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G4 *IS* nostalgia for G1 by its very existence. And really, Hasbro has tried before with various re-releases and exclusive ponies... what always happens is we all get excited about the idea, then when the item hits the shelves, we realize the price doesn't line up with the value in our minds and we don't buy, then Hasbro thinks it's a failure and we don't get more.Look at the G1 Re-Releases - they asked what we wanted, we told them, we did not consider that original materials would not be available and that the price point was going to be so high. Yes, $14 for four ponies does work out to the "original MLP price" each, but that is a lot of money to pay for ponies that look substantially different from what we thought Hasbro was going to give us. However none of us thought about how the plastic would have to be different for today's safety laws, etc. And the Art Ponies - for one, they were $40 so that was off-putting for many. And then the body design changed from G3 to G4. Go ahead, ask the Fair Staff how many of these Fair exclusives they had to pay OUT OF POCKET to order and are STILL in storage collecting dust!!! Hundreds from what I hear! I think the most successful G1 reboot has been the fanmade Genie project... but Hasbro will definitely want to hear NOTHING about that! And I don't even know how profitable Genie *is*, I think right now, each run has paid for itself?
I wish this stupid rumour would just die already. If Hasbro lost the rights to anything, it would have been the names (which, as has been said already, they could easily get back - sure they might have to rename one or two or have them be like, "Firefly the Pegasus" instead of "Firefly", but there is absolutely nothing stopping them from doing that, is the point). The characters, their designs and such, are still fair game. If they weren't, we wouldn't have all the retro merch that's out right now. Heck, I'm wearing a Moonstone shirt right now that I bought from Primark recently. Dollymixes, the Running Press ponies, the upcoming Loyal Subjects ponies, those also wouldn't have happened if they had "lost the rights". (Now yes, these are all licensed products and not made by Hasbro themselves, but my point still stands; I admit to not knowing all the ins and outs of this stuff, but I kind of doubt *anyone* would be allowed to [legally] sell these things if they had, indeed, "lost the rights".)Hasbro aren't producing any "nostalgia"/"retro" stuff (well, mostly they aren't, I guess there is Minty, and the Playskool Moondancer figure, but you know) because they don't want to, plain and simple. Would they profit off it? Eh, maybe. I'd agree with LadyMoondancer though, the nostalgia regarding MLP is really more the idea of it than the characters.Personally, I don't want any more G1 stuff in FiM (and I saw how they referenced G3 so I'd prefer if they stayed away from that, too..). I like little easter eggs here and there, but by and large I think the two should stay their own seperate things. I'd also agree with Taffeta that you need to be thinking of this from an American perspective, here. There was never a G2 cartoon, or a Oshare na Pony (Takara) cartoon, because there wasn't the demand for them, and honestly in the grand scheme of things, I don't imagine there'd be demand for them nowadays, either. Amongst us fans/collectors, maybe, but not from the general public, and that's who you need to think of when making things like these - it's simply not feasible to make something that only a short crowd will enjoy, particularly not when they could just put that money towards more FiM stuff, which is current and clearly makes money since it's still going.It's hard to put into words, but your perspective on this is kind of off, too? Not meaning that in an insulting way, just trying to explain where I'm coming from, here. I've noticed a lot of G4/FiM fans seem to assume that the UK comics were a bigger/more universal thing than they actually were, and that's not really the case? Now I don't mean this as an insult, I mean to say that since they weren't sold in the US, US collectors didn't know about them until the internet really caught on, from what I understand. Also that prior to G4, most MLP collectors were really more focused on the toys, not the cartoons and related ephemera. That stuff was just sort of a nice bonus; in general no one really cared about the "canon" of the franchise. That is to say, it wasn't a huge concern or the main draw, for most people, unlike G4/FiM where pretty much everything has to relate back to the show. Which honestly I miss, it's so limiting to feel like you 'have' to conform to the show canon.. but yeah, you need to look at this from the proper perspective; MLP has primarily been toy-driven, not show-driven, which affects a lot of decisions made regarding it. If that makes sense. Again, not trying to have a go at you, just trying to explain where most of us are coming from when you make threads like this. You're trying to put a G4 perspective on the G1-G3 stuff, when they're fairly different things in general.edit: gah, lovesbabysquirmy ninja'd me No, you bring up a good point that I hadn't thought about before. It's easy to say "wouldn't it be awesome if they rereleased G1 ponies for the Xth anniversary?!?" but.. they did that before, during G3, and they didn't sell. I can see why Hasbro would be unwilling to try again, lol. They have no guarantee that this time round would be any better, and honestly I can't blame them for wanting to save their money instead of throwing it away on a gamble that, in the past, didn't pay off.