I get a lot of questions about why Priced Nostalgia Press turned to Summer Hayes for their G2 and G3 books instead of me and the answer is simple, if not a little embarrassing.

You see, I, uh, don’t really collect G2s or G3s. *ducks the rotten fruit being thrown at her*

Wait! Let me explain!

See, I used to collect every generation. I had everything, you would have been really impressed. But then, you know how it is, you buy a house, you don’t have a lot of space, you start to look at your collection and say, “Sure, I love all of this but I also love closet space. What do I love THE MOST.” So I realized that I really, really loved my G1s and wasn’t going to part with them but that the G2s and G3s weren’t really as OMG must have on my list. I started culling the herd. I kept only my favorite G2 and G3 items and sold everything else.

I actually kept more G2 items than G3 because I’ve always loved some of the crazy G2 sets (Babies dressed like bumble bees! Unicorns with silver horns! Male ponies with construction hats! What’s not to love about this stuff?)

But G3? I was buying everything that came out for a while but it was madness. There were just too many coming out and, on top of that, I was keeping them all mint in box so they took up more room than my good ole G1s. Then they switched to Core 7 and it was like, eh, how many Pinkie Pies can one person own? So I still collect the cool stuff (you know, the usual: Comic Con ponies, Fair exclusives, anything that smells like root beer) but I don’t bother with the stuff currently in stores (though I always walk through their toy aisle to check their shelf space because I am a freak).

Then something happened. I got this massive lot of early G3s at Goodwill. I don’t usually buy G3s but they looked lonely and unloved and my inner Hillary was like, “They are still My Little Pony! Who are you to play favorites?” So I bought them.

There are too many. Two waist high boxes of them. It’s insane. There is, clearly, something wrong with me.

But as I clean them up to sell/trade something strange is happening. Maybe its because all I’ve seen is the new style ponies with the big heads and I’d forgotten how like G1 the original G3s were. Maybe its because now I can touch them with my actual hands instead of just looking at my mint in box items through plastic but I’m finding myself totally falling in love with some of them. With every batch I clean, I’m picking out one or two going, “Hmm, maybe I’ll just keep her.” There isn’t any rhyme or reason to this, I’m not doing it based on rarity (or Rarity for that matter ) or collectibility, it’s really more of an organic “OO Shiny!” sort of thing.

You know what I think it really is? I needed the thrill of the hunt. Going to the store and just buying the ponies new wasn’t enough of a challenge for me. I needed to hunt for them, clean them up, have the thrill of finding that pony I wanted in a bag of Goodwill or flea market bait. Now that I’m seeing the G3s in bags of filthy boxes, they suddenly look much better to me than they did in the stores.

I’m not saying this makes sense. I’m just saying that it’s what’s going on.

I’m trying to keep this urge under control, I don’t want to be that guy that buys back their entire collection after selling it. But as someone who swore off G3s, I’m surprised to find how much I like the early ones on a second glance.

I wonder if this will happen more and more as collectors like me see them second hand and give them a second chance.

I know a lot of people gave up on G3s after they introduced the Core 7 so I have to ask, did you give the early G3s a second look and feel the tiny tug of changing your mind? Or are you done with G3s for good?

PS: Because I have like 9 million G3s, expect a bunch of random G3 posts as I sort through them all.