You know the meme “Going to the Moon, be right back!“? That’s how I think Kayou must feel given the astronomical success of their My Little Pony trading cards. At first glance you might mistake these for your average, run of the mill, anime cards from China… What if I told you that out-of-print boxes are selling for 100x times their original cost? That’s right, this series has boxes that used to cost 30$ now being listed for 3000$ or more! My Little Pony is taking Kayou to the moon and in this post I’d like to introduce you to the series.
I’d like to thank the_silver_tree who helped me to understand this series better and supplied a lot of the images and information for this article.
Table of Contents
- Wait, My Little Pony?
- Where to Start Collecting
- Out of Print Boxes
- Other Products
- Bootlegs
- All Current Rarities
- Conclusion
Wait, My Little Pony?
Yes! My Little Pony, as in those cute little animated ponies that are part of all those internet memes. There is a lot more to it than just internet memes. The franchise actually started way back in 1981, the same year I was born, I remember both of my sisters playing with those toys all the time while I had my He-Man.
The franchise has a tumultuous history, with an attempt to revamp it in the late 90’s failing completely. Then in 2010 the animated series “Friendship is Magic” was launched and the franchise has been popular with all ages pretty much since then.
A few years ago the series was translated and broadcast in China and other parts of Asia. This sparked a whole new fanbase and led Kayou to license the franchise and start publishing trading cards. We’re now about 2-3 years into that series, I’ve been personally collecting it for about a year and half so everything I have is from the more recent productions.
Where to Start Collecting
This is a large series with tons of different products and product categories. I figured a good place to start would be with the current product offerings, these are things you can buy today for basically retail price. I’ll focus on the trading cards here, the sticker and ticket products are listed in the “Other Products” section below. If you need general advice on using AliExpress, I’ve got a whole other post about that over here.
Keep in mind as you go that the prices I’m quoting in this post are mainly from the Chinese market, which we can’t normally access from the west. On Ebay prices are still much lower for these, so do some research before you dive in too deep.
Also a lot of people ask if each box is it’s own set. The answer is kind of? Like each box introduces new rarities or cards at certain rarities that are not in any previous boxes. At the same time you will end up pulling older R, SR and even SSR cards from the newer boxes. The exceptions are the special editions, like the Zodiac box, that is it’s own contained set.
This is the current flagship 10-yuan product, it’ll cost you about 30$ from most vendors. The box includes 18 packs with 6 cards in each. The top rarity here is SC which you can see an example of below.
Next up is the 5-yuan box, there are a couple of these available for about 25$ right now. The older box only has up to UR rarity in it, but the newer box introduces a new chase level XR rarity along with a few other lower rarities like MTR and FR.
This is the blister pack version of the product, these are usually only purchased for the pack-in card. The packs are just 10-yuan packs so it’s usually better to buy a full 10-yuan box instead of this. These blisters run around 14$.
Finally we’ve got the 2-yuan boxes. These are very new offerings for the series and are really meant more for retail stores than hobby collectors like us. Still there are new rarities here like the N and CR levels that aren’t in any other boxes. There is a blue and a tan version of this product, both sell for about 20$ and include 30 packs. Keep in mind these packs have much worse odds then the 10-yuan or 5-yuan packs.
Out of Print Boxes
Once you’re caught up with the current products you might want to explore the out of print offerings a little, but be warned, prices go up fast – really fast. Above is a screenshot of a vendor selling the original 10-yuan box for nearly 4,000$, and they are not the only vendor doing that. I’ve heard from viewers in China that single packs of some of the original boxes can sell for hundreds or thousands at this point. Nobody knows if that pricing will hold, but right now it sure feels like crazy town.
Above are the three earlier 10-yuan boxes, these were all originally available for around 30$ pretty much everywhere even just 6 months ago. Today however, these are incredibly expensive. That pink one on the right can cost you nearly 1000$ these days.
Another now out of print product is this little purple box, I called this the “Zodiac” set since the chase level cards feature Zodiac signs. Personally I love the look of these cards better than any of the others, but you only get 4 regular packs in the box and 1 hit pack. When it first came out boxes only cost around 25$, I really wish I would have purchased more of them then as today they sell for 300$ or more in China. Surprisingly this will pop up on Ebay occasionally for much less, if you ever see it under 100$ I’d grab a box.
Other Products
Kayou’s license for MLP in China technically covers all types of “Paper Products”, not just trading cards. Kayou has produced a number of side projects that aren’t really part of this series, but use similar artwork and can be fun additions to your collection. Don’t let FOMO get the better of you though, there is a lot of stuff printed and it’s not realistic to keep up with all of it.
First up is a series of sticker/stand-up products. Each pack here contains a sticker and a standup acrylic figure that is not quite a full 3d statue, it’s more like a thick die cut figure. I’ve never personally bought any of these, I also can’t find anybody else who has reviewed these – if you know anybody, let me know.
I told you Kayou was going all out for this franchise. On top of the trading cards, the stickers, the statues and the binders – we also get these two products. The left is a series of buttons, or pins, you know like you pin to your shirt? This product category is actually much more wide spread then I’m making it sound, you can find blind box button products like this for nearly every franchise and from tons of manufacturers.
The right hand image is something very new, Kayou calls these “Laser Tickets” and they’ve been publishing them for a few of their franchises recently. I’ve got some of the Doraemon ones, but haven’t opened them yet. There is also a SpongeBob set and then this My Little Pony set. They are kind of like trading cards but very thick and only 2 per pack. They are die cut and longer than a traditional card, more like what a concert ticket might look like.
Kayou also produces a series of binders that are meant to help you store and organize the collection. The two on the left are higher quality than you’d expect from what I’ve heard. They have hard covers and a magnetic clasp. They also come with exclusive promo cards which means that yes, these binders are now collector items as well. That white one in the middle can go for 200$ or more.
Above are a few photos of what the binders look like to give you some idea of their quality. Photos courtesy of the_silver_tree and there are many more if you are curious get in touch and I can send you them.
Bootlegs
As with all successful products, there are of course copy-cats or bootlegs out there. That might seem strange as a lot of people think that the products being sold on AliExpress are all bootlegs – but that just isn’t true. In fact Kayou, like Card.Fun only makes licensed products. They aren’t willing to jeopardize the relationships they have with western license holders just to publish some cheap bootlegs. Now they may be licensed only for the Chinese mainland market, or Asia generally – but that still counts as licensed.
Above I’ve got two examples, there are likely others and more will certainly start appearing as word of this sets success gets around. For now the bootlegs do not carry the Kayou “Yellow Ant” logo, so that seems to be a safe way to tell the difference. That makes sense to me as Kayou is a Chinese company, and quite a big one, so copying their trademark logo inside of China would be a very dangerous thing for another Chinese company to do. I’ll grant that Chinese companies do not care a whole lot about stealing from western companies, but within China copyright can still be strongly enforced.
The bootlegs aren’t really that much cheaper than the real Kayou retail cards anyhow. From what I’ve seen they are of much lesser quality, usually just a flat print of the Kayou design on the front and then some common card back, most bootlegs do not copy the card backs as that would double their printing/setting costs. So look for that Kayou logo and you should be mostly ok.
All Current Rarities
To wrap this article up I’d like to show you some examples of the various rarity levels that are available. Most of these are cards I’ve pulled and scanned, some come from the_silver_tree’s collection. There are a few rarities I’m missing like the “CR” level from the new retail set and the brand new MTR and FR levels but those were just released last week so… give me a minute there and I’ll add them later 😅 I think we have examples of everything else here though.
Up above you’ll see a horizontal card, this is the new “N” rarity level that forms the base of the retail 2-yuan sets. These cards feature scenes from the show with information about that setting on the back. Interestingly if you look closely at the code for that care you’ll see it’s “♦YH-N02-004”, the ♦ means this is an alternate art version of this card. You’ll see this symbol in a few of the sets and it always indicates you’ve pulled something more rare than it looks. The ♦ N cards all have stamped gold that is not present on the standard N.
Next up are the traditional base cards of the series, R and SR. R is the most common and you’ll end up with tons and tons of duplicates of these. SR is less common but I still get tons of dupes, at least from the standard SR cards.
Speaking of the other SR cards, there is one up there. You’ll notice that this SR looks much fancier than the standard ones, it also uses the set code “PL01” and has an image back rather than an information back. This type of SR can be pulled from the special edition Zodiac box.
These are now getting into the higher tier rarities. You’ll pull about 15 SSRs from a 10 yuan box, a bit less from a 5 yuan and a bit less than that even from a 2-yuan box. UR are actually kind of rare, I usually see 4-5 per 10 yuan box on average. There are two different URs up there, the middle one comes from the standard sets and the right hand one is the style used by that special Zodiac set.
Onto the “gimmick” rarities, as I call them, although some of these are honestly very cool cards. The left blurry image there is actually a lenticular 3d card, it’s the HR rarity. The 3d on some of these is just fantastic, rivaling their best work on the Hatsune Miku set. On the other hand some of them are just simple 2 frame flip cards. The other two are semi transparent PVC cards, the left is the TR rarity and the right is the TGR rarity. TGR just has fancier foil treatment than TG.
LSR and SGR are the next highest tiers. These cards are loaded with tech, foil, stamping, etching – and tons of refraction textures. All the black on the left hand card is really highly reflective gold foil that my scanner won’t pick up. The silver background on the SGR is also loaded with texture, it’s just difficult to pick up with a scanner.
Finally we’ve got the top tier cards. On the left is an SC rarity card I pulled from a recent 10-yuan box, the middle image is the back of that card. These are not serialized, I’m not aware of any serialized Kayou MLP cards. Still, the SCs can sell for quite a lot of money, depending on exactly which on you have. On the right is a PR or promo card. There are quite a few different examples of PR cards, all of them are only available as either pack-ins with the binders or at events – they can’t be pulled from packs in any set.
Conclusion
And there you have it, that’s pretty much everything I know about these sets. Let me know if I got any details wrong, or if you have extra information or images to add I’d love to see them. Also join us on our discord server, it’s a great place to talk about all kinds of AliExpress trading cards and there is a dedicated channel for the MLP products.