25 Nights of Nineties Nostalgia: My Little Christmas Pony

Merry Christmas, Everypony!

Often billed as the first My Little Pony Christmas toy, Merry Treats was in fact technically predated in her 1989 release by 1985’s Stockings, a simple pony in the original pose and possibly even by Felicidades, an Argentinian exclusive who’s origin date is unknown. Still, Merry Treats was the first real all-out specifically Christmas pony. With red and green hair, a Santa Claus symbol, and decked-out holiday packaging, she left a pretty big impact on the kids that got her Christmas morning. She even came with a special unique Christmas-tree comb that was later released as a magazine pack-in, but not with any other US pony toys.

The real deal.
The real deal.

She was followed by Generation 2’s sole UK exclusive Christmas baby pony, Baby Sweet Snowflake, and G3’s massive catalogue of winter and Christmas exclusives: Candy Cane, Snowflake, Mittens, Marshmallow Coco, Mistletoe, Snow’el, Winter Minty, Toboggan, Sno-Glo, Baby Jingle Jangle, UK’s Winter Snow, Baby Ribbons and Bows, Chilly Breezes, Velvet Bow, Winter Wish, Mittens the second, Snow’el the second (who are both completely different toys from the originals, by the way, they just reuse the names for utterly unfathomable reasons), Jolly Lolly, and last, another winter version of Minty and some winter themed releases of Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie.

Despite the fact that the most recent generation kicked holiday exclusives to the maximum with even more Halloween, Valentines and even Easter toys, G4 has been spectacularly lacking Christmas ones. Oddly enough, the only holiday exclusive released has been a Chinese New Year version of Pinkie Pie – It’s just a regular Pinkie Pie with some red vinyl paint and glitter. It was very underwhelming with collectors and fans and a bit of a surprise in its release at all.

The current toy-line is focusing very heavily on show and movie accurate toys, with its new Guardians of Harmony line of poseable action figures, with molded hair and features, and its impressive statuettes. By rebranding its molds to look more like the cartoon, they aren’t focused on creating toys that don’t tie into the show, unfortunately. But, hopefully, with the show going strong and having successfully released a Christmas album from it’s holiday special, we may see Christmas holiday exclusives return in the future – and dare we ask, perhaps for even a wider selection of holidays!

A Note From Santa’s Helper: Well, this ends our wonderful holiday romp through some very nostalgic toys, and for those of you paying extra close attention, you may have noticed that a few 80s toys found their way onto our list! Ho-ho-ho! Yes, that’s right, it was all part of a super-fun contest! If you accurately guessed the number of toys on our “25 Nights of Nineties Nostalgia” that were actually 80s toys, please write that number down on a 3×5 index card and send it along with a self-addressed stamped envelop to the station and we’ll find some garbage around here to mail back to you as a “prize”! Ho-ho-ho! It’s worthless!

About Nate Schoonover 19 Articles
Everyone's favourite art loving, toy collecting nonbinary idiot.