My Little Positive Pony

When I was 9 years old, I would have been wild about these pretty horsey trading cards. I loved horses. My venerable Breyer Clydesdale mare is pictured above. She has a chipped right ear from one terrible day when the neighborhood boys convinced us that it was a good idea to throw all of the horses to see which ones were the toughest. (I photographed her good side.) Many of my horses still bear the scars and missing limbs of that day. Of course, we once filled our stuffed animals with water and threw them up against a brick wall to watch them slide down, and the "Barbies"* were regularly and repeatedly thrown into the trees so that they could Spiderman it back down to the bottom, so I suppose it wasn't entirely the boys' fault. Yes, I still have all of my old toys in a trunk in the garage, and yes, this morning I got down on my belly in the damp grass to take this picture. For you.

The Bellasara site is well thought out from a marketing point of view. The company is a girly spin-off of a bigger company that specializes in games and other cards--they know what they are doing. The cards are numbered and collectible, and the site has a spot to join and register your horses so that you can care for them in your online stable. It's an excellent marketing circle: go to store, buy cards, go to site, see more cards, buy more cards, go to site/store, buy more cards. But here's the part that's a little weird: each horse comes with a positive affirmation, such as "Be the hero in your own story." and "Think positive every day. Feel the joy and bliss that comes with it." or "Create something beautiful. It will make you feel peaceful." A new religion could and should be founded on these cards.


I'm torn about this. On the one hand, I know I would have loved these when I was a child. The horses are beautifully drawn, and there's the whole compulsive collecting thing that would have made this an expensive proposition for my parents. My first thought was that I wished I had some little girls to buy these for. And why not play with toys that give you a little guidance and positive affirmation? Because it's a little bit weird.

Can you imagine trading cards for boys with affirmations written on them? Yu-gi-oh with a little Baghavad Gita or Desiderata thrown in? Baseball cards don't have to have affirmations written on them. Baseball cards say to boys, "Be a team player. Focus on sports. Be very good at what you do, and someday you might be another little boy's hero." I guess it's weird to me that we think that girls need this. At the same time, I think I did need this when I was a little girl. Maybe it would have sunk in then, and I would have needed to learn less of this positivity stuff the hard way as an adult.

*As a rule, my mother bought us the more NOW correct "Sunshine Family" dolls, but one or two actual Barbies weasled their way into the group. Boy, did that cause an uproar among the Sunshines! Not to worry: everyone, including the Barbies, emerged from the experience with bad makeup and a punk rock haircut, and the Barbies were never seen again. They could still be in the tree.