Desert Rose - In Person

Without giving too much away on a public place like the Internet I would still like to introduce myself and tell you about my My Little Pony collecting history :)

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My real name is Erica, born and raised in the southern part of Sweden. As I was born in 1986 I grew up with the first generation of My Little Ponies and I had several of them as a child that went with me everywhere. I remember taking a different one to school every day (in secret as I grew older and the other kids started to think that toys were childlish). They went with me on family vacations during the summertime - buildings and everything XD - and I tortured my uncle by continously asking him to play with the My Little Ponies with me :P I watched the show religiously and I think even my mother can recite the My Little Pony Movie by heart to this day XD I also had a handfull of comicbooks that I used to read over and over. Now I'm very happy to be able to say that all those My Little Ponies and My Little Pony items that I had as a child still remain in my collection today - and in absolutely wonderfull condition too since my mother always taught me to take good care of my things since they cost money to buy and money is hard to earn :)

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I remember that, as I grew older, I kept checking the toystores for My Little Ponies every time I was near one and how my mother used to buy me all the ones from the early 90's that is known as the late UK ponies today - the 7 Tales ponies, Cookery Ponies, Jewel Babies etc. Ponies that today are quite expensive to buy, and so I thank my lucky star that I had a mother who generously bought me pretty much all of them during those years that they were being sold in the stores :) 

But then, in the mid-90's, My Little Ponies stoped appearing in the toystores and I was heartbroken. I still kept checking the toystores everytime I had a chance though to see if maybe my beloved My Little Ponies would once again appear.

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And so, one day in 1997, I was at the mall with my father and, as I always did, I went to check the toystore. And there, sitting on a shelf at the far side of the toystore, I saw some blue boxes with the the label "My Little Pony" written across the top. Exited as only a 11-yearold child can be I rushed over there to find what is now known as the G2's. Imagen my disapointment when I saw that they looked nothing like the My Little Ponies I've grown up with to that point. However they were still My Little Ponies and so I couldn't resist asking my parents for them, and they kindly bought me a bunch of them :)

My love for My Little Ponies sparked once again thanks to this and I started to watch my VHS tapes with My Little Pony and read my old My Little Pony comics again. One day, in 1997, I remember laying in the bed reading one of those comics when a notion hit me. The Internet was just comming to life and people were trying to figure out ways to use it, (my dad sent me into every store he could think of to ask if they had a website which few did at that time), and there honestly wasn't a whole lot to be found on the Internet just yet. But I figured it couldn't hurt to log on and do a search on My Little Ponies. To my surprse I found quite alot about them on a site that many My Little Pony collectors know today - Dream Valley. On that site I saw page after page of beautiful My Little Ponies that I had never known existed and I was extatic. The thrill of this discovery turned me into a die-hard collector on the spot. I also joined the very early version of the My Little Pony Trading Post then and there where I came into contact with other collectors, and from there on I was a solid member of the online My Little Pony community with no desire to ever leave it.

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As the years went by I kept buying the G2's at the stores while my mother kindly helped me to purchase loads of the G1's of Ebay. I did not care that I was hitting my teens and that all the other girls started to focus on make-up and boys instead of toys. I still loved my My Little Ponies and there was nothing that was gonna change my mind about that.

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In the early 2000 though the toystores were once again drying up when it came to My Little Ponies. I could only find random G2's every now and then. However, my disapointment wasn't as great as when I was a child since I now knew of all the G1's that existed and still tried to track those down over the Internet. I was still also a member of the My Little Pony Trading Post forum, so I did have alot of contact with other My Little Pony collectors. Through this I found out that a new line of My Little Ponies were going to be released which also eased the disapointment.

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And sure enough, in 2003 - when I was in my mid teens - a new line of My Little Ponies hit the shelves. The G3's. At this point I did have a boyfriend and I had started to wear make-up, but I still loved the My Little Ponies dearly ;) So, while Hasbro presented us with loads of new beautiful ponies that looked quite alot like the first generation of ponies, I desperetly tried to keep up with buying every single one of them :P And I did quite a good job XD Up untill 2007 I had managed to get my hands on almost every single G3 that had been sold in the stores to that point.

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But then in 2007 things changed. I was turning 21, I was now a working woman and I also met the man of my dreams :) The man who today is my fiancé. So my focus shifted somewhat and I became less and less active in the online My Little Pony community. I did still buy the G3's I could find in the stores whenever I saw them, but it wasn't long after that that the Core 7 phenomena hit and I, just like so many other collectors, got extremely bored with the G3 line. Because the Core 7 phenomena (or Bore 7 which it's also known as amongst collectors today) was the same 7 G3 ponies released over and over and over with only minor changes. This went on to the infamous G3.5 line, but since they had quite a new look to them I still picked some of those up aswell. Other than that my My Little Pony collecting was pretty much comming to a halt.

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One day in 2010 me and my fiancé stoped by a store that sells pretty much everything on our way to his fathers. Force of habbit I headed to the toysection to see what they had in regards of My Little Ponies and when I saw what is known today as the G4's I just stoped and stared at them. They looked so very different from the other lines of My Little Ponies that I was used to that I was convinced they were fakies. It was after all a rather low-price store we were in. When we got back home I paied a visit to the My Little Pony Trading Post which I hadn't done for several years now to see what was going on in the My Little Pony world now. There I discovered that there was indeed a new line of My Little Ponies - the G4's - that I had completely missed since I wasn't keeping up anymore with the news on them.

But, even with the new info that I had learned, I wasn't sold. The new line looked so odd to me that I only picked up a few that I had known from the previous lines - a Fashion Style Applejack, a Pinkie Pie and a Shine Bright Rainbow Dash. Other than that I was completely uninterested in them.

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That was untill 2012. I was going through a rough time and as I always do whenever I feel down I turn to my ponies who have brought me so much joy through all of my years. I headed to the My Little Pony forums and started to read up on everything - discovering that there even was a new show with them called Friendship Is Magic. Curiosity took over and I headed to Youtube to see if I could find some episodes of this new My Little Pony show. Sure enough I found every single episode made to that point and I clicked one at random - becoming completely hooked after just the first one :P I sat up all night watching every single episode and I was once again majorly in love with my My Little Ponies.

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I started to work my way into the community once again that I had been gone from for so long, I started to track down ponies of older generations that I was still missing and I headed to the toystores to pick up any G4 My Little Pony I could find. Fortunatly me and my fiancé also had a home of our own now that we just had started to renovate. And, kind as only he is, he was completely fine when I said I wanted one of the rooms as a ponyroom. So in the late summer of 2012 I started to work on it while continuing to build up my collection.

In early 2013 it was finally done and I would be lying if I said it isn't the favourite room of my home ;) I'm extremely proud of it and my collection, and I was happy to be back into the My Little Pony world again.

 

As time went by my collection grew and grew, and by late summer in 2014 I was close to completing my collections of all generations - only missing a few ponies from each. It was also at this point that the collection started to attract attention from very unexpected places. One morning in late August 2014 I discoverd an e-mail in my inbox from IKEA - the Swedish furniture store that is widely known across the globe by now. They had found this very website and discoverd that I had used their BILLY bookcases for a majority of my collection display and wanted to get in touch for interviews and more pictures that they then would display in their soon-to-come IKEA museum. I exitedly jumped the chance to let even more people discover the wonders of My Little Pony - and after a face to face interview about my collection and some fresh new pictures of my collection taken it was all featured on their IKEA museum blog with the titel "The BILLY bookcase - A Ponys Best Friend". Something that, of course, will always be a proud part of my My Little Pony collecting history. ^.^

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Because of my long history with My Little Ponies I do collect every single generation from G1's, G2's, G3's, G3.5's to G4's. And while some generations do get more attention than others I love them all the same none the less :) Because My Little Ponies have always played a big part in my life and they will continue to do so for years and years to come. Simply because they bring me alot of joy, nice childhood memories and they keep me in touch with my inner child :)

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Throughout the years I've been quite active on several My Little Pony forums, Ebay and the Swedish auctionsite Tradera. I've also recently become active on Bonanza and Etsy. To easily recognize me these are my ID's on each site:

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MLPTP: Desert_Rose

MLPArena: Desert Rose

Druvdalen: Desert Rose

Ebay: mysticrose1986

Tradera: Desert_Rose

Bonanza: DesertRose1986

Etsy: mysticrose1986

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