1990: Playsets:The Prize Day Pony

ROSETTE

Yellow earth pony with dark orange and yellow mane and tail (should be very curly), three prize rosettes symbol. Freckles.

For some reason, Rosette seems to have confused an awful lot of collectors. When she first appeared on ID websites, she was simply labelled 'Prize Day' and has also gone through spells of being called by her German set name - Turnierfest-Pony.

Perhaps the root cause of this confusion lies in the fact that there is nowhere in the pony comic or Hasbro advertising which gives Rosette's proper identity. In fact, the only places which I have found her given an actual name are her box and the list of information Hasbro sent me in 1995. She made absolutely no comic appearances, and it was almost as if she didn't exist.

And yet, quite obviously, she did exist :)

Many of her accessories were recycled or re-coloured from the Show Stable from this year, but she also had a couple of things which were uniquely hers. Her rosettes, for example, were purple with red trimmings, and she is the only pony to come with these. And her style of brush was sold with very few other playsets. In a sense, she was Hasbro's update on the earlier Gymkhana - and had about as much publicity!

Technically, she belonged in a set with Sweet Clover, the Picnic Pony, who was also sold this year. Both appear on each other's boxes. But she is also a playset pony in her own right - simply marketed as 'Prize Day'.

According to the story on the back of her box, Rosette was indeed the new Gymkhana pony, winning first prize in the showjumping contest. Her story also suggests her special friends were Sand Digger the Sunshine Pony and Sugar Apple the Candy Cane Pony, since they were the ones who did her hair before the race!