On Saturday, April 18, 2026, Kayou’s Fantasy Wonderland (BP01) finally hits U.S. retail, and on the surface it looks like a standard first-booster launch: rainbow-bordered ※GR Shining Gold Rares at the top of the pull ladder, ※CRs and ※RRs stacked beneath them, the usual pre-release hype cycle about what’s worth chasing and what isn’t.
In other words: what Kayou is actually shipping inside BP01 isn’t a handful of “artist signed” chase cards scattered across a rarity table. It’s a 24-card IDW mini-anthology, hidden in plain sight, waiting for collectors to realize it was there the whole time. Someone — at Kayou, or more likely at Hasbro’s licensing desk — built this on purpose. Here’s what they built, and who’s in it.
The matrix
The 24 signed cards break down like this:
| Artist | ※RR | ※CR | ※CR | ※GR |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Brenda Hickey | Twilight (※RR01) | Pinkie (※CR03) | Applejack (※CR04) | Fluttershy (※GR02) |
| Tony Fleecs | Fluttershy (※RR02) | Twilight (※CR07) | Applejack (※CR10) | Pinkie (※GR03) |
| Andy Price | Pinkie (※RR03) | Rainbow Dash (※CR11) | Rarity (※CR12) | Twilight (※GR01) |
| Amy Mebberson | Applejack (※RR04) | Rainbow Dash (※CR05) | Pinkie (※CR09) | Rarity (※GR06) |
| Samantha Whitten | Rainbow Dash (※RR05) | Rarity (※CR06) | Fluttershy (※CR08) | Applejack (※GR04) |
| Sara Richard | Rarity (※RR06) | Twilight (※CR01) | Fluttershy (※CR02) | Rainbow Dash (※GR05) |
The six artists, and what each of them signed
Brenda Hickey
If you’ve ever re-read an IDW pony comic and clocked a One Piece silhouette tucked into “Friendship Ahoy,” a Kill la Kill gag in Friends Forever #12, or an Attack on Titan cameo in FIENDship is Magic #1 — that’s Brenda Hickey. She’s the Prince Edward Island-based cartoonist who turned background Easter eggs into an IDW MLP sport, and her panels reward a second look the way few other artists’ do.
Her first pony credit was Micro-Series Issue #6 in July 2013. She stayed. The run stretches across Friendship is Magic interiors and covers, Legends of Magic, Friends Forever, Spirit of the Forest, the Holiday Specials, and the 2018 Annual. Outside ponies, she drew Ward’s Valley (Top Shelf, 2018, written by Bobby Curnow) and her self-authored Halls of the Turnip King (January 2020) through Pegamoose Press — the indie imprint she co-founded with her husband, fellow cartoonist Troy Little. She’s currently on Aggretsuko for Oni Press.
Her four signed cards:
- ※RR01 Twilight Sparkle — Twilight with a floating book and her cutie-mark logo framing, pink cursive signature in the lower-left.
- ※CR03 Pinkie Pie — Pinkie with a map, compass, and camping gear, prepping an adventure.
- ※CR04 Applejack — a serene Applejack in profile on a hilltop, Farewell-mechanic art.
- ※GR02 Fluttershy — the critters-and-watering-can Pre-plan card, dense with the kind of background detail Hickey’s known for.
The Twilight ※RR is the obvious pairing — Twilight is the book-heavy, detail-loving Mane 6 member, and Hickey’s the artist whose panels you have to study twice. The ※GR Fluttershy is arguably more interesting, though; it’s the card in the set that leans hardest into her comic-interiors sensibility.
Tony Fleecs
“Lady and the Tramp meets Silence of the Lambs.” That’s how Tony Fleecs pitched Stray Dogs, and once you’ve read the pitch you cannot un-read it. The five-issue Image Comics thriller he co-created with Trish Forstner in 2021 became a breakout hit, spawned the Dog Days spinoff in 2021–22, and cemented Fleecs as one of the most recognizable working cover artists on the shelf.
Before Stray Dogs and alongside it, though, he’s been drawing ponies for over a decade. His IDW MLP run starts with Rainbow Dash’s Micro-Series Issue #2 in March 2013 and fans out across Transformers, TMNT, and most of the IDW Hasbro shelf. He also has writing credits on Netflix’s My Little Pony: Make Your Mark — one of the few artists in this set with a credit on the show as well as the page.
His signature is the AMF monogram with a year tag. You’ll see AMF ’23 on his ※RR Fluttershy and AMF ’25 on his other three, suggesting the Fluttershy art was finished a couple of years ahead of the rest of the set.
His four signed cards:
- ※RR02 Fluttershy — soft painterly Fluttershy in a starry purple field, AMF ’23.
- ※CR07 Twilight Sparkle — the books-and-glowing-magic Adventure card.
- ※CR10 Applejack — Applejack mid-handstand in an orchard, apples everywhere.
- ※GR03 Pinkie Pie — Pinkie with the party cannon, mid-confetti-detonation.
The Fluttershy ※RR matches the quieter character-moment work Fleecs does on his IDW covers; the Pinkie ※GR is closer to his full comic-strip energy. If you’ve bought an AMF sketch at a convention in the past few years, the monogram is the same.
Andy Price
Andy Price drew Issue #1. That single fact — November 28, 2012, paired with writer Katie Cook, opening the four-issue arc that launched the entire IDW MLP line — is why he gets ※GR01 Twilight in this set, and probably why he gets four cards at all. Issue #1 shipped with a full set of lettered variant covers (A–F), one per character, an early tell for how central variant strategy was about to become to the whole run.
Before ponies he’d worked for DC, Marvel, Innovation, and Rittenhouse Archives, plus licensed adaptations of Quantum Leap and WordGirl. Inside ponies he’s the artist people mean when they say “the IDW style” — lavish, chaotic, throw-the-whole-cast-in-the-frame ensemble covers, usually with Spike doing something long-suffering in a corner.
His four signed cards:
- ※RR03 Pinkie Pie — the giant-cupcake signature piece with the Pinkie Pie title banner baked into the art.
- ※CR11 Rainbow Dash — a kinetic Adventure card with rainbow contrails and fire clouds, A. Price ’25.
- ※CR12 Rarity — Rarity reclining with a magazine and drink, a quiet counterpoint to his usual maximalism.
- ※GR01 Twilight Sparkle — fireworks, panic, Spike with a clipboard, Celestia flying in from the background. The most Price-coded composition in the entire signed set.
Price is separately collaborating with Kayou on the Chase the Magic sweepstakes grand prize (the winner co-designs a new pony with him) and, as noted above, had 20 hand-signed cards inserted into Moon Edition 2. Those are different products. Don’t list them interchangeably.
Amy Mebberson
Amy Mebberson made Pocket Princesses — the Disney fan-comic that went viral before “viral” had fully settled into a verb, then pulled off the much rarer trick of becoming official Disney work. That trajectory tells you most of what you need to know about how she operates: warm, clean, on-model, and so deeply in the lingua franca of character art that Disney itself eventually just hired her.
Her IDW MLP footprint is deep — interior and cover work across Friendship is Magic, the Micro-Series, Friends Forever, and the FIENDship is Magic specials — on top of work for Walt Disney Publishing, Dark Horse, and Hasbro. Her line is cleaner and rounder than the Price-Hickey working-comic feel, more sticker-book and animation-cel, which is exactly why it lands so cleanly on a trading card.
Her four signed cards:
- ※RR04 Applejack — Applejack mid-leap in autumn leaves, orange cursive signature.
- ※CR05 Rainbow Dash — Rainbow Dash in flight with a book and satchel, in a cleaner painterly style than the other Dash cards in the set.
- ※CR09 Pinkie Pie — Pinkie balloon-lifted through pink, blue, and yellow pastels.
- ※GR06 Rarity — Rarity at the sewing machine in reading glasses, small initial signature.
The Applejack ※RR is the clearest Mebberson card in the subset — an orange cursive signature in her familiar hand. One note on attribution: her signatures on the other three Mebberson cards (CR05, CR09, GR06) are smaller and less legible in pre-release scans, and I’ve placed them in her slate by process of elimination after matching the other five artists’ signatures across the rest of the set. If Kayou publishes an official artist list, that list should be taken over this inference.
Samantha Whitten
Samantha Whitten is the one who doesn’t belong — and that’s the point. She signs her MLP work as “Celesse,” the online handle she’s used for years, and unlike the other five she didn’t grind out a long haul of interior pages through the FIM era. She came in late and on purpose, commissioned by IDW on Hasbro’s behalf in 2021–2022 to deliver a run of stylized covers in a style nobody else on the book was drawing.
Pastel palettes, rounded shapes, a storybook hush. Put her covers next to a Fleecs or a Price page and the rooms they’re drawing barely feel like they’re in the same universe. In a 24-card anthology where five of the artists come from broadly the same comic-page tradition, Whitten is the tonal reset button — and if she weren’t in the set, the set would feel 30% smaller.
Her four signed cards:
- ※RR05 Rainbow Dash — a soft, sparkly Rainbow Dash over a rainbow spiral, “Celesse” cursive.
- ※CR06 Rarity — Rarity among luggage and travel cases in soft pastels.
- ※CR08 Fluttershy — Fluttershy in a meadow of butterflies; probably the set’s most storybook composition.
- ※GR04 Applejack — Applejack in a warm kitchen with pies cooling on the counter.
Pairing Whitten’s style with Rainbow Dash on the ※RR is the most unexpected choice in the subset. Rainbow Dash is normally drawn with speed-lines and angular action; Whitten’s card reads more like greeting-card art. That contrast is likely the point — if all 24 cards were done in the same house style, the anthology would lose its range. Whitten’s four cards are the ones that give the subset its breathing room.
Sara Richard
Sara Richard draws like somebody pulled Art Nouveau, Victorian mourning portraiture, and the iconography of old Salem, Massachusetts into a single sketchbook and told the result it was allowed to draw ponies. She’s Eisner- and Ringo-nominated, her IDW MLP cover tally sits at around 106, and that’s on top of extensive cover work for Marvel, DC, Dynamite, and Oni Press. Outside comics she illustrated The Royal Book of Oz for Clover Press and authored Kitty & Dino and The Dead Hand Book.
Her signature is a flowing cursive with a small heart tucked into it — the most ornate of the six, and the one that takes the longest to spot because she hides it inside the linework rather than next to it.
Her four signed cards:
- ※RR06 Rarity — the painterly Art Nouveau Rarity surrounded by crystals and silver mirrors. Probably the most “fine-art print” card in the entire signed set.
- ※CR01 Twilight Sparkle — Twilight with a floating scroll, Spike on fire in the background reading from another scroll.
- ※CR02 Fluttershy — Fluttershy with butterflies and flowing ribbons, tree branches overhead.
- ※GR05 Rainbow Dash — Rainbow Dash leaping through gold hoops with a painterly rainbow arc. The most elegant Rainbow Dash card in the set, by a comfortable margin.
The Rarity ※RR is the signature Richard card in the subset. Rarity’s elegance-and-refinement character DNA maps directly onto Richard’s Art Nouveau sensibility, and the composition is the one most likely to end up framed on a wall under proper display lighting.
What this actually is, taken as a whole
Step back and look at the roster. Hickey, Fleecs, Price, and Mebberson are IDW veterans with deep, documented runs on the books. Sara Richard is the prestige cover artist. Samantha Whitten is the stylistic outlier brought in to give the set tonal range. That’s not a random draw from the IDW freelancer list. It’s a curated line-up.
It’s also worth noticing what isn’t in the set. No Agnes Garbowska, no Jenn Blake, no Katie Cook. Those are all names that could plausibly have appeared. The fact that this specific six were chosen, and that the structure is this tidy — four cards per artist, four signers per character, zero artist-character duplicates — suggests a deliberate design exercise rather than a loose tribute.
Read generously, BP01’s signed tier is a miniature 24-card IDW anthology. Read more cynically, it’s an efficient way to put six bankable artist names on 24 different cards without anyone’s work feeling redundant. Both readings are true, and together they make this the most interesting subset in the set.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the signed cards in Kayou Fantasy Wonderland BP01?
Kayou Fantasy Wonderland BP01 contains 24 signed cards illustrated by six IDW comic artists: Brenda Hickey, Tony Fleecs, Andy Price, Amy Mebberson, Samantha Whitten, and Sara Richard. Each artist signed four cards spanning RR, CR, and GR rarities, featuring characters from the Mane Six across different rarity tiers in the set.
Who are the artists in Kayou Fantasy Wonderland?
The six artists featured in Kayou Fantasy Wonderland BP01 are Brenda Hickey, Tony Fleecs, Andy Price, Amy Mebberson, Samantha Whitten, and Sara Richard. All six are established IDW My Little Pony comic book artists, and each contributed signed artwork to four cards in the set spanning multiple rarity levels.
When does Kayou Fantasy Wonderland BP01 release?
Kayou Fantasy Wonderland BP01 releases on Saturday, April 18, 2026 in U.S. retail stores. This is Kayou’s first booster set launch featuring a hidden 24-card anthology of signed artwork by six IDW My Little Pony comic artists, distributed across RR, CR, and GR rarity tiers in the product.
How many cards did each artist sign in BP01?
Each of the six artists signed exactly four cards in Kayou Fantasy Wonderland BP01, totaling 24 signed cards in the set. The signed cards are distributed across three rarity levels: one RR card, two CR cards, and one GR Shining Gold Rare per artist, featuring different characters from the Mane Six.