First Look at G5 Toys

[ridi]

i just keep thinking the molded hair for boys mustve come from market research.  like maybe kids born in 2016 were confused by boys with long comb-able hair?

older kids, like 10+ maybe were okay? but I’m thinking the little kids werent tracking it

If that's the case, that's an awful regression I grew up with G1 and I had no problem assigning boy roles to some of my ponies for gender balance, and iirc other people on the arena have said they did the same. They're horses. I didn't think they looked like any particular gender.

[Pokeyonekenobie]

Maybe the molded hair on that Hitch is a prototype and he'll actually have brushable hair to go with his comb?

[gabumon]

^ maybe!


i think Hasbro of the 1980s is quite a different thing than Hasbro of 2020/2021.

the toy battlefield is quite different now - so many more options and apps and smart phones to compete with.  I don’t see Hasbro taking any risks with long-haired boys.

[Tropical_Sunset]

But they don't need to make long haired boys for them to be brushable. They just released a brushable set where Zipp has short brushable hair and it looks great. The boys still got molded helmet hair.

[RoseNoire]

^ maybe!


i think Hasbro of the 1980s is quite a different thing than Hasbro of 2020/2021.

the toy battlefield is quite different now - so many more options and apps and smart phones to compete with.  I don’t see Hasbro taking any risks with long-haired boys.

It feels really sad to imagine "boy with long hair" to be a risk in toy marketing. <<Be yourself ! It's okay to express yourself and be who you are ! But not too much, eh...>>.

[Wardah]

But they don't need to make long haired boys for them to be brushable. They just released a brushable set where Zipp has short brushable hair and it looks great. The boys still got molded helmet hair.

As short as it is it's still longer than the helmet hair on the boys.

[otocolobus_manul]

My guess is that it has nothing to do with kids and everything to do with outspoken parents screaming about toys "going against/confusing kids about traditional family values" or "turning their kids gay/trans/whatever" by having a male whose hair can be styled. I remember one time I was in Target and this very young boy wanted a toy and his mom got SUPER angry and was like "NO you can't have that it's a GIRL toy for GIRLS" and dragged him away like she thought the toy was gonna poison him. Something about boys doing traditionally feminine things makes people lose their minds, especially when it comes to children.

[serena-hime]

So! I recently got a bunch of the G5 toys (the Shining Adventures set, Singing Pipp and Hairplay Sunny) in the mail from Target and Amazon, so I thought I'd provide a little mini review of it all! LMK if this is too long and requires it's own thread lol

First of all, I can just say confidently now that Singing Pipp is my favorite toy of this generation so far; she's made with quality materials, her hair is excellent (nylon mane AND tail) and her head sculpt is the most aesthetically pleasing of all of them- it's definitely not super horsey (it's actually a little flatter than the mid-size G5 ponies- I'd say it's on par with G4), but it's the most expressive sculpt and looks more like a natural progression of the G4 aesthetics with a bit more horse-ness thrown in, especially in the body sculpting with the hooves and feathers. Her body is also a bit more robust than the other ponies, her legs and torso are thicker, altogether she just looks more like an MLP. I actually adore her so so much, and I really hope they do some reworking to the other ponies to look more like her; if they went with this head sculpt and pose for the rest of the line, I would have loved them from the start. I find myself smiling whenever I look at her lol.

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 I did have to take out her battery though because the music is annoying.

For the Shining Adventures set I'm just going to link to PrincessKittyDragon's review of them since it's very thorough, but I will add a few things; one, the tails on both this set and the hairplay ponies are polypropylene as expected, which is super disappointing and it feels gross, especially compared to the high quality nylon of the manes. And two, the rooting of the manes is just...weird, imo. I don't like the human hairlines, but more than that, I don't like how the hair is rooted like a doll; the G4 Fashion style ponies had wider hairlines than the brushables, but the rooting was still done in thick, uniform rows down the head so you could style it more like a horse. It's really hard to brush the hair across the neck for these ones, because it reveals bald spots like you'd see with a doll's rooting pattern. It's almost like it's not intended to be brushed sideways like a horse mane, and I don't like that at all. The only exception is Pipp by virtue of her hair being styled in a side pony, so it's rooted to fall on one side of the head already.

There's also a mold line going across the snout on the head sculpt for the SA/Hairplay pony head sculpt, which is pretty unsightly. Please just get rid of this sculpt and scale down Singing Pipp's head for them instead lol.


Also to note is that the Hairplay Sunny has a lighter hair color from the Shining Adventures Sunny, I prefer the hairplay one but the SA one is definitely more accurate to her design!

I do have something important to add, though- you CAN open them up and remove the tails! The heads pop off pretty easily (I hope they decide to go with a traditional MLP neck joint in the future because this will be a nightmare for children, plus it contributes to the 'human head on horse body' vibe) and the neck knob is a separate piece glued into the neck (I tested this on one of the boys, since I find them hideously ugly anyway).

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The only downsides here are that since the bodies are so thin and the necks are so long, it's really hard to pull the tail out from the inside- I had to push the tail through the body and pull it out through the neck with forceps.

Another issue is the vinyl is VERY dense and hard, too hard to soften with just a heating pad, so it's really difficult to pull a new tail through. I had to tug pretty hard to get Izzy's new tail through.

Overall I'm happy with my purchases, but I do think G5 needs a lot of tweaking from a sculpting and design perspective; I think the brushable ponies should be more proportioned like the singing Pipp, I think the mane rooting should be tweaked to be more reminiscent of a horse mane, I think the neck joint should go back to the traditional design and I think polypropylene is a curse and should be banished from this plane of existence- all of these tweaks would still maintain the core aesthetic they're going for, but improve the products exponentially.

I also think the eyebrows should go away, the lack of brow creates a lot more space on the forehead and actually draws more attention to the expressive eyes.

And um...the boys need a complete overhaul because they're just ugly. No saving them for me lol. They look like 90's skater boys on giraffe bodies.

I basically hate the smaller brushables so I'm never getting those as they are, but I will be getting more of these ponies and I need the Sunny styling head desperately lol.

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(apologies for the low res images, I'm too tired to take proper photos of them lol)

[ridi]

Thank you for the review, serena-hime! Wow, the picture of the two Pipps next to each other really makes the difference between the heads stand out. Singing Pipp's head definitely looks nicer, and she looks more complete with her headdress.

Why in the world would they use different hair types for the manes and tails

[PrincessKittyDragon]

Omg thanks for taking one apart so we can see how they work! I was very curious if the ball joint would be easy to get off with how hard the plastic is. It's good to know that tail replacement is still possible!

[Taffeta]

I'm still not feeling inspired to buy any of these, but it's interesting to see how they're put together and the differences between releases. Feels like a lack of consistency somehow within the same character..?

[serena-hime]

Thank you for the review, serena-hime! Wow, the picture of the two Pipps next to each other really makes the difference between the heads stand out. Singing Pipp's head definitely looks nicer, and she looks more complete with her headdress.

Why in the world would they use different hair types for the manes and tails

Thank you! I really hope the next wave will have some improvements to more closely resemble Singing Pipp's shape, she definitely has a more thoughtful design imo.

Sadly they've been doing the poly tails for years, I believe they started trickling in around the time when Twilight Sparkle got her wings or maybe a little before- eventually both the mane and tail were done with poly which was even worse lol.

[Leave a Whisper]

I'm glad part of the hair is nylon. Thanks for the break down on giving them a new tail serena.

[Dragonflitter]

Oh man, that plastic seam on the snout is so ugly! It's super noticeable in the pic of the two Pipps. Why would they do that?? 

[Leave a Whisper]

Oh man, that plastic seam on the snout is so ugly! It's super noticeable in the pic of the two Pipps. Why would they do that?? 
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