Everyone's G1 Favorites

[Glistening Rainlight]

So I didn't exist when G1 was around. By the time G3 was out, perhaps in its late years, I was going back and watching G1 myself, but I.... don't really feel like I ever really understood it. There are a lot of things I like about it, but I don't feel like I see the same things in it that everyone else does. I never really understood how people fell for Firefly the one time she ever showed up, or why everyone seemed to like Gusty so much even though she generally just seems to be a grouch in the show from what I can tell.

I love G1 and a lot of what it has to offer, I've especially been getting into the comics lately, but I want to understand how and why people got into the show the way they did. It's something I've been curious about for years. o: Is it all nostalgia? What do/did you like about G1? Who are your favorite characters, and what about them makes you like them so much? Do you like them only for what you saw in the show, or do you see something more in the characters? And, I pose these same questions for the world itself, too, if you really like the world the ponies live in. c:

I'm so curious about the minds of those of you who had the opportunity to be fans of G1 while it was first being aired. I would absolutely love to hear anything you have to say about it!

[Mermaid]

For me, it was never about the show. I liked it yes, but it was more about the ponies and the adventures I gave them. It was a simpler time back then, I didn’t even know the show had existed until I already had an established love for the toys. When I discovered the show, it did influence play a little, but not by much. Also by the time I was into ponies firefly and company were no longer sold in stores so the rescue at midnight castle feature was fun because it didn’t have ponies I had in my herd.

The show at least for me was aired on the Disney channel so I didn’t get to watch it unless it was summertime because it was on when I was at school. I watched it when I could, but like I said I had an already established love for my ponies and the personalities I assigned them.

The pony world I lived in as a child, did not have tons of media or advertising. The only way I knew what ponies were available were from the backcards or pamphlets that came with the ponies. It was 99% play based and 1% tv/movie influence.

For me, the sea ponies and ribbon were my faves in the show! The sea ponies specifically from rescue at midnight castle. I did not have them, but the ones I did have I wanted them to be like the ones in the special! I also really loved the princess pony episode, Tiffany was always my favorite, but in my mind was different from her tv personality.

[Shaiyeh]

Growing up, I never even watched the show - I just loved the concept of pastel ponies. I did watch some MLP Tales when I was maybe around 10?11? But I've caught up on watching all of the g1 animations (movies, n' friends, Tales) in my late teens and as an adult. We also didn't have ads on the tv for mlp in Sweden (at least not on the channels we had!).
Much like for Mermaid, it was 99% play based, and 1% tiny snippet of mlp n friends on the telly in like, '96 + relaunch of mlp with g2 advertisement in '97
(I'm was born in '92, and got my first ponies when I was around 3)

Maybe my opinions on favourite characters won't count because I formed them as an adult, but I love Shady. Poor thing is so insecure, and gets picked on for being klutzy and "bad luck". I guess she's relatable for me
But since I watched Tales when I was a kid, I can pick a favourite from there - Sweetheart And Bon-Bon I know a lot of people don't really like Tales, but I loved it growing up, and I still have a very soft spot for it.

[Ponyfan]

My grandparents had a copy of Rescue at Midnight Castle that I watched many times at their house My parents rented a copy of Escape from Catrina and the MLP movie that I watched sometimes. I remember being excited when Rescue at Midnight Castle aired on Disney Channel because I didn't have a copy  only to be disappointed every time because the Moochick's song was cut.

I do have a vague memory of watching MLP and Friends when it was first broadcast and being disappointed when it switched from MLP to Potato Head Kids.

I watched most of them when they were on Disney channel but sometimes I would watch the first few minutes and put the TV on something else. I did enjoy Tales though.

I don't think the show really influenced how I played with my ponies. Cotton Candy was my first pony but until I started collecting as adult I didn't have many of the ponies featured in the animation. 


Ponyfan

[SaraMari]

Yeah I'm going to agree with what everyone else is saying, I didn't even watch the cartoon as a kid and it had no effect on what ponies I liked. Gusty is popular because shes beautiful I think.

[Gator]

I'm an animal lover.  As a kid I was really into horses, breyer model horses and riding lessons.  Then my sister got Applejack and baby Moondancer, and I was exposed to the world of My Little Pony.  I started to get my own: Windy, Pinwheel and more.  I watched Rescue over and over. 
I know many people here would prefer a world without Megan, but for me, as a lonely kid, I loved to imagine that I, like Megan, could travel to a world full of magic and magical creatures.  It was almost like the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe for me.  The pegasus ponies could travel between worlds through some misty, magical, unseen portal in the sky.  And one day, maybe they would come and take me the way they had Megan. 
My favorites probably weren't based on cartoon personality other than Ribbon.  I liked her on the show.  But other favorites were just based on how much I liked certain figures, like beautiful Paradise and Pinwheel. 

[Glistening Rainlight]

I'm excited to have gotten so many replies to this already! Thank you guys so much!

It's cool that most of you seem to agree so far that it was the ponies themselves that did it, rather than the animations. Honestly that makes a lot of sense, and seeing as I have and adore plenty of (especially G3) ponies that were never a part of animation, I can completely understand. Kinda paints a different picture on why the animated series including that of MLP have changed so much over the years though. I was born in '94, so I missed all of the 80s stuff and never got to experience people's opinions for things at that time.

Honestly if I were to name some of my own favorites from the shows, I'd have to say that from My Little Pony Tales there's Sweetheart, Teddy, and Clover.    For the rest, I love the sea ponies but never became attached to a specific one. I'm a lot more in love with the twinkle-eyed ponies and some of the flutter ponies, namely Honeysuckle and Morning Glory. To pick a top favorite from them, I'd have to go with Galaxy for her intuition which is only matched by Wind Whistler's intelligence.

This does all make me realize however that I've probably been too wrapped up in the "official" content, once again. I don't really remember being a kid very much or the things I used to do, as far as I can remember I may have spent more time brushing their hair or trying to get them to look "perfect" than actually playing with them haha. I came up with a lot of my own characters and made stories for them which I still remember, and I remember spending hours looking at everyone's customs and wanting greatly to make my own. So I may have simply always had more of a focus on creating new characters to match the personalities I wanted, instead of changing personalities of existing characters to fit my tastes.

[Artemesia's Garden]

I used to love Blossom, Peachy, Snuzzle when I was little, in fact anyone apart from Cotton Candy who was my one and only pony. I have an army of her now as well as a lot of other 'favourite' girls. My younger sister used to have Cascade's waterfall, the show stable, grooming parlour and perfume puff palace when I was little and I used to make little worlds with the playsets and accessories and place the ponies in them. I din't really remember what they were doing though. My favourite pony when I was a bit older was my cousin's Galaxy, but she had Gypsy and Honeycomb too and I also really loved those also.

[SkyCakes]

Is it all nostalgia? I think it is in a sense for me because I grew up with the show and the ponies together.  What do/did you like about G1? I love the deversity of characters so many different types of ponies. I also loved their awesome colors. Though besides boy ponies. I love the play and care sets for the babies. I never had any newborns but im gald to have more now. Who are your favorite characters, and what about them makes you like them so much? I like the show because it was about ponies who were brave to go on adventures together. Of course my favorite character is Surprise.

[Psylocke]

Rescue at Midnight Castle did a lot for my love for MLP, I don't think i would've loved them as much as I did if i didn't have anything more to go by but the toys. It was so exciting and beautifully animated and that was it for me! Firefly was amazing, I was always so sad that she never got to reappear (and when I learned she was supposed to be in FIM but got replaced by Rainbow Dash.... ouch, my heart)
The movie was fun, and the tv-series was........ special. to put it kindly it had good moments but mostly what the hell is going on. Especially when watching it at an older age; guess you had to be a kid and grow up with it to appreciate it! I also prefer the Swedish dubs to the English original because there's an awful lot of cringe for me..
I guess I was too old for MLP Tales when it came out, i never liked the scenario with them being too human-like with buses and what not so I never got into it and I don't understand how it's so loved (maybe it had good stories, didn't bother to watch it enough to tell :p), so in that way I can understand you about the G1 animations.
RAMC still the best pony animation through all the gens though despite its too quick and easy ending.

[Leave a Whisper]

I grew up watching MLP n Friends and later MLP Tales.

Some of my favorites

Unicorns:
Gusty
Fizzy, Galaxy
Ribbon and Baby Ribbon
 and Buttons

Earth Ponies:
Shady
Sundance
Posey
Baby Lickety-split
Slugger
Trucker
Baby Tic Tac Toe
Sweetstuff
Baby Quacker
Tales:
Sweetheart
Patch
Clover
Lancer
Melody

Pegasus:
Wind Whistler
Lofty
North Star
Whizzer
Masquerade

Flutters:
Morning Glory
Peach Blossom
Forget-Me-Not
Queen Rosedust


I bought the MLP Movie and later the boxset for my daughter and I to watch. I still enjoy going through it, as I do several other childhood cartoons. Never did find the Tales boxset anywhere, but I watched a few eps on Daily Motion and it still holds up fairly well.

Some of my favorites are:
MLP The Movie-Its fun, adventurous and has some of my favorite villains. I love the volcano witches and the smooze.

Return of Tambelon-Great setting, the last song is catchy, some smart tactics used against Grogar and Bray

Somnambula-Hooray for the big brothers! Somnambula is a cool villain. Love Slugger and Buttons.

Crunch the Rock Dog-I always loved how smart Wind Whistler is. She's definitely someone you want by your side during a crisis. She's calm, logical, thinks sideways and on her feet.

The Magic Coins-This is such a high stakes episode. I used to wonder why they didn't take the baby sea ponies to the kids house and put em in the bathtub or something? Sure it'd be a tight fit, but better then them drying out and dying.

Baby Its Cold Outside-Its interesting that whatever magical/natural disasters affects Pony Land, also affects Earth. I really loved Galaxy in this and while I dislike being out in real snow, I have always been a sucker for snowy imagery. Prince Edgar is a good kid. Chick. Hatchling. Whatever. Makes me wonder as an adult if King Charlatan's magic coincided with Megatron's attempt to drain the Earth's core which started freezing the world?

Happy Birthday Sweetheart-Teddy is a jerk. I always related with Sweetheart. Getting caught between friends who don't like each other is hard. Good for Lancer for making them get along for a few hours.

That one where Clover wins tickets. It was just a good ep. She stayed home with her friends to watch, although I did feel bad for her.

Battle of the Bands-Fun episode, the twins are cute, the song is catchy.

Up Up and Away-I love them meeting the Glow n Shows. I always wondered why Tales was always Earth Ponies. Patch is kinduva brat sometimes.

[brightberry]

Rescue at Midnight Castle captured my heart when it came out.  It was easily the best thing I'd ever seen before and for many years after.  There just wasn't anything like it at the time.  The ponies were both girly and heroic.  They had magic and seemed completely free of worry.  Well, until the monsters came.  But they handled it.  I wanted to live there so badly.  Pony Land was my idea of heaven.

Escape from Catrina was good too.  Though, I didn't like it when Sparkler was "mean" to Sundance.

When, My Little Pony and Friends came out, I was pretty disappointed in the animation and dialog.  But the story arcs were intriguing so I watched them.


For the toys, I think there is a good chance I would have loved them without the shows.  They didn't look like the cartoons and the cartoons didn't really influence the ponies I wanted most but it did sometimes influence who I didn't want. Sparkler.

[Zapper]

I'm an animal lover.  As a kid I was really into horses  (...)
It was almost like the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe for me.  The pegasus ponies could travel between worlds through some misty, magical, unseen portal in the sky.  And one day, maybe they would come and take me the way they had Megan. 

This. As a little girl I just loved that fantasy of a bunch of magical talking horses bringing me into their magical world and going on adventures with them as the special/chosen one/hero. I wasn't lonely but as horse crazy as I was, the idea of hanging out with talking animals in a DnD land was preferable to hanging out with everyday humans in boring humanworld

But the nostalgic aspect is not everything. I just enjoy the franchise, I like engaging with the stories and characters. That's why I got to love characters from later gens even more than the G1ers. And G3 makes up the majority of my herd nowadays because I simply love their designs so much.

Nostalgia for G1 made me a collector, that's where my roots are. So to speak. That's why G1 will always have that special place in my heart.
Especially my very first pony. I have a photo of toddler me playing with her. It's so sweet

[Wildshadow]

So I didn't exist when G1 was around. By the time G3 was out, perhaps in its late years, I was going back and watching G1 myself, but I.... don't really feel like I ever really understood it. There are a lot of things I like about it, but I don't feel like I see the same things in it that everyone else does. I never really understood how people fell for Firefly the one time she ever showed up, or why everyone seemed to like Gusty so much even though she generally just seems to be a grouch in the show from what I can tell.

I love G1 and a lot of what it has to offer, I've especially been getting into the comics lately, but I want to understand how and why people got into the show the way they did. It's something I've been curious about for years. o: Is it all nostalgia? What do/did you like about G1? Who are your favorite characters, and what about them makes you like them so much? Do you like them only for what you saw in the show, or do you see something more in the characters? And, I pose these same questions for the world itself, too, if you really like the world the ponies live in. c:

I'm so curious about the minds of those of you who had the opportunity to be fans of G1 while it was first being aired. I would absolutely love to hear anything you have to say about it!

I don't remember when I fell in love with MLP, maybe I enjoyed horses and they where colorful? That goes for the show as well but it just struck me as amazing. I keep wanting to say my sister would tape the show off the tv (ahh WTTV-4...) when I went to elementary school but I'm sure it was her suggestion and my dad did it, since she's a year younger than me xD (She was probably in PM Kindergarten) and when I got home we'd watch them. I still have some of those tapes though I haven't watched them in years T.T I need to find them....

Anyway, I some how enjoyed the episodes when they would get captured and then some how get free o.O a LOT of that ended up in playing with my toys xD other toys capturing the ponies and then escaping from the villains. or even playing make believe with my sister had some of that going on. Man I remember one time, after watching Flight To Cloud Castle, walking around one of the sheds in my old back yard and we both were calling out "Ariel" the way Garth(?) was saying it in the episode xD

Then after we moved into an apartment complex, Disney was saying they were going to start showing MLP and I was so excited. The 'commercial' they played stating that had the baby sea ponies singing their song and when we went to the pool at the apartments, I was swimming about singing that song. and around the same time, we went to a Blockbuster to rent a VCR and they had MLP tapes so it was my first time watching the first special. I watched it so many times and almost started to hate it but got over it to look at the details in it and loved it all over again. 

(oh geeze I'm wordy x.X)

My sister and I one time got out the food cans and made a castle and the TMNT we had (might have been Leo and Raph), they captured them for their castle...

I loved all the characters when I watched the show, even to try and mimic all the voices when I got to memorizing scenes and songs , only until my mom brought home plush Surprise and Baby Surprise, when she worked at Goodwill one time for Christmas presents, was when I fell in love with Surprise.

Then when they suddenly started the MLP Tales, I was shocked but also in love cause it was ponies doing human things. and around that time I didn't have friends at school and it was getting horrible for me. All I wanted to do was be a MLP so I just gobbled up Tales and day dreamed of being a pony = P My Sweet Heart Sisters became my Tales ponies xD

So now my favorite characters from the show is Surprise, Spike and Danny. and I try to collect all I can from the show and movie 
(I could go on forever....)

[Glistening Rainlight]

(oh geeze I'm wordy x.X)

Oh please, don't worry about it! I am loving every moment reading what everyone has to say haha. I've ended up staying so disconnected from fellow older gen fans for so long that getting to learn about you and the others is an absolute delight! ^u^

I guess I was too old for MLP Tales when it came out, i never liked the scenario with them being too human-like with buses and what not so I never got into it and I don't understand how it's so loved (maybe it had good stories, didn't bother to watch it enough to tell :p), so in that way I can understand you about the G1 animations.
RAMC still the best pony animation through all the gens though despite its too quick and easy ending.

In a weird way I found them being so human-like both its greatest strength and its greatest weakness. It was easier to stick them in more modern, relatable situations. Though I have to admit, fanfiction did a lot to improve my perspective of them as what I read brought some of the magic back into the world.

I bought the MLP Movie and later the boxset for my daughter and I to watch. I still enjoy going through it, as I do several other childhood cartoons. Never did find the Tales boxset anywhere, but I watched a few eps on Daily Motion and it still holds up fairly well.

I thought you could buy it online? Granted, I don't know if it's specifically a boxed set, but I believe I've seen most of that stuff, including Tales, available on Amazon. I'd like to get the boxed sets myself, but alas I'm a bit short on funds to do it with.

I'd really have to put a lot more time into the show before I could definitively name my favorite episodes/arcs, but certainly a few on your list are ones I like too, from both main and Tales. c: ....Pun not intended. Certainly I quite like Tirek, the witches, Grogar, and Somnambula as well though. ^u^ I loved how effective Grogar and Somnambula in particular were with their plans.

Rescue at Midnight Castle captured my heart when it came out.  It was easily the best thing I'd ever seen before and for many years after.  There just wasn't anything like it at the time.

Honestly that's probably going to be a big takeaway for me from all of this. Between this sentiment and some of the stuff I've found myself discovering lately, I think it's starting to make sense to me what kind of atmosphere this show was introduced into. I've never gone back and watched any other 80s cartoons, at least not unless they were still airing when I was a kid, so I've had very little sense of what people had to pick from so no sense of how new an idea MLP might have been. I've heard that a lot, but it's one thing to hear people say it and another to actually have some context for it.

~~~

All of this said, I definitely share sentiments with the others here who have mentioned wanting to escape to the pony world. I was very much like that growing up with G3. Everything seemed so nice all the time, nobody ever really hurt anybody else and they all accepted each other, quirks and all. Plus they only ever seemed to have fun and eat sweets, even managing to have fun doing stuff that generally wasn't fun because they did it with friends. Of course, having G3 as my main gen didn't stop me from wanting to be a twinkle-eyed flutter/fairy pony hahaha