Pinkie Pie

Cheese Sandwich was great, but you can't have a party with just one attendee! Launching laughs with a cannon! We already reviewed one version of Pinkie Pie, but that set was a weird outlier: the figures were in a scale (and style) not shared by anything else, and Hasbro never released the rest of the characters that way. So now the Guardians of Harmony line has begun, meaning we'll try again to build a complete set, starting once more with the ultimate party pony, Pinkamena Diane Pie. Pinkie is a giggling goofball and the only pony in the show who the writers permit to be "cartoony" - that is, she does the big physical gags that would be more at home in Looney Tunes, while everybody else is (more or less) restrained. She also seems to know that she's in a cartoon, which kind of makes her the Deadpool of the show. Her tail and mane are big and poofy when she's happy, but go flat when she's sad. If that weren't enough to reveal the mood of this toy, her snout is sculpted with a big cheery smile. Cheese Sandwich had a molded shirt, but Pinkie just gets the plain pony body. It's smooth and rounded, just like the art on the show, though it's still not an exact match - the style is close, but it's not a direct copy of the animation model. Her curly mane is sculpted to be seen from one side more than the other: viewed from her left, it falls past her neck and all the way to her withers, and the curl in front twists out past her forehead for maximum visibility; viewed from the right, her neck is exposed and the curl ends up in front of the forehead. One way looks like the cartoon, one way doesn't. Unfortunately, the way that does look like the cartoon isn't complete. In order to cut costs, her cutie mark - two blue balloons with yellow strings and one yellow balloon with a blue string - is only painted on her right hip, not her left. So you need to view the body from the right, but view the head from the left? Better twist her around like Linda Blair. Modern Pinkie is based on a G3 pony of the same name, with the same kind of cutie mark, though that one had a dark body and light mane, the opposite of what this one is. The Guardians of Harmony toys buck MLP tradition [I see what you did there --ed.] by offering articulation. At last, toys that aren't solid, immobile lumps of plastic! Pinkie Pie has a swivel/hinge joint for the neck, plus the same for his shoulders and elbows. The hips are just swivels, but the tail gets a balljoint so you can move it all around. Of course, it's so very heavy, you won't have a ton of options for what to do with it. Depending on how you stand her, she ends up about 4" tall, though if you want to get fancy and dig out a figure stand for her, you can have her bouncing up into the air as she does. While an articulated figure would probably be enough, she still gets some accessories. We begin with her party cannon, a light blue piece of artillery with pink wheels that have yellow flowers in the center. The fuse on top is sculpted, but not painted. You can load a rubber chicken (possibly Boneless, but this one gets orange paint apps on his legs), and use the plunger on the back to launch it a scant inch or two. She also includes a green military helmet that's shaped to fit over her poofy hair, and a plastic badge showing an image of her cannon - that can clip to the figure's leg or onto a kid's shirt. Hasbro really needs to get over this "painting details only on one side of their figures" thing, but other than that endemic flaw, Pinkie Pie is good, and bodes well for future GoH toys. -- 03/10/17

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