1988: Sparkle Ponies

TWINKLER

Store release: Dark purple pegasus with dark purple mane and tail streaked with gold, pale blue and pale pink tinsel. Tiny pink and yellow stars symbol. NO symbol on cheek.

As has already been mentioned, the Sparkle Ponies are a confusing breed, and keeping the store issue and the mail order release on the same page seems the easiest way of preventing further confusion about these releases!

Not much comic information seems available on Twinkler and her special road to sparkledom. In one story it's hinted at that she gets it from drifting bits of stardust, after she writes messages in the night sky, but that is about the size of it. She was my favourite as a child, though I never managed to find her. Ironically, in one of the Sparkle Ponies' most significant stories, the baddie's sidekick also preferred Twinkler over all the others - wanting to abduct her because she was 'ever so pretty!'

She is the Pegasus pony from the set and for some reason she was given tricolour tinsel - something which none of the others in the set have. Why this happened is another Hasbro mystery!

Mail Order Edition: Dark purple pegasus with dark purple mane and tail streaked with gold, pale blue and pale pink tinsel. Tiny pink and yellow stars symbol. Small symbol on cheek.

Officially, the mail order versions were not sold in the United Kingdom. Unofficially, there have been claims that some were found sealed onto cards both here and in North America, as if Hasbro were getting rid of surplus stock.

Such claims remain unverified, but may explain the small number of mail-order Sparkle Ponies that have been found in the United Kingdom.