What came first?

[MissSleepless]

The toys did, but just to throw in a little info about the Transformers...they were actually a whole toy line before their cartoon too. Hasbro bought an existing toy line from a Japanese company, they were then slightly redesigned and repackaged as Transformers by Hasbro and then they got a show to advertise them.

Gobots had a similar deal.  The main baddie Cykill, was actually the hero in the line, before they were renamed and repackaged.

Wheras He-man got in trouble for trying to air toy commercials while the cartoon was on. Because He-man's cartoon was made solely to sell toys, it was deemed to much advertising to bombard kids with.

And we only have Jem as a cartoon, because Hasbro commissioned a cartoon based around their dolls. When doll sales waned, Jem the show got the axe.

It's the way toy companies do things, Hasbro is particularly good at it though.

I am a massive, massive toy nerd. Sorry for the wall of info guys! xD

[fingerpaints]

the egg ^^

[Bag of Magic Food]

Now was it the same for all later generations of My Little Pony, or were there exceptions?  I keep getting the impression that Generation 4 was made to look good in animation first, and then the toys are just approximations of those cartoon designs.

[Elisto]

I don't know, but I remember seeing Lauren Faust's concepts long before I'd ever heard about G4...in fact, I didn't realize who's deviantArt gallery I was looking at at the time, and the pictures came across as just an artist's interpretation of a few G1s, so I assume the animation style, if not the whole concept for G4, came before the toys.

[Sunset]

I don't know, but I remember seeing Lauren Faust's concepts long before I'd ever heard about G4...in fact, I didn't realize who's deviantArt gallery I was looking at at the time, and the pictures came across as just an artist's interpretation of a few G1s, so I assume the animation style, if not the whole concept for G4, came before the toys.

Lauren Faust's designs may have influenced the design of the G4 toy but be assured, Hasbro only made the show in order to further boost sales of the My Little Pony brand.  This is why I found it strange the couple of times that I've seen complaints about "another brushable" pony.  The entire brand was and is based on little ponies with hair a little girl can brush and style herself.  If the toys weren't selling, Hasbro would probably cancel FiM just like those other shows mentioned.

[Elisto]

Oh, I'm not disagreeing that the show is to promote the toys; certainly even with the newest generation the idea of toys comes first. But I do suspect the style and the characters were decided before the design for the toys was, unlike G1, where there were toys for a few years, and then a show was made based on those characters and concepts.

[Sunset]

Agreed.  Though a case could be made that it was more of a collaberation considering that Applejack and Pinkiepie were preexisting toys.  For that matter, if what I have read online is true, then Lauren Faust's designs where based on pre-existing G1 characters which were in turn based on pre-existing toys.
 
hmmm, I'm starting to see that the chicken/egg analogy is very accurate.