How Little
are the Little Ponies?
Hasbro seems to have sent
conflicting messages about how small My Little Ponies are. After all, they are Little Ponies,
but just how little? Size, of
course, is relative. We think birds are
small, but ants think they’re huge. So
the real issue here is which humans the ponies should be compared to—us, or
Megan and Molly.
The
Ponies are Tiny!
If we
compare the ponies to us, they are indeed tiny. When the advertisements said we should be “My Little Pony
Mommies”, it seems that we are supposed to be the point of
comparison. Some of the playsets
support this notion. The ponies made
their nurseries out of building blocks, their dance schools from bonnets, their
ice cream shops from shoes, and their beauty salons from dressing tables and
perfume bottles. They seem to live on a
Honey, I Shrunk the Kids scale.
If we compare the ponies to Megan and Molly, they are about the size of normal horses (unless the two sisters are tiny, too). There’s a lot of evidence that the ponies were intended to be regular horses. They lived in giant castles and mansions, wore saddles, and galloped around stables. The coloring books show the ponies playing with lots of children, with no indication that they are tiny. Maybe, as ponies, they are smaller than average horses, sort of like Shetlands. Or, perhaps, “little” was meant as a term of endearment.