Kenneth Glad
We all have childhood hobbies that fade away. Most kids outgrow their favorite toys before high school. One fan took a different path, turning a simple purchase into a lifelong obsession.
Years ago, a little girl in England asked her parents for a horse. They flatly said no.
To fix the letdown, three-year-old Miranda Worby found a colorful alternative. That plastic toy changed her life.
“Then I was in the toy shop in town and I saw a My Little Pony on the shelf and that was it, I was addicted after that,” she told the BBC.
Today, the forty-three-year-old fills an entire room in her house with figures. A storage unit holds the overflow.
Setting a massive record
Worby now appears in the latest Guinness World Records book. Judges formalized her title by counting 4,550 individual items.
The search went digital in the nineties. She scoured internet auction sites to track down incredibly rare pieces.
“I always had My Little Pony in my life from the age of 3, but I started seriously collecting in 1997, when I found ponies on auction sites and could find the ones I was missing,” she explained to People.
The herd continues to grow. Her current tally sits at roughly 7,750 pieces.
The hidden message
The path to global recognition started with a missed notification. For months, Worby completely overlooked a direct message from the famous record book.
“There was a message sitting in my [Facebook] inbox and it was sitting in a different one to what I was used to, so I didn’t see it for about three or four months,” she said to the BBC.
When she finally opened the hidden note, she suspected a scam. She ignored the inquiry.
Eventually, curiosity won out. “I went back to it, opened it, and [realized] they wanted to see if I had the biggest collection in the world,” Worby said.
Meaning beyond numbers
Tallying thousands of toys proved difficult. The intense counting process left the collector feeling deeply humbled.
“I actually sat in the room with the ponies and I just looked around and I thought, ‘I have the world’s biggest My Little Pony collection,’” she recalled to the BBC.
She shared her takeaway with People: “Having the world records means everything to me, but it is also for the other collectors, to let them know that if you collect what you love, that is what’s it’s all about!” she noted.
Sources: People, BBC
