1983:Rainbow Ponies

WINDY

lavender unicorn with dark pink, yellow, green and blue mane and tail, glittering gusts of wind symbol

Windy was my first pony, so naturally I took a great interest in her as a child. She very rarely appeared in the Pony Comic, but she was characterised as being one of the fastest of the little ponies, running so quickly that all that could be seen was her tail, streaming out behind her like a rainbow. In fact, if the Fact File is to be believed, only Whizzer ever had Windy beaten for speed!

Windy herself started off life in lavender, but most Windys found second hand are more beige than lavender.

The White Windy Controversy
There have been rumours for several years about the existence of a white version of Windy - some say with blue symbols. Unlike White Tootsie, who is well documented both loose, and MOC, White Windy has never been traced to any official release.

Windy has a lot of batch variations in her body tone. The pale lavender colour can also fade and discolour to grey or a beige shade. Some versions seem so pale that they have been dubbed 'White Windy' and seen as a UK variation. Some of these also have blue symbols. Blue symbols on Windy are a sign of fading, not variation.

As the MOC image to the right of this page shows, Windy in the United Kingdom was sold on card in lavender as standard.

PALE WINDY, CHILDHOOD WINDY, MINT LAVENDER WINDY
My childhood pony shows clearly the uneven signs of discolouration. The other two Windys show different batch variations. Pale Windy looks white when next to other Windys, but compared to a white pony like Glory, she is clearly pale lavender.

Comparing the heads of Pale Windy and Lavender Windy.

Comparing Pale Windy to Glory (a white pony) and my faded Windy from childhood. From this you can see that Pale Windy is paler than my childhood pony, but she is not as white as Glory, making her probably a pale batch variation with less dye, rather than an active attempt at a white pony.

My conclusion is that the pale pony is a genuine variation in batch or pigment tone, but is probably not a definitively unique 'White Windy' release. A cool anomaly, but probably not an official variation.

 

Thanks to straightdealstoys for the picture of Windy MOC.