Life-Size Animatronic Pony from Hasbro.

This is so bucking cool, a life-sized animatronic pony, the "FurReal Friends Butterscotch Pony". They've been around since 2006, but Hasbro still carries them. They are also available from numerous other places like Amazon and others. List price is $299.99 but they can be found second-hand for anywhere from $100.00 to $450.00.

Click on image to go to Hasbro page.

From the product page:

Every girl dreams of having her very own pony! With realistic animation, movement and sounds, this incredibly lifelike pony is a very special, once-in-a-lifetime friend. This adorable pony stands over three feet tall, and really "comes alive" as she moves and responds to your loving care! Touch or talk to your pony and her head moves! As you continue to interact with her, watch her ears wiggle and her eyes blink! Be sure to take extra-special care of your pony. "Feed" her the carrot and groom her with her brush. Watch her swish her tail back and forth! She even whinnies and snorts, and will sniff your hand! Sit on your pony for a pretend ride and she makes walking sounds! Bring home BUTTERSCOTCH pony and make your little girl's dreams come true!

Pony comes with carrot, brush, halter and special adoption certificate.

Pony's maximum weight limit is 80 lbs./36kg.

Adult assembly required.

Requires 6 "D" batteries (not included).

Ages 4 and up.

From Toys R Us page:

Product Weight:30 pounds 

Product Dimensions(in inches)32.2 x 29.0 x 20.7


Yes, I know it's not a G4 MLP:FiM pony, but it's a bucking awesome place to start modding your own!
With all the great plushies out there, I'm sure somepony would be able to make a great custom skin for it and, from what I've seen from the figurine modders, there are many ponies out there with some skills at altering the general body shape of an item.

But wait, there's more!

The body can be altered to have full articulation (hell, even fully robot-icized, but that's a LOT more work and beyond my skills).

Hack the audio circuit and add a custom ROM with samples from characters on MLP:FiM and re-program the sensor triggers (The stock chip is likely potted, but most any PIC/Arduino/Propeller/other µC would likely be better anyway and giove a wider range of possibilities).

Forget BattleBots, build BattlePonies!

Some video:
Commercial(with an added "no shit" symbol for some reason)



Link to footage from the 2006 NYC Toy Fair
(embedding was disabled).

And for visual context, a video showing Butterscotch encountering a living pony:



If Hasbro has kept this toy in production for the past five years, mayhap they would consider some MLP:FiM editions?

(last post for today, I promise.)