I began collecting My Little Ponies in 1983, which I was in 4th grade. The new girl in my class, Erica, brought a pony to school (Minty) on the first day, and I was captivated. I asked my mom to buy me a pony, and I got Butterscotch -- my very first pony! My sister, five years older but still a fan of dolls and toys, got Bluebelle and Blossom. Snuzzle was my second pony, and Cotton Candy came soon after. (Strangely, I didn't get Minty until the mail-order ponies were available years later.)
It soon become clear to us that all-girl ponies weren't going to cut it, so we made Snuzzle and Bluebelle boys. We were big Duran Duran fans, and Snuzzle was forever dubbed "Simon." From then on, some ponies were boys and others were girls, and it was just gut feeling that told us which were which. Bubbles was a boy, but Seashell was a girl. Both Bow-Tie and Applejack were boys. I think all the unicorns and pegasi were girls, at least at first. They went on dates, developed relationships, and sometimes got married.
I got all my friends hooked on ponies. One friend, Amy, developed a collection to rival my own, and we played ponies for years, well into middle school. My neighbors two doors down, Heidi and her younger sister Bonnie, became faithful pony fans.
The ponies had very distinct personalities. Years later I saw the cartoons, and they got some of them right -- Firefly was very adventurous -- but the personalities of my ponies stuck, and will always be part of them for me. Some were rock stars (Skippety-Doo and Paradise); some were foreigners (Blossom was from Germany); some were bitch queens (Heart Throb). Some were shy awkward nobodies who got discovered by the hunk pony next door -- there were several of those!
Some ponies became royalty, patterned in part after the magical unicorns of Piers Anthony's "Apprentice Adept" series. In my world, royal ponies are named for a color they represent; thus Bow Tie became Lord Blue (remember, he's a boy) and Tiffany was Lady White, and so on.
My basement was transformed into Ponyland for months at a time, almost constantly for six years. The castle, waterfall, parlor and stable lived alongside shoeboxes, dollhouses and the Barbie Townhouse with the cool elevator. I made diagrams of Ponyland on my Macintosh 128k computer using MacPaint and printed them out on my Imagewriter, using the drawings in the pony brochures as guides. Ponies drove around in shoe-roller-skate cars on the roads I outlined with masking tape.
Medley was my favorite for a long time. We had lengthy conversations in my bedroom about all sorts of things -- she was great. Other favorites included Rosedust (a flutter pony), Bright Eyes (with Twinkle Eyes), Braided Beauty (a Brush n' Grow pony) and Lucky (that "first" boy pony).
Later, in middle and high school, I wrote pony fan fiction. Some of it was pretty racy (I think I threw all of that stuff away)! One story grew to over 30 pages. The stories were my play substitute, after I didn't have anyone to play ponies with anymore.
I taped the My Little Pony 'n' Friends TV show and learned all the songs by heart. ("Shoo-be-doo, shoop-shoop-be-doo!") I was mortified my friends might find out I watched it, so I hid the tapes at the top of my closet. They had long given up their ponies, but mine were still living in Ponyland in my basement.
Finally in high school, we had a garage sale, and I put out some of my ponies on a whim. A woman snapped all of them up, and I showed her the rest of my collection in the basement. She took the castle, the perm parlor, Megan and Sundance and a dozen other things -- I think I asked $45 for all of it. After that, all the rest of my ponies went into boxes, lovingly labeled with names, combs and ribbons (which I knew by heart, but also knew I wouldn't always remember), and sat in my parent's basement until I got married.
Now I'm taking ponies out of boxes for the first time in a decade. It's neat to see them again. Soon I'll line them up and take a picture of them, just to remember how it once was.