I LOVE flocked ponies. I think they might actually be my favorite gimmick. Their little fuzzy faces are just so cute. When I got my first SS, Cupcake, I was surprised at how nice and thick the flocking was. I thought it was going to be like those flocked LPS, where the flocking is short and thin and rubs off easily. I'm surprised they didn't make any flocked ponies in any of the later gens.

That being said, I like the purpose-made So Soft Ponies better than the rereleased ones from Y3. The deflocked Shady, Magic Star, Wind Whistler, ect. are a little too oversaturated in color without their flocking,  and lose a lot of their appeal to me. On the other hand, a lot of the old characters lose a lot of their detail with their SS versions, like the wings on Heart Throb's symbol.

 I'm pretty selective with the ponies I buy since I have limited space and money, so I try to find ones with their flocking in decent collection, but some wear on their ears, hooves, or wings is fine by me.

So last week, I bought a small lot of G1's off Ebay, and finally got around to cleaning them all up. One of them, Blossom, has something peculiar going on with her body, and I couldn't get them off with soap or a magic eraser.


As you can see from the pics, she has specks all over. They're mostly on her right side, but there are some everywhere on her body (not on the head, which is also slightly mismatched in color).  At first, I thought it might be pindot, but I haven't been able to find many good pictures of MLP pindot to compare. It looks less like spots of mold, and more like she has enlarged pores. They are very difficult to see unless looking directly up close. I opened her up and her inside is completely normal.  Is this what pindot does, or is something stranger happening, like the plastic disintegrating? And whatever it is, what can I do to fix this?

So today on Reddit, I saw someone post their massive collection of Bluey related merchandise. While I agree that the amount of things they own and probably will never use is a bit overkill, the comments seemed to have an anti-collecting rhetoric to them. Many people said that this much merchandise was overconsumption and ultimately wasteful.  That it’s selfish for adults to keep toys on a shelf when there are kids that would love to play with them. That it’s just another 60 tons of plastic headed for the landfills. That their obsession of something made for kids is unhealthy, and cannot be compared to collecting merchandise for something “adult” like Star Wars. Any rebuttal of “it makes them happy!” was followed by people criticizing happiness being derived by owning things. For good measure, there were also people making backhanded comments about MLP collecting, insinuating that it’s equally as creepy.  I’ve also seen similar comments on MLP collector’s instagrams.

This made me kind of feel kind of guilty about collecting MLP.  Is collecting things, especially if they’re second hand, inherently wasteful? I haven’t been collecting for long, but I always make sure to get ones I genuinely like, and don’t spend too much at once.  Is it shallow that something that makes us happy is ultimately a mass produced toy? For me, being an MLP fan/collector is much more than buying ponies-it’s connecting with fellow collectors, and using the franchise as an inspiration for art and writing. I’ve loved MLP for almost my whole life, and it’s become part of who I am. Do people really thing it’s creepy or a sign of issues to collect ponies these days? (I swear, the G4 fandom ruined everything when it comes to how the general public perceives MLP and the people who like it). 

The argument that really got to me was the “why are you keeping the toys away from the poor little children? Toys are made to be played with, not looked at!!” one. Is it really looked down upon to find cheap ponies second hand, and take the time to clean them up and lovingly display them when they could have gone to a child instead, even if they have already been loved for 20-40 years?

I know I’m blowing this way out of proportion, and that as MLP collectors, we will all disagree, but these comments made me question whether it’s “moral” to collect ponies or not for a minute (although nothing will make me stop collecting MLP or give away my collection).

So I was thinking the other day about the G3 Core 7, and how I just don't understand why Hasbro made the decisions they did with this refresh. I somewhat understand that they wanted to have some characters become the face of the brand for merchandising purposes, but I don't know why they chose the ponies they did.

It could be argued that Hasbro wanted to tie the toyline and movies together more, but they could have used characters that had already been established such as Minty, Wysteria, Starcatcher, or Rarity. They instead decided to choose the oddest group of ponies and try and force kids to love them, while erasing the 300+ other ponies from existence. Pinkie Pie and Rainbow Dash were obvious shoe-ins, but they decided to change Dash's voice and personality, making her traits less unique and unfamiliar to those who saw her in the earlier movies. The only other character from earlier that went unchanged was Scootaloo, also a strange choice seeing as she never appeared in any cartoons and only had one toy release. Then for some reason, they took Cherry Blossom, but gave her the name of another pre-existing pony, who had a prominent role in previous cartoons, which I don't understand at all. I understand even less the decision to take Toola Roola, a pony whose name is a reference to an Irish song, tying in with her Celtic symbol, and slap the name on a completely different art-themed pony, where the name makes no sense. There was no reason they couldn't have made Toola 2 a completely original character. Starsong and Sweetie Belle are brand new to the Core 7 refresh, so I don't have much to say, except that they didn't even let Starsong be completely unique-her Cutie Mark is the same as Silver Glow!

Not to mention, it's just a weird selection of characters from a group standpoint. 3/7 ponies are pink, and all of them have pink somewhere on them. I get that pink sells, but it makes the limited number of characters look even more limited. They needed a green pony in there (hint hint).

Honestly, I don't even know why the Core 7 refresh was made in the first place. I don't think Hasbro understood why kids were so drawn to MLP, especially at a time when it wasn't as character and media driven as G4/5. Apparently around this time MLP sales were getting low, because kids became more interested in LPS instead. As an LPS kid around this time, who recently lost interest in MLP, I was into LPS because of the collectibility and huge number of pets you could get. So how does Hasbro try and boost MLP sales? By limiting the number of ponies you can get!

This era was a harbinger of sorts for what MLP would become for the next decade and a half. I understand having a focus group of characters, especially for a TV show-other toy lines have done this for decades. But just because there are main ponies doesn't mean that no other ponies can exist, or that nobody will buy them. G4 had loads of characters in the show that you'd think would be perfect toy material, but never existed-the reformed changelings, the Kirin, the student six, the Pillars of Equestria-If you didn't know better, you'd think the inclusion of all these characters was to push toys, but Hasbro was too busy selling Pinkie Pie with a new hat instead of Thorax or Autumn Blaze. The popularity of background ponies like Muffins and Lyra was because fans enjoyed being imaginative and giving these incidental characters in the MLP world their own personalities and stories. Fans of all ages have been making their own OC ponies and giving them their own personalities and stories. Not even the most die-hard fans are tied so hard to FIM canon that they will not accept any character that is not one of the Mane Six. Kids are no different than Bronies in that regard. Give them a random character like Dewdrop Dazzle or Snowcatcher, and they can imagine their role in the world of Equestria and their relationships with the Mane 6 and other characters. TV tie-ins and toy variety don't have to be mutually exclusive, and I don't know why this big toy company seemingly doesn't know that.


What are your thoughts on the Core 7 15 years later, and are there any other decisions made about MLP that make you go "Hmmm"?

Not crazy about her color scheme, but her symbol and name are too cute!

I stopped by the toy isle at Target this weekend and came to the conclusion that my biggest gripe with G5 is that it seems like Hasbro just doesn’t get what MLP even is anymore? Like the concept of a My Little Pony is basically impossible to mess up. It’s just a colorful plastic horse with long pretty hair to brush!

But Target had a grand total of 4 different MLP products, only one of which falls under that category, the brushable opaline. There was also the Marestream set, a multi pack of the posable figures, one (1) of the Mini World things, and a set of blind bags they had the gall to sell for $20. I know there have always been minifigure spin-off lines, but the brushables were always the main attraction, and at G3 and G4’s peaks, there was always at least half an aisle of them, not a few boxes buried by the (much higher quality) Rainbow High and OMG dolls.

I honestly think the MLP toyline (and the franchise as  a whole) is on autopilot at this point. Hasbro seems to think that due to the success of G4, anything with the MLP name slapped on it is sufficient, and haven’t bothered to do anything interesting aside from replacing the mane 6 with another repetitive cast of characters. The other posters are right in that MLP just seems to be a brand name to slap on various merch and not a core toy brand anymore. It's very telling that they're making stuff like the Equestria Girls and Baby Alives already when G5 doesn't really have many pony toys to its name 2 years in.

I wanted to like this, and I do think it was better than the special, but it took me awhile to get through it because I honestly got kind of bored.

 I really dislike Pipp's social media schtick, I find it annoying and I think it will really date the show in the future. Ponies having smartphones is one thing, but Pipp constantly taking selfies and making Clip Trots as large parts of the plot just gets kind of annoying. I wish she was more of a creative singer, like we saw hints of in Izzy Does It, and less of a vapid influencer.

Zipp's my favorite, she's always been. Although it seems like she's the only one who cares about the plot and all the others are made out to be really dumb just to have it work.

I wish we got to explore more locations than Maretime Bay, it's easily the most boring of the three main towns, and the lack of budget to add background characters makes it sad and empty.

That dragon is ugly and annoying. Looks like a Newborn Cutie with the voice of Bibble from Barbie Fairytopia. I'm just still not vibing with the character designs in general. It's like they took the stylized face shape of G4 and tried to make it more details and proportional and it just doesn't look right. I don't find the ponies cute. Twilight's cameo is probably the worst of this.

I still don't like the connection to G4, it feels just so disjointed, and like Hasbro only tossed that in at the last minute to get older fans interested. I don't buy that Twilight took away magic that quickly just because ponies were mean to each other. FIM literally had a whole episode about how you shouldn't give up something just because you're scared of it going awry (the Kirin episode).

I have to say, I do love Misty. She's so dorkily cute in her attempts to be evil. I wish Opaline did more than just sit in her lair and have Misty do all the heavy lifting though.

I'm honestly thinking about just checking out of current MLP at this point, because the shows and toys aren't impressing me, and instead just focusing on the older gens and the new Basic Fun stuff.