Markets 
A My Little Pony superfan has broken the world record for having the largest memorabilia collection of the toys on the planet.
Miranda Worby, 42, has been collecting the plastic trinkets based on colourful ponies since she was a little girl.
The artist from Lowestoft, Suffolk, even bought a new house so she could display her collection of the plastic creatures in a dedicated ‘pony room’ and also keeps them in a storage unit.
Up until 2025, Miranda had amassed a collection of over 4,550 items – which includes an amusement ride.
She has since received a Guinness World Record this year for the collection which was counted between April and July the same year.
But the keen collector has now revealed her pony trove has grown to around 7,700 – worth a huge $53,894.
Miranda said: “It is a surreal feeling to have been awarded the Guinness World Record.
“I found out last year that I had the biggest collection – so it has been a long wait until it was revealed.
“When I first started collecting I never envisioned myself having so many.
“I just wanted to collect the ponies I had as a child, and it just grew from there really, I just kept adding and adding.
“I can’t ever see myself stopping collecting – there will always be something new to get hold of.”
Miranda got her first pony Snowflake when she was three years old and her obsession began from there.
She said: “I remember seeing it in the shop. It was bright pink with whiteish grey hair.
“I wanted a real horse and the My Little Pony was the next best thing.
“It was my favorite toy. I wasn’t interested in anything else.
“From there, all my Christmas and birthday presents were My Little Pony and they were what I spent my pocket money on.”
At 15-years-old, Miranda began using eBay to track down toys she was missing or ones only available abroad, such as America.
In the early 2000s, the third incarnation of the toys, dubbed ‘Generation Three’ by collectors was released.
Miranda said: “There were hundreds of new ones and I spent $336 on buying all the ones in my Toys R Us.
“I got home and realized I wanted to display them so I put up shelves.
“In 2010, Generation Four was released and there were even more.
“I had stalled with my collecting as there weren’t any new ones to buy but my mum bought me one and it set me off again.
“It led to me moving house to find space to display them all.”
Miranda now estimates she has almost 6k My Little Pony Toys and calls herself the ‘perfectly imperfect collector’ who has spent around $47,157 on her collection.
Unlike most collectors, she doesn’t keep all her ponies boxed up.
Miranda explained: “I don’t care if they’ve got a little bit of a mark or a haircut – as long as I get it.
“I buy a lot second hand and for me, if they’re kept in boxes, then you’ve got less space.”
Miranda’s rarest item is the Fireball pony – which she says is one of only two in existence.
The Hasbro toy was made in Thailand rather than China or Hong Kong.
Miranda explained: “I got him for 50p at the car boot.
“If I’d known how rare he was, I’d never have dragged him through the mud or played with him in the swimming pool.
“My favorite is Sundance from Generation One. When I was a kid, I saw the movie and she was quite clumsy and always getting herself into trouble.
“I could relate to that. I have between 25 and 30 models of her.”
Miranda even bought an amusement ride which used to stand on Weymouth Pier in the early 1990s.
The three-foot-tall arcade attraction cost her $539 from eBay and a front door had to be removed to collect it.
Miranda said: “There’s about 11 known to exist in the world.
“When we got it, it didn’t work. The guy that sold it said his daughter had outgrown it and it was in her bedroom.
“I then found out he lived in a bungalow and he had to get the front door taken off to get it out the house.
“I managed to speak to the guy who made it and he walked me through how to connect the wiring to get it working again.”
Miranda also regularly cleans her collection, using washing up liquid to stop the plastic from peeling off the ponies and brushing their hair.
She does it in stages and said if she did it in one go, it would ‘take all day’.
Her collection was also featured in the Come As You Really Are exhibition in London which celebrated hobbies across the UK.
Miranda added: “Lots of people have ponies from when they were a child and don’t know what to do with them anymore.
“They give them to me because they know they’ll be looked after.
“You get backstory from people in their 40s saying they’ve had them pretty much all their life.
“People used to save for weeks getting stamps off the back of boxes and cereal boxes to buy them.
“Toy collecting is not a childish thing. I’m not a person who wishes I was still three-years-old.
“The collecting community is so welcoming – we all pitch in and help each other.”
Read the full article here
