International Releases
Outside the US there have been a lot of releases that differed from their North American counterparts, or have been manufactured by a local licensed company. In our first database set-up we split these in two parts: US releases, and the others as Nirvana. This was not the right wording for it, and the split also made searching for ponies more difficult. That's why in our latest update, we've merged them into a single G1 database that should cover all G1 releases, whether they were made in China, Hong Kong or anywhere else in the world, and regardless of their release region.Pony Names
After merging all G1 releases together, we had to face another challenge: localized names. While Applejack is always Applejack in the US, in Spanish speaking countries she never received that name. This could confuse people who're specifically looking for that name, but also vice versa. That's why we've decided to make these name interchangeable: in the database you'll find the localized name listed, followed by the international name. And searching for the international name will show you all ponies with that name, whether we've localized them or not.Year Structure
In our initial release, we've structured everything by the Pony Year structure commonly used by the collectors community, which focused on the US years of release from fall to summer. This is a great system for US-based releases, but with the merge of international ponies, this was no longer a great choice for all. That's why we've decided to make these interchangeable as well: US releases are primarily dated with their Pony Year, while international releases have a (estimated) release year. Though, on all releases we've aimed to note them with the first year of release, and international ponies can be found through Pony Years too.Variants
Especially in some regional markets, there have been cases where ponies were released with several variants. Different colors of body and manes are the most common, but even slight symbol changes have surfaced. While we aim at documenting all My Little Pony releases, we're currently holding back by the variants. Our current rule of thumb for listing variants is the following: If we have photos of the variants or the releases are clearly differentiated within a set, we'll add it. Our main goal with this is to prevent any confusion while browsing the database and seeing 10 Moonstones with the exact same release year and type without images. Perhaps our standpoint on this might change, but for now we're sticking with this approach.Set Names
Another challenging topic for us, is the use of regional set names. Overall, the more exotic the release, the less is known about their release back in the 80's. Where possible, we've given complete sets their proper name. But to prevent duplicates in the database, if a set has only a small difference from other releases, we commonly named the set 'Int. x Ponies'. The same goes for sets of which we don't know their name, where we named them 'Country Y X Ponies'.We hope that you understand our choices and enjoy browsing the G1 database!
~ MLP Merch Team
