We Bought Chinese MLP Trading Cards - This is What They Look Like!

A couple of weeks ago we got messages about an eBay listing for a box of Chinese My Little Pony trading cards (thanks Jade!). We've seen them before, but only briefly based on promotional images. It seems that they became available for purchase recently, and the eBay listing was the first (and only?) one online. While the eBay listing was still online (and ended quite high), but we decided to buy them directly from China on AliExpress, which turned out to be much cheaper anyway.
Update: At the bottom of this review we've added images of exclusive cards that are not available in the retail packs we bought.

We had options to buy 5, 10, 15 or 20 packs in one go, with prices ranging from $9 to $25. We picked the 15 packs bundle, but in hindsight we should have gotten the larger bundle, as that is a fully filled outer box by the looks of it. On AliExpress there is also an option for a "Discount 12 cards" pack for just $3.50, but that's probably just some random cards from opened packs.

AliExpress being a Chinese market place we expected a long shipping process, but we received the order after 2 weeks, which we think is reasonable. What we also expected, and turned out to be true, was that the cards weren't packed all that good. A simple paper envelope with thin bubble-wrap liner was all that protected the card packs. As a result of that the cards were slightly bent, but luckily nothing serious.

The packs themselves all have the same design, but are not crimped equally, so a slight variation can be seen. Regardless of that variation, none of the cards were damaged from it and all packs were sealed completely and opened without any problems. On the back of each pack there is a lot of information in Chinese, mostly product numbers, the factory address and the company behind these cards: Kayou.

As said the packs opened smoothly, and directly reveal the front of the first card. No worries there, as it's always a regular card in front. All regular cards are foil with a starry pattern, so our first enthusiastic reaction was tempered after seeing that all cards have that foil. The front 4 cards are regular (R) cards, followed by rare card which can be a super rare (SR), secret? super rare (SSR) or ultra rare (UR). These rares have a different foil design (with the ultra rares having the prettiest) and also a different back: the R and SR cards have information about the ponies on the back, SSR has a standard back and UR has a back with foil details.

Aside from the foil finish, these cards are made of sturdy cardboard. They feel more like playing cards than trading cards, and have a solid feel to them. Printed on all cards is a single FiM character, ranging from the mane 6, to the princesses, the cake family, pets and even Bulk Biceps is included. There are also rare cards with seaponies from MLP: the Movie, we we didn't pull any of them in our packs. On the background of each card is a location from Equestria, usually where they live, and also printed on the front are the My Little Pony logo, card rarity, card number, Cutie Mark and their name, in both English and Chinese. There doesn't seem to be any game behind the cards, other than collecting and trading.

There's also a sixth card in each pack: a translucent card featuring a Cutie Mark Crew pony available in both regular (TR) and gold (TGR). These have a bit more decoration with pop art backgrounds and words that match with the pony. These are not printed on cardboard obviously, but are made of plastic. For some reason they are marginally larger than the other cards.

There seems to be a pattern in the regular cards (sometimes even sequentially numbered cards), but even with duplicate regular cards, the rares were always random. With our 15 packs we managed to get most (but not all) of the regular cards, several rares and a small selection of SSR and UR cards. We don't exactly know how many translucent cards there are, but we have a good selection, but sadly one double TGR. Below we have an overview of all unique cards we managed to pull.

From a collecting standpoint we really these cards and are tempted to get another set. We like the quality and detail of all cards and the nice finish that the rare cards have. Downsides are, well, that these come from China: we can't read anything that's written on the back and we would have liked a better package to protect the cards during transport. Overall we liked getting and opening these, and are planning on adding them to the database soon!

If there are any questions about the cards we'd be happy to answer them in the comments.

Update: Aside from the packs we got on AliExpress, Kayou also sold these cards through their own online store, which could contain exclusive SGR (super gold rare) and LSR (???) cards. Thanks to RDB, who made photos of their collection, we can get a sneak peak at what these cards look like, as well as the seapony cards we didn't pull: