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Pony Corral / Re: Did G5 flop?
« Last post by TheBeatlesPkmnFan42 on Yesterday at 10:09:57 PM »I've personally felt that MLP (strictly the toys themselves, not any attached media) has been on a downward spiral ever since Core 7.
One of the KEY aspects of MLP is the 'collect them all' nature which completely falls apart once you introduce a core group of characters - I think only G2 pulled this off somewhat successfully as it maintained a good blend of old characters with new looks and brand-new ones.
The second aspect is the tactility, which I feel has been lost with the ponies getting increasingly small and less... quality?
The hair doesn't feel nice any more (if it's not outright sculpted) and they're hard plastic. Poses are static and uninspired, gimmicks are obtrusive and get in the way of standard play...
I firmly believe if G4 hadn't had such a successful cartoon attached to it, it would have been dead in the water in a couple of years
Little late to quoting this here, but I absolutely agree. I did get into MLP via G4's cartoon, and so G4 of course will always hold a place in my heart, but the toys themselves were never as good as the generations prior to it, even if they were the first toys I started collecting.
As I got further into MLP, the collectability with the large amount of different ponies to collect in gens 1 to 3 were a huge part of what drew me to those past generations and ultimately led to me preferring them over G4 (and now G5). And yes the quality has gone down significantly, too. Though the concept of the Core 7 drags late G3/G3.5 down, at least even then the quality of the ponies were still pretty good. Early G4 quality was... alright? But about halfway through that it dipped significantly.
Completely agree that the success of FiM was the only reason G4 lasted as long as it did. I also think the G4 toyline could have done a little better if they'd took advantage of the cartoon's success more? Hasbro going in on releasing so many versions of the Mane 6 constantly when the FiM staff introduced so many characters was always a really strange decision to me. While it wouldn't have helped the issue of decreasing quality, I do think the G4 toyline could have been much more enjoyable to collect if Hasbro would have just made more various FiM characters into standard, widely released pony toys. We did get some toys of other characters, but a lot of them were either part of spin-off lines (like blindbags, Guardians of Harmony, etc), or had limited releases in specific store chains. Really a lot of missed opportunities.