1991: Pocket Friends Ponies

SINGING POCKET

Purple earth pony with pink and dark purple mane, pink tail, pink flower with yellow bee on a silver cord symbol.

Singing Pocket was my personal favourite from the set, and also the one who probably had most outings in the comic, once appearing as the poster pony for the pony comic's 1991 calendar (I don't remember which month, though!). On account of the original prototype photo showing her in Powder's pose, she was depicted as a unicorn in every comic story, though she was actually an earth pony.

The flower and bee can sometimes be missing on loose ponies. Please note that the clip in her tail does not belong to this pony.

There is at least one confirmed variation extant for this pony. Like other ponies from her year, Baby Starbow and Pretty Beat, (though less well publicised), Singing Pocket's darker streak of hair can be either blue or purple. In the instance of a blue streak, the pony generally also has the smoother, silkier hair and the pink section of her mane and tail are the pale, fading pink rather than the darker, rougher pink seen in the pony pictured above.

SINGING POCKET (BLUE HAIR)

I can say 100% for certain that the pony pictured at the top of the page was sold in the UK. I cannot be 100% certain whether both versions were sold all over the world, or not.

COMPARISON OF SINGING POCKET VERSIONS

As you can see from the above picture featuring both of them, the variation does not stop at the hair. The pony on the left is a tiny bit taller, and a much paler colour overall (this is even across the whole body, so is not faded - and if it had faded, the hair would've faded too, making that highly unlikely). Her eyes are also slightly different. The hair colour distinctions are quite clear in this image, too. Unfortunately our blue haired one is missing her 3d symbol, so I cannot make a comparison on those.

There is potentially a third variation on this pony, with the silky fading pink hair alongside the dark purple streak. I have seen a photo of one of these on ebay, but because pictures can be misleading, I am calling this an unconfirmed variation at this time. If you have information/images, please don't be shy to share!

In North America this pony was known as Sweet Pocket.