My Little Pony Plush 4 inch and TY Beanie baby comparison

I am going to compare, make suggestions and discuss best practices for care of My Little Pony plushes of all sizes. For my daughter who LOVES My Little Pony (MLP) the show, and the characters like the plastic classic figurines with brush-able manes and tails. She has a variety of sizes of these dolls, plushes, and mini figurines. When she first started liking the show, she was 3 and there was not as much merchandise out as there is now. The new generation of MLP's show was in it's third season. So as first we kind of settled for what we could get our hands on. In this case is was the small 4 inch plush size MLP's by Mattle that sold at both Toys'r'Us and Target. They were cute enough, soft and because they had fleece like strips hair, it did not need up keeping and she could take them to school and sleep with them and no messy hair to brush. So for younger kids this plush is pretty perfect. Small enough to take with you or stick in a stroller, a pocket in the car and easy to care for. However, when the TY Beanie Baby My Little Ponies came out, it was apparent just what these smaller versions were missing. So for one, the TY MLP's are a little bigger, by about 3/4 inch in diameter and about an inch and half taller, if not two. Making then about 6 inch tall. The TY MLP's also have real hair to brush, bigger more true to character eyes, softer plush and better coloring (as seen in the photo here) The smaller MLP are just a tad darker (or in Twilight Sparkles case a tad lighter) and the features are just a tad more generic.


You can also see that on the left the TY MLP has a shinny horn and embroidered eyes and eye lashes. So a little more detail and what seems to better materials used to emphasis those details were used in the TY babies.

Sometimes it's difficult to get all the characters, or at least the six from the show in any one form: from the plastic ponies, to the small plush dolls, to the TY MLP Babies, to the Build A Bear (BAB) - there was some sort of strategic delayed release of each character. So we had to wait, and check back in at different places to see when or what character was coming out next.

Here is the collection of the TY MLP. which I first found a TY MLP at an airport about 6 months ago, and recently found all six at Party City, Mesa AZ. Just in time for my daughters 5th birthday. They are all stuffed well and stand up alone.

Here is the smaller 4inch Mattel plushes. I do not have all of the six main characters, because between Toys'r'us and Target I was only able to get or find the 4, however there were other characters like DJ (seen here) and Cherry Lee, and some other of the shows characters which I appreciate, but was most interested in collecting all six of the main characters. Because she has most of the shows characters that she likes in the classic plastic figurines,  I did not find it necessary to have them also in the plush.

          This is the collection of Twilight Sparkles. The BAB in the far back left, a 20 inch Mattel plush to the right, and then across the bottom from left to right is the TY, the smaller plush, the plastic figurine and the mini figurine. 

Here is our collection of plush Fluttershy's the large one is from Build A Bear, the far left is the TY MLP and the middle is the small plush. As I pointed out before the TY babies are much closer to looking like the Build A Bear MLP and the characters themselves. The plush and hair used is very similar. The build or structure of them is almost identical, the seams are even the same and I haven't measured to know, but they look like they could be to scale just different sizes. I really like the the BAB because of the softness of the plush and the fact that BAB sells outfits, like shoes and skates for the ponies, that also fits their other BAB animals. But it is just a fun experience to go and "build" your animal. However, be warned the BAB MLP hair is REALLY hard to take care of. We did not know this when we bought our first BAB MLP which was Rainbow Dash, the hair got terribly knotted, it seemed to be a horrible dry, course and unforgiving type of hair. Since this is my daughters favorite character she took it everywhere, including to day care where she slept with it. This further made a mess of the hair. I tried everything from water, to using de-tangler, to leave in conditioner, to trying to brush the hair out every time she came home. Eventually, I gave up and tried to talk to the BAB I got here from. I asked if there was anything we could do. They said no and they did not offer a replacement or refund. It made me hesitant to buy additional BAB MLP's but the BAB manager suggested keeping the hair in braids or in pony tails like they are in the store. So far, so good. And that is what I have done with TY MLP's hair as well.

Here she is with the MLP Dolls from the movie, the TY plushes, the classic plastic figurines and the mini figurines. Personally, I enjoy the little original Ponies because it brings back memories, but the mini figures are fun - because they travel easy!! Throw them in a bag, they can go in a pool or tub and no worries about the hair getting tangled.