyes are made of an ordinary transparent polymer.

But the problem with this pony, and with all Twinkle Eyed Ponies, is her eye sight. No matter how pretty and chic it may be, faceted eyes on a horse are not efficient. This is not the compound eye of an arthropod. This is not a normal, round and transparent cornea. This is a fake jewel, and this pony sees the world through a fake pink jewel, which amounts to her frivolity. Fortunately for her, she compensates this sight issue with popsicles. Here is her picture:

Double popsicles for a stereo taste, multiplied by six (three in each side of this pony's bottom), makes twelve popsicles, one for each hours of the day. The good thing is diabetes is extremely rare in horses.

This is a pegasus pony, but considering this pony's weight, 91g, and the wings' area, 8cm² each, he would have to flap the wings 2100 times per second to be able to fly, a value that exceeds the two-winged fly wingbeat. But this wingbeat speed is impossible for this pony's metabolism, which makes her the pegasus-equivalent of a penguin, with obsolete, merely decorative wings. However, the inefficient wings, as well as the inefficient eyes, look nice on her, as well as on her cousins Masquerade and Whizzer, who suffer from exactly the same inefficiency syndrome. 

The poor eye sight and small wings make this pony clumsy, but undeniably cute.

Rainbow Rider

Newton made it clear that rainbows come from the refraction of light by suspended particles of water in the atmosphere. We cannot ride on rainbows, because rainbows are light, and light has no mass: it is made of photons. But then comes young Einstein dreaming about riding on a beam of light. What can we make of this?
No! We will not talk about relativity! We will talk about my favorite pony: Streaky or (the impossible) Rainbow Rider! Here are some photos of the pony:

He (to me he is a male and there is no way around this) is a Rainbow Curl Pony, released in 1989-1990 along with Raincurl, Ringlet and Stripes. He is lavender and he has the Bradley/Buttons pose. The ponies of this set have four colours in their mane and ringlet curls. Unlike most My Little Pony toys, Rainbow Curl Ponies have rainbow-themed symbols in the sides of their bodies.

Streaky has musical notes on the rainbow symbol and they are somewhat disorganized. It seems someone played their music so loud, all notes collapsed and fell off the rainbow. Someone was supposed to put them back into place, but whoever did it knows very little about music, because some of the quavers and crotchets are facing backwards.

I don't know about your Streaky, but mine doesn't sing at all.

My Little Pony Vintage - Intro

This blog is about the first generation of My Little Pony toys (1982-1997). This is a fan/collector blog. Each post focuses on particular pony or pony set, pony art or other vintage MLP-related object or topic. The comments and reviews are not only of technical nature, but can also include personal thoughts, humor, science and philosophy. Warning: this is a highly nerd blog. Guest comments are welcome!