G1s were 1982 to 1991 in the US, 1993 in Europe. G2s were 1996 and 1997 in the US and as late as 1999 in Europe.
You can barely argue that the G1s are "vintage," let alone the G2s
G3s began in 2003 and that particular body style changed over in 2009. That style flopped, and right before Christmas 2010 the new ponies began popping up in stores, modeled after the characters from the Hub cartoon.
QUICK SPOTTING GUIDE FOR MLP:
(I don't own any of these images. They are all from a google image search)
(all of this is info from my head and googled pictures matching what I'm talking about. Its pretty dang accurate because I'm awesome, but I haven't really actively collected since 2007 so I'm a bit out of the loop. Its all correct information, but sometimes you'll see things like "2005ish" because I don't remember EXACTLY, but it's close).
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G1s:
the G1 style was constantly going through changes, making them range from basic pony poses and innocent expressions to fuzzy ("so soft"), jewel-eyed ("twinkle eyed"), beddy-bye eyes, colorswirl; symbols just on the rear or symbols all over ("twice as fancy") and even mermaids.
Applejack from 1983
Twinkle-eyed Quackers from 1986
Baby Sea Princess, a 1989 fancy mermaid pony.
Most G1s are made of soft squishy plastic, almost vinyl, but some (like the TE Quackers) are hard enough to knock against a table.
There are three things that nearly all G1 ponies have in common:
the first two are the eye paint and the snouts. All ponies have the same shaped eyes, with the exception of the twinkle eyed adults and beddy-bye eyed babies. G1 eyes are gentle in expression but simple, usually only one color as an iris and a large pupil.
All G1 ponies regardless of type have the same snout:
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Even Dream Beauties, released by the MLP line in 1989-1990 have that same Hasbro eye mentioned above, albeit with a few extra eyelashes:
The other thing all G1s have in common are their hoof marks.
The original 1982 ponies sold in stores had flat feet, and the writing underneath looked like this:
These are a bit harder to find than their concave foot editions, but are by no means super rare. There were seven ponies released with these feet: Butterscotch, Blossom, Cotton Candy, Blue Belle, Snuzzle, Minty and Peachy.
All of the ones with these type of feet are in this mold:
The rest of the G1 my little pony hooves look like this:
They will all read slightly different things depending on the date of the mold, whether it was after copyrighted or pat pending and what country it was made in. Most common is what you see in the picture. Almost all G1 ponies have hooves shaped like this and with the exception of certain countries like Greece, they are all printed with Hasbro and the country they came from.
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G2s:
I know the least about these because they bore me, but they're super easy to spot.
First of all, as you can tell from the picture you posted, they're noticeably smaller than G1s and G3s.
G2s are shorter and thinner than their younger and older counterparts. Almost every, if not all G2 pony has its mouth open. Their hooves are molded, almost as if every G2 pony is meant to be a clydesdale.
Almost every if not all G2 pony has a little gem embedded in its eye. These fall out often, but the hole is just as noticeable.
There were adults and babies, but they all look very similar in body type. Nothing really crazy was done with these because they weren't very popular (especially here in the US) so it makes them really easy to identify.
the babies are kind of adorable, but unfortunately most, if not all of the babies were released in Europe, not the US.
I can only find one picture of G2 hooves and the writing is too small to read, but somewhere under there it says Hasbro. Also if memory serves ALL G2 ponies have that rainbow marking on their hooves.
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G3 ponies:
A lot of G3 ponies, especially the early ones, are sort of generic looking. That's the best way I can describe it. They tend to be very similar to each other with the slightly more curvaceous body than the G1s and their facial expressions are pretty much the same. Nothing super crazy with these guys, but they can have tinsel in their hair, a glittery forehead and glitter-covered symbol, raised symbols, open mouth or closed mouth, earth pony, pegasi or unicorn, wearing clothes or not wearing clothes, etc.
They tend to be much brighter and bolder in color than G1s. Their faces are smaller and their bodies are made out of hard plastic. Their eyes are extremely similar to the G1s but have a bit of an update like a little white spot for fake shine or having the irises multicolored.
This picture is a real G3 on the right and a customized G1 on the left to match the G3 pony. Again, the pony on the left is a custom, never released in stores. I'm posting this to show the size difference and the body shapes. Look in particular at the shape of the legs; the G1 has feet that are somewhat squared off while the G3 is all rounded curves.
G3 hooves look like this:
The pink thing is a magnet used to activate doors and things in playsets. After the Polly Pocket/Knex swallowing magnet scare circa 2006 they started removing these, and so the newer versions have a white plastic cap or simply a hole where the magnet used to be.
Some you find second hand will have a white cord with a small plastic pony hanging from it. These are the charms that the 2003 and 2004 ponies came with.
These two are giant styling Rainbow Dash and Rarity, with a size comparison showing a regular G3 (Kiwi Tart) and a Baby G1 (Baby Suzie from the UK). There are about 8 different G3 styling ponies, all this scale.
G3s also come as plushies (some with real hair, some with plush hair, some with yarn) ranging in size from 3" to 3' long pillow buddies. In 2004 and 2005 there were giant plush buddies released in Australia.
There are many (30+) ponies released as giant newborn dolls for younger girls to play with. These are usually around 8-12 inches and have some sort of gimmick, whether its singing, crying, sucking a bottle, crawling, etc. They usually have a soft body and a plastic head.
From 2006-2007 Hasbro began releasing Breezies, little miniature fairy ponies (completely adorable). They started as a bonus with Balloon Flying playsets and then began to be sold on their own. There are probably two to three dozen different breezies. Their little antenae aren't attached very well and come out easily, so you might find one of this body type without antenae and wings from rough play, but the holes will be noticeable.
After the breezies became popular, from Christmas 2006-2010 Hasbro started releasing what they called Ponyville ponies, little hard plastic ponies that fit in the palm of your hand.
The tallest ponyville pony in the back, the standing blue one in the dress tops out at just over two inches. These came with tons of tiny accessories and were released with at least forty characters in a variety of molds. The very last ones sold at the end of 2010 were mermaids.
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BEYOND:
In 2009 Hasbro noticed a decline in sales, and tried to reformat the MLP brand to appeal to the littlest pet shop lovers. This is when it gets a little confusing, because collectors can't decide what to refer to these as. They're not G3 molds anymore, but they're still the same characters. Some called them G3.5, some called them G4. Personally I just try not to label them as a generation since it gets so confusing, lol. (Its also super hard to do an image search).
The adult ponies are shorter, chubbier and have thicker rooted hair. I'm not very fond of them but the babies are completely adorable.
part of the reason I think they're so boring is that, the year before, Hasbro decided to drop all the other characters and keep a "core seven" set of ponies, using the same characters again and again. Blah.
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After these pretty much flopped, Hasbro started producing a cartoon on the cable network HUB, which surprisingly has developed a huge following. They then made toys to match this new line which are pretty much amazing. There have only been less than ten characters released in the US, but more have come out in Germany and will hopefully come to the US soon.
This new body type is much smaller and thinner. Its like the original G3s and the Ponyville miniatures had a love child.
There was a big bonus pack of five ponies released for twenty bucks. These are all plastic with plastic hair.
The rest, sold individually or sometimes two in a set have silky brushable hair and a pet.
This is a size comparison shot:
from L to R you have G1 Cocoberry from 1987, 2011 Friendship is Magic Applejack loose and Rarity MIP, then next to Rarity on the end is what I believe is a German blind bag Rarity released 2011. It is a similar size to the Ponyville ponies but is modeled after these Friendship is Magic HUB ponies.
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McDonalds Happy Meal ponies:
I'm adding this section because my biggest ebay shopping pet peeve is people putting up auctions for a bunch of swap meet McDonalds toys and saying its a HUGE LOT of RARE ponies. Yeah. Right.
This auction here is a good example:
http://cgi.ebay.com/HUGE-LOT-MY-LITTLE-PONIES-55-pieces-/180676969102?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item2a112fc28eThe seller has a bunch of stuff and his asking price is $60 with $13 shipping. So $73 total. This is what is in it:
Looks pretty good, right? But now let's see what's really there:
Checkmarks are real MLPs:
-orange checkmark is for G3s
-yellow checkmark is for G1s
-green checkmark (bottom middle) is because its MLP merchandise, but not a real pony - this is a plastic bubble bath topper.
maroon X's are for fakies
and red X's are for the ridiculous number of McDonalds ponies in this auction.
That leaves us with:
So you end up with an unopened ponyville set, a single ponyville Sparkleworks, a bath topper, two playset shells with no accessories, a Pinkie Pie styling pony, a talking Goodmorning Sunshine that probably doesn't work, two G1 pony brides, a Kingsley lion friend, two G3 ponies and random pieces of accessory playsets that all the little pieces and the ponies are missing from.
I'd say this lot is worth about $35, which is probably far less than the seller has invested either by buying that many happy meals for their kid or picking all this junk up at a thrift store.
If you're planning on buying to collect, sell or trade it's important to be able to recognize the difference between real ponies and McDonalds ponies.
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G1s only had one McDonald release, only from the midwest (I'm thinking St Louis to Chicago, but it might have been even less than that). They are ridiculously hard to find but not very sought after, making them somewhat reasonably priced.
They match the original six collector's ponies as seen in the pictures.
These same figures without the plastic clip were sold as "mommy charms," one was released as a Charmkin and later on in 1989-1991 as petite ponies. They are less than an inch tall. If you ever find a plastic pony this size it would most likely be a petite pony. If it has a loop on top it is probably a mommy charm.
G2 ponies had one US release in McDonalds. These are distinguishable from G2 babies in that either the mane or tail is molded plastic instead of brushable hair. There were only three, Ivy, Sundance and Light Heart.
I find these everywhere. They're not very wanted and not very rare.
G3s have had a few Mcdonalds releases:
Original set of G3s, released in 2005ish:
Original G3 set from UK:
(the last two on the right are what I'm referring to. I don't have any info on these but I believe there were three total.. I know there is a green one not pictured.., all with a star symbol. They didn't represent any known character, just ponies in general).
Second set of G3s with elaborate designs, released 2008ish:
Ponyville pones, released 2007ish:
these are the exact same size and shape as the ponyville ponies released at the time, so they can EASILY be confused in a picture. However they're different because they are all attached to some sort of base that goes in the mini playset:
Chubby ?"G3.5" or whatever you want to call them, released around 2009:
"Friendship is Magic" HUB ponies released in 2011:
These bases are just stands with pegs that the pony's legs fit into. Each is really compromised of two comb shapes pushed in together. They fall out easily, so finding the stands second-hand is going to be nearly impossible.
I hope you like this little guide, because it took me like two hours to type out just now. lol.
