Festival of Licensing starts, but where my pony info at

[SweetLemons]

At this point I just want good quality toys with nice silky hair and come in many different shades/different characters. If the Mane 6 get some releases here and there that’s fine, I just don’t want them to be at the forefront anymore as they were in G4. They had their heyday, and it’s time for some new blood in the brand, but I’m okay with them popping up once a season/wave in the form of cameos. New innovation on the brand is also an expectation I have, and I would love to see what they come up with.

[Leave a Whisper]

So? The balance was excellent and there were a crap ton of toys to collect that weren't Pinkie/Cheerilee/Rainbowdash with MAYBE 1 or 2 new characters short changed every couple of years.

Tales did not oversaturate the G1 line.

 We're allowed to be tired of Hasbro's extremely obnoxious obsession all we want. Plus the damn Mane Suxx aren't moving on the shelves, so that tells me the target audience is tired of it too and its not working anymore.

Yes Bumblebee, Optimus, Megatron, Grimlock, Soundwave and Starscream may be pushed to the point where people are getting tired of them, but Hasbro still keeps a healthy and diverse balance of old, new, popular and obscure characters on the shelves.

Little girls aren't brainless goldfish who have forgotten they have 6 packed-in Raritys at home.

[banditpony]

So? The balance was excellent and there were a crap ton of toys to collect that weren't Pinkie/Cheerilee/Rainbowdash with MAYBE 1 or 2 new characters short changed every couple of years.

Tales did not oversaturate the G1 line.

 We're allowed to be tired of Hasbro's obnoxious obsession all we want. Plus the damn Mane Suxx aren't moving on the shelves, so that tells me the target audience is tired of it too and its not working anymore.

We have no details on what the toy line entails, unless I missed something.

Right now we know that the movie will have 1) a new "core" and 2) segway with mane 6.

And I agree -- you can be tired of whatever... but we don't know anything yet.

[Taffeta]

There's a certain irony in the indignation about M6 fatigue. I really don't understand it, but it does seem more productive if you want to know why someone doesn't like the M6 to ask them, rather than discussing their reasons as though they aren't reading the thread and able to contribute o.O.

My own personal dislike of the M6 is twofold, but it doesn't relate to bronies at all. I actually don't know much about how bronies see any of the M6, my brony fatigue is to do with the hostility to earlier generations, and not how they see their own generation.

So for me it's the repetitive toys on the one hand, which means I'm just sick ofg seeing them on the shelves when there are so many other options they could have used. It reminds me of Shera who did the opposite - promoted only a handful of characters while selling a ton of different ones. That was also pretty annoying for me as a kid too

The other reason is that I really don't like Pinkie Pie or Rainbow Dash's characters. I don't have a major objection to the personalities of the others, but I do have big issues with their moralising about friendship and the awkward way that message sometimes opens up problematic debates. But that's the show overall.

I never found Pinkie Pie's humour funny, she's not really random or amusing, she's just annoying to me personally. That is just my opinion, though. I didn't like G3 PP either, but that was more the appearance of the toy than anything else. I really didn't like Pinkie Pie's "I can do what I like" attitude in the EQG special with Sunset Shimmer turning back time, and the fact she's basically immune to learning any lessons.

With Rainbow Dash, it was two incidents - one, the story (with Pinkie!) when they destroyed the statue of the Griffons and then said it didn't matter because friendship was more important. Smacked of colonialism 101. And the other was the way Dash made the animals race to prove themselves to her, and treated the tortoise who eventually became her pet - it was an unhealthy relationship and I didn't like how it was constructed.

So those are my reasons, personally.

These are also really why I don't want to stay in Equestria. I don't like the way these awkward conundrums have come up by trying to force friendship as though it's something that can be imposed universally by the same set of behaviours. I want a clean break from that world for those reasons. I don't think it's a healthy one at this point, or that the M6 are really helpful role models.

Going back to other generations, we had the first M6 concept in G1, with the Tales ponies, but MLP Tales didn't last long enough to really become annoying. They did saturate the merchandise and the market, though, for those two years. All pony merch in those years feature the 7 characters, and there are 2 versions of 3/7. That was the direction Hasbro were going in. We should maybe be grateful G1 ended before it became oppressive.

There's a similar concept of core characters in G2 as well, but the lack of a US release after 1999 kind of makes that a bit less obvious, ponies having different names and all. I noticed Wiki refers to Sundance and Sunsparkle like they are different ponies on one page- they're not, but the different name gives the impression they are xD.

And the core 7 came really late in G3, so it's kind of easier to absorb. I stopped following G3 when that happened, though, because different characters are really important to me in the toyline.

So it's not necessarily an anti-M6 campaign or limited to G4. The problem with G4 is simply that the M6 happened and then didn't move on. They stuck with the same core cast for the whole period, and are still mostly doing so for PL (reminiscent of 3.5/ponyville and the core). I don't understand why it's weird to be fed up with that, or why all negative opinions of G4 must be because of the behaviour of bronies.

[Nemesis]

There's a certain irony in the indignation about M6 fatigue. I really don't understand it, but it does seem more productive if you want to know why someone doesn't like the M6 to ask them, rather than discussing their reasons as though they aren't reading the thread and able to contribute o.O.

I’m sorry if that came off as accusatory—I didn’t ask anyone in particular to give reasons because I was trying to encompass the fandom and adult MLP collectors as a whole, rather than just the people posting on this thread.

Again, I completely sympathize with the rerelease fatigue! I’d REALLY rather that G5 ended that. It just seems like a large chunk of the collecting community are leveling that frustration at G4/FiM/M6 as a whole, rather than poor toy design and distribution. While I don’t personally care if someone hates or loves a fictional character, it seems kind of disrespectful to fans who enjoy G4/FiM/M6 to constantly throw around terms like “the mane sucks” and talk about how trash it all is. When G1-3 hate first started floating around in the brony communities, I know a lot of us were miffed at them for calling everything pre-FiM garbage, or saying the original ponies looked like hippos.

It reminds me of the old G2 hate and how that divided the fandom, and I guess that’s what bothers me, really. It goes on in every fandom that’s lasted long enough to get a second generation or reboot. People liking or disliking different things is fine and dandy. Taking issue with how something is portrayed in a series is also completely valid. But calling the things other people like stupid or obnoxious just kind of seems excessive, IMO (again, aiming this at the MLP fandom as a whole, not you in particular). I’m not defensive of G4 or the M6 themselves (they’re far from my favorite MLP iteration), but of the fans who enjoy them and feel uncomfortable or looked down upon by other segments of the community.

[Taffeta]

@Nemesis, it wasn't aimed at you particularly or especially anyone specifically on this thread, but I just wanted to point out that criticising something or having a negative opinion of it is not some kind of conspiracy against G4 caused by bronyism (at least not for me) but a valid personal observation on the series/line/whatever.

The reason it bothers me is because if I say I don't like the G1 animation, or prefer the comic characterisations, or whatever, mostly nobody bats an eyelid. Nobody has yet called me to heel for comparing Sundae Best ponies to weapons of mass destruction, either.

...So if I can criticise elements of my own preferred and main generation with more or less no issue, why is it not okay for me - or anyone else - to say we don't like the M6 or Equestria without it being turned into a bigger issue?

I am all in support of reducing inflammatory comments about other generations, but some common sense needs to be used here as well.

And suggesting it's all about the bronies implies that there are no reasons that anyone could dislike the G4 line or the show. When there are actually good and valid reasons that people can dislike both.

...I will say that I am also resigned to a TV series basis. But I don't really see why that automatically must mean reliance on the G4 world except for a lack of originality/desire to cash in on existing media or concepts. It would be so easy to invent a new world for new characters, so it's a disappointment that they haven't done so. But it's a question of whether it's Equestria they want, or a way to keep the M6 merch alive that's really driving this. And I would assume the latter, given that it's going to centre on what Hasbro can sell. It's cheaper to keep some of the same characters in circulation.

I'm not going to shun it without knowing what all the details are. I just feel strongly that the G4 world has basically broken itself by hinging on ONE moral message at the expense of a whole lot of others. And after this long, it wouldn't hurt to take a different approach.

[Nemesis]

Nobody has yet called me to heel for comparing Sundae Best ponies to weapons of mass destruction, either.

I missed that conversation, and now I’m genuinely curious.

...desire to cash in on existing media or concepts.

^
Hasbro’s thinking in a nutshell. MLP is (for better or worse) an iconic, recognizable brand. A big part of its marketing is going to be based around “X and Y worked for us before, so...”. That’s a bit disheartening, but it’s the route most long-lived franchises follow.

On that note, I’d like to bring up how often Transformers ends up compared to MLP in terms of variety vs. rereleases. As a fan of almost every iteration of TF to date, it strikes me that the last time they really and truly “started fresh” with a new cast of characters and themes was in the 90s with Beast Wars. While there are many, many characters in TF, and there’s a healthy selection to choose from in any given toyline... the same characters are still being recycled from G1 and Beast Era. They have new looks, new molds, new stories, and new gimmicks, but even the background characters are usually based on existing ones from previous gens. New characters pop up here and there, but they are the exception rather than the rule.

Comparatively speaking, MLP has reinvented itself in virtually every incarnation to date. G2 was all fresh faces, and so was G3. G4 used a handful of familiar names, but attached them to very different designs and personas. MLP has never been as story/character-based as TF, so jettisoning the cast from past gens never felt like a huge departure from the core of the brand. On the other hand, TF fans tend to complain if there is a LACK of returning characters. My point being, I think people want very different things from MLP and TF respectively. We actually saw far more new MLP characters in the last ten years than we did TFs. So unless someone is talking about the other (non-M6/royalty) characters within G4 not getting toys or merch, saying that TF (by contrast) gets endless new characters each line isn’t quite correct.

[Leave a Whisper]

There's a certain irony in the indignation about M6 fatigue. I really don't understand it, but it does seem more productive if you want to know why someone doesn't like the M6 to ask them, rather than discussing their reasons as though they aren't reading the thread and able to contribute o.O.

I’m sorry if that came off as accusatory—I didn’t ask anyone in particular to give reasons because I was trying to encompass the fandom and adult MLP collectors as a whole, rather than just the people posting on this thread.

Again, I completely sympathize with the rerelease fatigue! I’d REALLY rather that G5 ended that. It just seems like a large chunk of the collecting community are leveling that frustration at G4/FiM/M6 as a whole, rather than poor toy design and distribution. While I don’t personally care if someone hates or loves a fictional character, it seems kind of disrespectful to fans who enjoy G4/FiM/M6 to constantly throw around terms like “the mane sucks” and talk about how trash it all is. When G1-3 hate first started floating around in the brony communities, I know a lot of us were miffed at them for calling everything pre-FiM garbage, or saying the original ponies looked like hippos.

It reminds me of the old G2 hate and how that divided the fandom, and I guess that’s what bothers me, really. It goes on in every fandom that’s lasted long enough to get a second generation or reboot. People liking or disliking different things is fine and dandy. Taking issue with how something is portrayed in a series is also completely valid. But calling the things other people like stupid or obnoxious just kind of seems excessive, IMO (again, aiming this at the MLP fandom as a whole, not you in particular). I’m not defensive of G4 or the M6 themselves (they’re far from my favorite MLP iteration), but of the fans who enjoy them and feel uncomfortable or looked down upon by other segments of the community.

Of course that particular frustration is going to be lveled at it. No other generation of pony has had such obsessiveness in pushing a handful of toys on their shelves to the point of extremism, further aggravated by making new ponies come with a pack in of a M6.

The Bore Core was annoying, but M6 Fever is on a whole other level.

 TMNT can get away with it because its a small and focused cast and that is alright. But even then, I sincerely doubt most kids and older fans have 50 Michelangelos, 10 Splinters, 20 Shredders and 36 Raphaels.

 MLP has tons of characters and tons of non-characters so it does not work, yet Hasbro continues to push, push, push this strategy.

There are some other companies that do the same thing and its fans are JUST as frustrated.

Really? Transformers hasn't? Then I must have imagined the new characters in Rescue Bots. It may not have a big cast, but Heatwave and Chase get plenty of toys. Moreso then holdovers Optimus and Bumblebee.

And there was nothing BUT new characters in Botbots.

Prime, RiD15 and Cyberverse brought in some new characters as well like Knock Out, Thunderhoof, Windblade, Fix-It, Hammerbyte, Fracture and Wild Wheel.

 There was that all girl combiner Victorion. 

Heck even Movie-formers, as much as I despise Bay's style brought in new characters like Shatter, Barricade,  Dropkick, Steelbane and Cogman. And none of those lines were in the 90s.

 If Transformers can do it, MLP can go back to doing it. And when was the last time MLP did it? The early 2000s.

[Taffeta]

I actually get quite upset when people try to compare what is just criticism on a board thread to what happened with G2.
There is such a difference between saying you are fed up with the mane 6 and with Equestria, and drawing pictures of G1 ponies killing Twilight, while creating multiple identities to harass you off the internet.

Some of the brony actions towards older gens may be in that category but I have never seen anyone do anything (on either side of the equation) here on the Arena that comes even close to that. Heated discussion and differences of opinion yes. Genuine malice, no. 

As I said, some common sense is required when dealing with this.

If we must talk about bronies, I know not all G4 fans are spewing hate. At the same time, not many of them have done much to mediate or stop the negativity from that side to this. Again, I am not talking about Arena people here, but the g4 community in general. Someone commented in the ponycon discord earlier that every con they had been to before this they had encountered snide comments about older generations from g4 fans. Not mad bronies. Just G4 fans. Forgive me if that makes me less sympathetic to them disliking criticsm of G4.


Poor toy design and toy distribution is also not something you can separate from G4/the M6/whatever. That is also part of G4. So is poor QC, repetitive releases, etc etc. Each gen has its own challenges but they are not separate from the gen itself.

I have bigger issues with the moralising in FIM than with any of the toy line stuff, though. And that is also part of g4.

[Leave a Whisper]

As long as that particular batch of ponies is nowhere to be seen in the toys and merchandise, as long as Hasbroken doesn't go on another extreme-obsessive streak with any new characters and as long as the toys look like ponies and are of decent quality, that'll be fine. But hearing them being dragged along into the new gen makes me feel that they will continue on destroying the brand.

[Nemesis]

Really? Transformers hasn't? Then I must have imagined the new characters in Rescue Bots. It may not have a big cast, but Heatwave and Chase get plenty of toys. Moreso then holdovers Optimus and Bumblebee.

And there was nothing BUT new characters in Botbots.

Prime, RiD15 and Cyberverse brought in some new characters as well like Knock Out, Thunderhoof, Windblade, Fix-It, Hammerbyte, Fracture and Wild Wheel.

 There was that all girl combiner Victorion. 

Heck even Movie-formers, as much as I despise Bay's style brought in new characters like Shatter, Barricade,  Dropkick, Steelbane and Cogman. And none of those lines were in the 90s.

 If Transformers can do it, MLP can go back to doing it. And when was the last time MLP did it? The early 2000s.

I wasn’t really counting Botbots, since they’re so divergent from the rest of the TF universe (adorable, though!). But if I were comparing them to MLP toys, I’d say they’re most analogous to the blind bag minis, which featured A TON of new characters.

Rescue Bots borrowed names/themes for Blades and Heatwave, and heavily rereleased the main cast, to the point of nearly excluding additional characters. As someone who was scouring the shelves for the /one/ Dani figure (released with a main character minifig), I can hardly say it was handled better than FiM. The distribution of new vs. rerelease characters was almost the same pattern. Granted, RB had less characters to work with, but I can’t decide whether that makes the poor availability of the existing ones better or worse

And yes, I acknowledged that there HAVE been new characters across various TF media (I scoured the shelves for them, as well), but they are strongly outweighed by returning ones. FiM also introduced new characters like Starlight Glimmer, Cocoa Pommel, Coloratura, Cheese Sandwich, Shining Armor, Flurry Heart, Tempest Shadow, Songbird Serenade, all of the seaponies/hippogriffs, Discord, Chrysalis, and many, many others. All of the ones I listed were represented in varying degrees across the toyline, much like all of the new TF characters from the last decade. And thrown into every wave containing those new TFs were a half-dozen or so familiar faces. I’m not saying that formula is a good idea for MLP, as I feel like MLP has traditionally focused on a “collect ‘em all“ mentallity, but to say that Hasbro favors TF with giant waves of all-new characters isn’t quite right. If anything, I think most of us older MLP collectors are AFRAID of MLP going to a TF-esque format, with Twilight and Pinkie returning to headline every new series or reboot, surrounded by a supporting cast of mostly returning (albeit reinvented) characters. That’s exactly what TF Animated, Prime, the movies, WfC, etc. did (all of which I enjoyed and collected). It works well for TF, not so much for Pony.

At the end of the day, I agree with what most people are saying they want from G5. I want a new story, new style, and as many new characters as they can crank out. I don’t need any more M6 figures, and I don’t intend to buy any unless they’re radically different in design. But I do think it’s understandable that Hasbro is going to try and use the success of G4 to give G5 an initial boost. My biggest concern is that we’ll just end up with six or seven NEW characters who are perpetuated for ten years, but with an ongoing cartoon that’s almost inevitable... There just aren’t many shows like G1 MLP anymore, where the cast is constantly (and somewhat inexplicably) refreshed. I’d be happier with that personally, but it must not be a formula that works in today’s world.

As for the kind of people who make fanart of G4 ponies murdering G1 ponies or otherwise deride older gens... I absolutely find that disgusting. I just feel that being respectful of everyone’s preferences in generation or style is more conducive to a healthy community as a whole than simply retaliating with hate for G4 (again, referring to the larger MLP community—people are generally pretty civil on the Arena).

[Taffeta]

In fairness, the reason I stay on the Arena and not in the wider MLP community is because mostly here the worst you get is heated and impassioned debate.

But that's something I think that should be protected, and for all generations. I don't think it's a problem to be critical of something you don't like in a generation so long as you aren't making it into a personal vendetta.

The art example I made of a pony killing another pony was from the G2 conflict, and it was a G1 - I think Gusty - killing a G2 pony. I don't know if people do artwork of G4 killing G1 ponies = my point was to illustrate the difference between that event and this discussion. It's a matter of context.

I've posted this before but I wrote this during the G2 conflict. It basically sums up how I felt at that time, both as myself and in terms of the G2s, who bore the brunt of all that hate. I wrote it from the perspective of a G2 pony in that hostile environment.

I left it on my site all these years, because I think that it still matters. Unexpectedly G4 made it topical again.
http://www.etherella.com/scrapbook2/ponydream.htm

G4 fans are not all responsible for bad brony behaviour but it is incumbent on them to understand the wider impact of the actions of some G4 fans on the existing pony community. 

[LadyMoondancer]

I think the next pony gen will be much shorter then ten years.  MLP FIM was originally intended to be three years IIRC.  Like Twilight Sparkle becoming an alicorn was obviously supposed to be the stopping point.  But it was at its height of popularity so Hasbro just kept going.

Transformers cartoons usually last two to three seasons.  Littlest Pet Shop (2012) lasted 4 seasons.  Pound Puppies (2010) lasted three seasons. I think the max we'll see from a MLP cartoon in the future will be 4 seasons, but more likely 2 or 3.

About the G2 thing, back in the day I had someone tell me I was "racist" for disliking G2 and that it made me "a Nazi."  I remember ripping into them on the mailing list because WTF?

[Taffeta]

Sounds about right. It definitely went both ways.

[Leave a Whisper]

I think the next pony gen will be much shorter then ten years.  MLP FIM was originally intended to be three years IIRC.  Like Twilight Sparkle becoming an alicorn was obviously supposed to be the stopping point.  But it was at its height of popularity so Hasbro just kept going.

Transformers cartoons usually last two to three seasons.  Littlest Pet Shop (2012) lasted 4 seasons.  Pound Puppies (2010) lasted three seasons. I think the max we'll see from a MLP cartoon in the future will be 4 seasons, but more likely 2 or 3.

About the G2 thing, back in the day I had someone tell me I was "racist" for disliking G2 and that it made me "a Nazi."  I remember ripping into them on the mailing list because WTF?

Whaaaat?!?