TRU Exclusive: Zecora

Today's collection addition comes all the was from the Everfree Forrest or at least Ohio where my mom was lucky enough to find the Toys R Us Exclusive Zecora.

Zecora is pretty darn cool as she is the standard pony size (in fact she uses Applejack's head mold) but her body is made out of glow in the dark material. I think her eyes are the most striking feature.

The one thing people don't seem to like about this release is that the gold bands of her bracelet are not painted all the way around her leg, so she only looks "correct" in a few poses.  Meaning she photographs better from some angles than other.

Unfortunately there has been some drama with her pricing. She was announced at the Toy Fair at $9.99 and was on the shelves for a short period of time with this price. Then it got raised to to $14.99 unexpectedly. Just a week or so later it bumped up again to $16.99.

Sadly, we are thinking the price will increase more closer to the holidays.

Talk like Zecora Day - BB Wave 4: Day 4

Sparkly Clear Merry May - Wave 4 #8

Well I think the designers, they did great.

This little pony of green

makes me think of newborn spring

The review above I did revise

it only took a few tries!

In other news, please beware
TRU gave me quite a scare

If they raised my price, it may cause fits
so save your money and count your bits!

In non rhyme- I went to purchase a Zecora today and she rang up $14.99. I got the cashier to reduce to $9.99, but it has confirmed to have happened to another pony member in CT, except her shelf sticker said $14.99 as well. So watch your prices everyone!

TRU Exclusive Favorites Set

The fan favorite's set was announced at the toy fair and collectors have been waiting for it since. I never pre-ordered a copy because I happened to be busy when the preorders page went live and then I forgot about it. Well, it sounds like these sets are showing up in stores before the preorders have been filled and collectors are getting emails of their items being on backorder or just cancelled. I was tipped on twitter that the local Toys R Us claimed to have some of the sets in stock so I rushed home, grabbed the car, and drove to TRU before the other local bronies could buy them all.


I've seen some people complaining about the price of this set (the MSRP is $39.99) but I had a $5 TRU coupon to apply, so I got 7 ponies for $35 which works out to about $5 per pony and is about what they are individually (if not a little less) so I really don't see why people are complaining about it.


Nightmare Moon is the big villain from season one and the community was really surprised and thrilled when they announced the toy. She is the first villain ever sold under the my little pony brand, as far as I recall the first black my little pony as well. 

The second most anticipated pony in the set is Trixie, the antagonist of the episode boast Busters. Her personality might need some work, but her toy is lovely. I adore the combination blue/white of her hair.

Vinyl Scratch/DJ Pon3 is a welcome addition to this set, though fans seem to be split about her eyeglasses. I personally would have preferred her to have painted eyes, and accessory glasses, but I am not going to complain about them making a toy more show accurate than anticipated.

I think Lemony Gem steals the show from the other fan favorites with her lovely combination. The light blue hair on all of the ponies in this set has a different texture to it and seems to shine more than normal.

Pinkie Pie and Rainbow Dash consistently top the charts when we as a fandom are polled about the best/favorite pony. It's no surprise both are included in the favorites set, though since I already have several different Pinkies (this is the only one with a glitter cutie mark) I wish the set had more previously unreleased ponies.

Rainbow Dash also has a glittery symbol and some pretty stunning box hair here.

Flower wishes completes the set, but she also illustrates a problem with a lot of the pony packaging. It's too tight and often leaves dents in the pony!

This is the dent a little closer. The horror, the horror!

Blind Bags

It's been a bit quiet from me this week as I have had some big projects due at work. But now it's the weekend and I can update the blog.

I was lucky enough to find a handful of blind bag ponies yesterday while I was out and about with the other NorCal bronies for a brony meet up. The blind bags are becoming a little easier to find, but as the stores are only getting one box at a time actually finding any is pretty good, so this is a rather large post.


As you can see the size of the bags is a little misleading when it comes to the size of the actual pony figure.

Inside each bag is a trading card with a picture of the pony on the front and a little profile of the pony on the back. Also included is a pamphlet that shows all of the ponies in this blind bag set. They still only take up about half the size of the bag though, so I just don't see why the packaging is as large as it is.

The cashier was kind enough to let me keep the box and I noticed on the ride home that the box has an image on it from season two of the television series. I would hope that these weren't delayed as long as they were for something like packaging art. Of course it's possible that I am misremembering, but I'm pretty sure we didn't see any unicorn statues until season two.

Speaking of oddities, Gabumon at the MLPArena noticed that there is actually a coverup label on every. single. pamphlet and box. I've pulled the sticker off so you can see the original text beneath the coverup. Originally the text over the silhouetted ponies said "special edition ponies!" which was later changed to "3 other figures available (not shown)". The only explanation we have come up with thus far is that they are avoiding the term "special edition" as there are one of each pony in the box so no one pony is more rare than the others.

It also looks like Target is planning on getting the blind bag figures, though they didn't have any in stock when I was there. I took the product I bought at Toys R Us and ran it through the scanner to see if it would pick anything up.

Sadly, it looks like Target would not be the best place to shop for blind bags as they are $1.99 at Toys R Us and $1.96 at Walmart. Hopefully Target will revise their prices by the time the stock comes in.