I remember when the S&H Green Stamps catalog offered English saddles.
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Sweet. Mother. Of. God.
I wonder why you had to state the number of children in the family when ordering?
(If the seller is going to ask questions about a potential buyer, I can think of about 100 better ones.)
Maybe if you had a lot of kids, they wanted you to buy two ponies? 
(Okay, I’m having way too much fun with this ad.)
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My guess would be the bigger ponies went to bigger families?
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I love the Purebred Shetland is the original type.
Not the toothpick-legged, snake-necked Modern showing these days.
Whose idea was it to “refine” the breed? 
Marshall Field’s Chgo store had English tack in the Sporting Goods when I was a kid, back in the '50s.
I spent many happy visits inhaling the scent & wishing 
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I’m entertained by the fact that they wanted you to return the crate. I wonder how many times those crates were used again and again over the course of that operation?
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So they could ride three or four at a time, like the old pictures of Snowman with all the kids on him? Lol.
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Or maybe the bigger pony wouldn’t get tired as fast if they rode him one after the other? Given the time-frame of the ad, I could see both of those being possibilities. I really have no idea, just the best guesses I’ve got. 
Someone has researched this! Still no answer on why the number of children mattered, but… Scroll down about halfway (or read your way down) and there’s an article on the mail order ponies, including more pics.
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Imagine how many inexperienced families were disappointed in their Shetlands. Those little monsters (the ponies, not the families) got away with murder, in my experience. They weren’t malevolent, but when the person telling you what to do with your life is 36 inches tall, believes in Santa and has a 7 pm night-night time…
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I need a mail-order pony. FFS.
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Wow, that was pretty darn interesting. Thanks for finding it!
This is awesome. A two-year-old pony who’s just spent 1-4 days boxed up in a crate, going home to a family whose main priority was getting their preferred coat color. What could possibly go wrong?
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You’re welcome. I actually just searched the farm name to see if I could find any history on it and that came up.
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Not a thing!
Hopefully all the ponies were tired from the trip. Lol.
And hopefully they had a source of water on the trip so they were not all colicking when they arrived.
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My parents must have hidden those Sears catalogs along with the Chicago Tribune!
If my 5-9yo self had seen those ads, they would have known no peace!
I contented myself with reading the For Sale Ads listing horses & dreaming…
FWIW:
We looked at a horse for my husband through one of those newspaper print ads, as late as 1990.
Didn’t work out, but as late as that, the Tribune was still printing the ads.
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The first horse I bought myself as an adult was via a Los Angeles Times classified ad.
My mom bought at least one via the Valley Greensheet. We lived in Santa Monica and the Greensheet was a San Fernando Valley publication, so procuring one required a trip over the hill. There was far less traffic then.
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Ponies! We’re giving them away!
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My folks moved to SFV in 1968.
I stayed behind to go to college.
I remember the Green Sheet, and how, if you left it out too long, the green faded 
SoCal sun is fierce!
@BrownDerby Perhaps another reason for the death of the Edsel:
Parents everywhere avoiding the dealers
BTW: Jocko is a pretty lame name for a Genuine Wagon Train pony 
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