Is anyone else on the brink of losing total interest in G4?

[MJNSEIFER]

G4 was obviously taken over by its show.  The toys dominated by the plans for the show at first.  The ponies selected as main and major characters were informed by that.

Is this excluding the Mane Six?  I know that Lauren Faust planned on having six G1 ponies that got changed into the Mane Six we know, so the show would have influenced the toys there, wouldn't they?

[Al-1701]

Actually, that's at the core of it.  Faust was essentially forced to choose ponies they already planned to release for the main cast.  And it was all she could do to make Cheerilee a b-character.

[MJNSEIFER]

But the Concept Six were six of the G1 ponies she loved growing up right?  Or do you mean that they basically said "You can't use those ponies, you have to use these ponies.", but allowed her to give them whatever personalities she wanted (which was how she interpreted the G1 ponies)?  I don't really understand what you mean about Cheerilee from the way you wrote it, I'm afraid.

[Al-1701]

Basically, when she showed her concept, they told her she had to use the ponies they were planning on using, but could give them whatever personality and story she wanted.  They also let her use the original designs for Applejack and Spike.

According the commentary on the Season 1 DVD set, Hasbro wanted her to include Cheerilee in the main cast because she was a part of the Core 7 (same reason Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo are CMC).  Faust managed to convince them to let her be the school teacher on the CMC side of things.

[Lore-Lei]

That explains why there were so much serious focus on Cheerilee in Season 1.

[Mana Minori]

That explains why there were so much serious focus on Cheerilee in Season 1.

such a shame that marketing overpowers creative vision. I can understand why Faust up and left, if Hasbro had more reign than she did. I know it's their IP and all, but as an artist, myself, I can imagine how sucky not being able to go where you want with ideas and characters and direction can be.

[MJNSEIFER]

Basically, when she showed her concept, they told her she had to use the ponies they were planning on using, but could give them whatever personality and story she wanted.  They also let her use the original designs for Applejack and Spike.

According the commentary on the Season 1 DVD set, Hasbro wanted her to include Cheerilee in the main cast because she was a part of the Core 7 (same reason Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo are CMC).  Faust managed to convince them to let her be the school teacher on the CMC side of things.

Ah, that makes more sense.  I would have been really surprised if I had been wrong about Lauren planning to use those G1 ponies originally, thanks for confirming.  To this day, I still sympathise with Lauren for not being able to use, what I am sure are her childhood favorites (I know that Firefly was literally her favorite pony) even though I love the Mane Six as they are.

Thanks for explaining Cheerilee, it makes more sense now.  It's actually not surprising that Hasbro wanted her to be used more, because of the Core Seven thing (I know that Apple Bloom was supposed to be part of a solo storyline for her cutie mark, originally).

That explains why there were so much serious focus on Cheerilee in Season 1.

such a shame that marketing overpowers creative vision. I can understand why Faust up and left, if Hasbro had more reign than she did. I know it's their IP and all, but as an artist, myself, I can imagine how sucky not being able to go where you want with ideas and characters and direction can be.

While I understand that business is business (and I'm sure Lauren does too), I think she really started to feel messed around at times.  Not only did she have less control of he creative vision than she'd like, which would be disheartening for any writer, but there were other things as well, such as Hasbro's reluctance to given them a writer's room (they got one, but it wasn't really their room for the most part, or something) and the Trixie/Pipsqueak hypocrisy, which is what made her decide to leave, I think.  It sounds like a small reason, but I think it was the final straw at the end of the day.

For those who don't know, Trixie was going to be a stallion, but Hasbro told Lauren's team to make her a mare (most likely due to the target audience), but then when "Luna Eclipse" was done/almost done they insisted that Lauren's team added Pipsqueak - a colt character, despite being adamant that too many male characters weren't needed.  This may sound like Lauren throwing her toys out of her pram to an outsider, but I can understand why this was a problem; the episode had been mostly completed if not fully completed, and now suddenly there's a new character that has to be part of the episode, so this means that they have to go back and rewrite the episode, because now there's suddenly a new character interacting with the others.

[tulagirl]

Honestly, Dazzle, I felt this way from the beginning of G4.  I tried to really like them and I have several blind bags and one set of other ponies. That is it.  I couldn't collect them.  There were numerous reasons I had trouble with G4 as a product and other things associated with it.  I loved G1 and G3 so much.  G4 was just too different for me. I respect that others really like it.  I can't really even get into the show anymore. I use to like watching it but got bored with it probably after season 3.  So, when they made G4.5 I was not surprised at all that I still felt nothing for the line.  I am kind of waiting and waiting with hope that G5 will be a wonderful pony thing that will get a whole knew breath of fresh air in the pony collecting world. 

[Wardah]

Basically, when she showed her concept, they told her she had to use the ponies they were planning on using, but could give them whatever personality and story she wanted.  They also let her use the original designs for Applejack and Spike.

According the commentary on the Season 1 DVD set, Hasbro wanted her to include Cheerilee in the main cast because she was a part of the Core 7 (same reason Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo are CMC).  Faust managed to convince them to let her be the school teacher on the CMC side of things.

Ah, that makes more sense.  I would have been really surprised if I had been wrong about Lauren planning to use those G1 ponies originally, thanks for confirming.  To this day, I still sympathise with Lauren for not being able to use, what I am sure are her childhood favorites (I know that Firefly was literally her favorite pony) even though I love the Mane Six as they are.

Thanks for explaining Cheerilee, it makes more sense now.  It's actually not surprising that Hasbro wanted her to be used more, because of the Core Seven thing (I know that Apple Bloom was supposed to be part of a solo storyline for her cutie mark, originally).

While I can guess that Starsong must have been turned into Twilight Sparkle since they are both purple with star cutie marks I wonder what happened to Toola Roola. Along with RD she was one of my favorite out of the Core 7.

That explains why there were so much serious focus on Cheerilee in Season 1.

such a shame that marketing overpowers creative vision. I can understand why Faust up and left, if Hasbro had more reign than she did. I know it's their IP and all, but as an artist, myself, I can imagine how sucky not being able to go where you want with ideas and characters and direction can be.

While I understand that business is business (and I'm sure Lauren does too), I think she really started to feel messed around at times.  Not only did she have less control of he creative vision than she'd like, which would be disheartening for any writer, but there were other things as well, such as Hasbro's reluctance to given them a writer's room (they got one, but it wasn't really their room for the most part, or something) and the Trixie/Pipsqueak hypocrisy, which is what made her decide to leave, I think.  It sounds like a small reason, but I think it was the final straw at the end of the day.

For those who don't know, Trixie was going to be a stallion, but Hasbro told Lauren's team to make her a mare (most likely due to the target audience), but then when "Luna Eclipse" was done/almost done they insisted that Lauren's team added Pipsqueak - a colt character, despite being adamant that too many male characters weren't needed.  This may sound like Lauren throwing her toys out of her pram to an outsider, but I can understand why this was a problem; the episode had been mostly completed if not fully completed, and now suddenly there's a new character that has to be part of the episode, so this means that they have to go back and rewrite the episode, because now there's suddenly a new character interacting with the others.

I'm not sure I would see it as hypocrisy. They must have wanted Trixie to be a mare because then they could make her into a brushie while Pipsqueek is just there to be a "cute littled brother type" and not made into a brushie.

[Al-1701]

Half of Lauren's problem was she burned more bridges than she built with Hasbro.  She didn't have much control because the media side has never had much control in this situation.  Hasbro is a toy company first and the toy side will always win a dispute.  Other creative teams have built alliances with people on the toy side to gain more creative control.  If you have someone willing to go to bat in the boardroom for your idea or wish to not execute an idea given to you, the company is more willing to listen than if you complain about them impinging on your creative vision for a brand they're paying you to work on.

She didn't even stick around long enough for FiM's success to build into some political capital.  Remember, she was brought in to produce the latest series for the brand as her first executive producer job ever.  Contrary to popular belief, she is not some pony goddess who blessed Hasbro with her presence.

[Katika]

I lost interest in actively collecting at the G3/G3.5 transition because they moved too far away from what I identified as wholesome pony style. And then they went G4, which made my aversion even worse. It took me about a year and a half into G4, being super confused in my pony-collecting identity (my status as a collector either made me "one of those weird brony people" to non-collectors or "HEY! FIM! YEAAAAAH!!" even though I didn't collect that gen to the obnoxious side of the brony crowd), and a bout of almost depression that made me long to customize something to pick up my first G4 for customization purposes. And from there, they kind of grew on me. And I started collecting (though only ponies with brushable hair that would survive being dropped in a bucket of water). Now that they changed styles *again,* I've lost a bit of the enthusiasm I found again.

I'm just sitting back and crossing my fingers that if this is a sign of G4 dying out (the way G3 did when they got super duper gimmicky and then tried a major mold change), that their next try will bring us back to the G1/G3 style. Those are my favorites <3

[lostpony]

I'm not sure I'm really following a lot of what's being said here in the last page or so.

First, I don't know much about the circumstances of Faust leaving to get any idea as to those things but if it's true that they weren't even being given a private room for writing that should have given them an idea how much equity they have in any negotiating and failure to work by the guidelines seems more a workplace get-along problem than anything else....of course I don't know if any of this is either true or means what it says to me so I'll just leave it there.  I definitely understand about creating on someone else's time:  that's hard, and for me creating can only happen with control.  Professionals must be able to create on command, and for that my that's off to them no matter what their perceived quality.

Oh and as to trixie/pipsqueak....I'm not sure I can see how Trixie could have been anything other than disagreeable as a stallion...for whatever reason I have to agree with how she was done because it really really works.  As to making Pipsqueak male or female I have a hard time seeing how that would have made any sort of difference...clearly there is some sort of gender issue going on at mlp as there are no males at all in G3 and very few otherwise and FiM is very short on males but not so short that it's nonsensical, for example such as the Smurfs are on females....like, one female?  Even as a little kid, who didn't care for them, I had thoughts as to the only sort of way that could work and it's a bad message to push in front of kids of any age because whether we are supposed to go there with them or not, many of them already know so it makes really zero sense to have a gender imbalance in cartoons, in my opinion, whatever the target audience.  But that's off topic. 

Conclusion is this stuff really is going over my head and if any of it is particularly important it'd be cool if it was explained a little better.  Nonetheless, I don't see how it is particularly at issue in whether people are losing interest now or not....that stuff is many seasons in the past and anyone who would have been lost by those issues are for the most part probably long gone, not just losing interest now.  I'm not saying anyone is wrong, just that I'm confused.

[MJNSEIFER]

I'm not sure I would see it as hypocrisy. They must have wanted Trixie to be a mare because then they could make her into a brushie while Pipsqueek is just there to be a "cute littled brother type" and not made into a brushie.

It's possible.  Like I say, I think it was just the final straw, and I don't think either Lauren or Hasbro are really in the wrong, I think it may have just been poor comunications or something.  I'll have to check how that article/review/whatever it was was written to be sure.

Half of Lauren's problem was she burned more bridges than she built with Hasbro. She didn't have much control because the media side has never had much control in this situation. Hasbro is a toy company first and the toy side will always win a dispute. Other creative teams have built alliances with people on the toy side to gain more creative control. If you have someone willing to go to bat in the boardroom for your idea or wish to not execute an idea given to you, the company is more willing to listen than if you complain about them impinging on your creative vision for a brand they're paying you to work on

.

As much as I respect Lauren, I think you are right here.  She sadly wasn't experienced with toyline related shows from that perspective, so probably wasn't as prepared for how it worked as she thought. 

Going back to the writers room thing, she was used to having one, as most writers would be and while I am on her side in this respect, she was probably lucky to get what she got, but I can understand it feeling the way it did.  Hasbro obviously cared more about the toys than the development of the show, which is understandable - they are a toy company first and foremost, and while the previous generations are far better written than the description "just there to sell toys" gives them credit for, there was admittedly no long term storyline to them.  There was continuity in places when it was needed, but you could mostly watch the previous cartoons in any order (which is partly true for My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, but less so in there is more stuff in there to show that it is a series).  Honestly, I actually thought that My Little Pony Tales aired in a different order than what it did, because from a character development standpoint at least some of the episodes worked better in a different order in my opinion.

Ultimately, I think that neither Hasbro or Lauren can be held completely at fault for how things turned out, but rather they were from two different worlds, which were unprepared for each others methods, which is understandable.

Contrary to popular belief, she is not some pony goddess who blessed Hasbro with her presence.

To be honest, I don't really feel that that is popular belief.  Even those who feel that the My Little Pony cartoons were bad until Lauren "saved" them don't seem to praise Lauren that much.  While I do realise, deep down that I am not the only brony who respects Lauren (though there are times when I allow myself to feel like I am), I still have yet to see anyone actually legitimately treating her like a goddess outside a figure of speech (calling a show creator the god/goddess of the show is standard practice amongst fans) or using her alicorn ponysona in a goddess type role (which is more likely a metaphor for how she created the show), and I do feel she is somewhat undervalued at times, or at least was in that bronies tended to assume that if it wasn't literally her episode, then she can't have had any part in its creation, when as show creator/showrunner she would have at the very least had a say in how things were written. 

Ultimately, the main credit should go to whoever wrote the episode, but what some people fail to realize is that whoever the showrunner is, usually has the final say at least to some extent, and the writers usually talk to each other.  Yet certain bronies act as though Lauren mostly sat around and did nothing, or left earlier than she actually did.  I'm sure she's not as underappreciated as I have allowed myself to believe, but she isn't really as overpraised as people seem to think either.

At the end of the day, I have a lot of respect for Lauren, but I respect her as a writer and an artist, and ultimately a person who is as relatable as you or I.  You can praise and admire someone's talents without viewing them as being on different level as you, and that is basically what I do.  Even celebrities whose talents I can't even hope to replicate are ultimately just human beings at the end of the day, who are just doing what they want to do, and it is that fact which allows me to have great respect for them.

As to making Pipsqueak male or female I have a hard time seeing how that would have made any sort of difference...

I should have been more clear, it's not that Pipsqueak started out as a filly and was rewritten as a colt, it's that he didn't even exist originally - Lauren and her team were asked to write him into a script that (as far as I know) was at least almost done if not actually done.  Having thought of it, I wouldn't be surprised if I were to find out that Pipsqueak's scenes and dialogue were originally planned for the Cutie Mark Crusaders (most likely a different Crusader in different scenes), because if you think about it, the CMCs role in "Luna Eclipsed"  is pretty minimal, so much so that you could replace them with three random foals and the episode wouldn't have a very noticeable change at all.

At the end of the day, the episode still ended up working (though to me it was awkwardly placed and would have worked better as a season one episode), so no real harm was done, it's just annoying at the least to think you've finished with a script and then be told (possibly at the last second) to not only add in a new character, but also give them a major-ish role.  In fact, I am now even more convinced that Pipsqueaks lines and scenes were originally shared by the CMC, it was probably the easiest way to to include him (i.e. to give him scenes and lines that already existed).

clearly there is some sort of gender issue going on at mlp as there are no males at all in G3 and very few otherwise and FiM is very short on males but not so short that it's nonsensical

I don't think there's really a gender issue, it's just the belief that seems to be held that a show can only be for a particular sex if it only has or mostly has characters of that sex.  This doesn't have to be particularly true, because at the end of the day it's how we relate to the characters, though I will admit that when I was first getting into girly shows (that I knew were girly) it helped to have a boy character to sort of ease me in, but I don't think I'd ultimately need one now.  I think that My Little Pony could still be a girl's show if there were a decent ammount of male characters in the main cast, but I'm not saying there has to be.  My Little Pony Tales came the closest to having a decent ammount of male characters in its main cast, and still worked as a girl's show the same as a boy's show could have a decent ammount of girls in the main cast, and still work as a boys show.  So ultimately I agree that they don't need make it inbalanced in order to make sure it looks like it's aimed at the target audience, but at the same time I kind of get why they do, because not everyone is like me, and even I wasn't like me back then (meaning I would have originally needed at least one boy in the show at times, and that included characters that I thought were boys at the time if that happened in this scenario).

Note: I am not using "girly" as derogatory in any way, it's no secret that I love "girly" stuff, I wouldn't be here otherwise.

Nonetheless, I don't see how it is particularly at issue in whether people are losing interest now or not....that stuff is many seasons in the past and anyone who would have been lost by those issues are for the most part probably long gone, not just losing interest now. I'm not saying anyone is wrong, just that I'm confused.

Yeah, sorry I did get pretty off topic there, so sorry about that everyone.

[Everlyn]

Considering my post history, looks like g4 and what happened to the forum after is what made me quit collecting five years ago.

[Wardah]

As to making Pipsqueak male or female I have a hard time seeing how that would have made any sort of difference...

I should have been more clear, it's not that Pipsqueak started out as a filly and was rewritten as a colt, it's that he didn't even exist originally - Lauren and her team were asked to write him into a script that (as far as I know) was at least almost done if not actually done.  Having thought of it, I wouldn't be surprised if I were to find out that Pipsqueak's scenes and dialogue were originally planned for the Cutie Mark Crusaders (most likely a different Crusader in different scenes), because if you think about it, the CMCs role in "Luna Eclipsed"  is pretty minimal, so much so that you could replace them with three random foals and the episode wouldn't have a very noticeable change at all.

At the end of the day, the episode still ended up working (though to me it was awkwardly placed and would have worked better as a season one episode), so no real harm was done, it's just annoying at the least to think you've finished with a script and then be told (possibly at the last second) to not only add in a new character, but also give them a major-ish role.  In fact, I am now even more convinced that Pipsqueaks lines and scenes were originally shared by the CMC, it was probably the easiest way to to include him (i.e. to give him scenes and lines that already existed).

I also don't really understand why they added Pipsqueak. He never really got much merch so what was the point of adding him?