1989:

DANCE 'N' PRANCE PONIES

Yay! Dancing Ponies!

The Dance 'n' Prance Ponies took the tail twirling technology of the Happytails Ponies to new levels. Instead of squeezing the pony's sides, each of these girls had a flower shaped brooch on her chest, with which her mechanism could be 'wound up.' Then, when the pony was placed on the floor, her tail would spin around, juddering her across the surface in a circular motion.

So it's not quite ballroom calibre, but you have to admit the idea is original!

SONGSTER AND PLAYER AS PEGASUS PONIES (UK COMIC)

In the UK comics, Player and Songster were always depicted as pegasus ponies and it appears that early plans were to make them this way, since prototype photos have been found of them both in pegasus moulds. However - probably to facilitate the movement - the set eventually only consisted of earth and unicorn ponies, each in the same looking up pose. The pose was based on the early unicorn pose used by Powder and Skyflier, and even the earth pony moulds bore a startling resemblance.

Each Dance n Prance Pony was a veritable celebrity, and because of this she came with various glamour accessories such as earrings, a fluffy boa, a clip with a lock of false hair, and a gold mesh ribbon. These are fiddly and difficult to find on the second hand market - especially the mesh ribbons, which are easily damaged. As a collector of JEM, I half wonder if Hasbro ploughed their eighties rock-diva energies into producing these girls after the death of the Jem Doll line. Certainly with the wild earrings, boas and showbusiness symbols, there was an element of hanging on to the eighties in this particular set.

All the ponies shown in the above picture and the page pictures are wearing accessories that are correct to them :) Each pony also had a brush or a comb - those issued with curly hair generally had combs and those with straight hair came with brushes.

As was the custom for ponies this year, all of the Dance and Prance ponies were sold in boxes with patterned borders on their UK and European releases.