Lost MLP and Friends Song "Hurry" has been found!!!

[Taffeta]

I am not sure what might have offended about that. Although if you mean Celestial, that only refers to the stars and sky; it's an astronomical descriptor.

It was a, not-slur but later slur?, for Chinese people (we got trouble of this in Dr.Who with Celestial Toymaker, who got renamed).

That's interesting. I've heard my Taiwanese friends complain about other slurs and such but this one is new to me. Still, the name isn't Hasbro's name, and if it was, they would've been able to change it like they changed set names between the US and UK (eg Precious Pocket/Pocket Friends and so on). They wouldn't pull the whole line.

I wonder how many families had sewing machines in their homes at that time. We certainly never did, nor did anyone I went to school with...I didn't see a sewing machine until I hit secondary school, and we didn't have one at home until my sister needed it for her textiles a-level.

I mean, the thing is we're stabbing around in the dark at possibles, but it's really hard to pinpoint what one thing might have triggered the removal without more evidence. Any or all of the suggestions could be the reason.

I do think it's a censor cut though.

[Leave a Whisper]

 Gonna be honest, I really do think it's a time cut just because the shout factory set has issues for so many episodes on fewer discs. Not only are songs cut out, but sometimes the sound will disappear for a second, or if you try to skip episodes the picture can sometimes go all wonky just as examples.

 Shout Factory is usually pretty decent about their box sets but when they cut corners and cram like this, the quality suffers. I have another show set of theirs and the last season suffers from some of the aforementioned issues and have episodes crammed on them.

I truly doubt that some perceived non-existent offense or safety issue is to blame way back when. And if it is, then it's strictly a case of tapes-played-backwards, rather then one of Sunbow's faux pas.

A Little Piece of Rainbow and Good ol Days is gone. They didn't pull the Nightshade episode because of the disturbing allegations against Michael Jackson coming to light.

Not trying to be antagonistic to anybody, these are simply my thoughts on the matter. 

[Ponyfan]

I can't remember which release of the Jem DVDs I have, but as I said before, there are also a lot of changes even from script to episode, and with the multipart MLP eps, there are sometimes cut or changed scenes to make that division make sense. It strikes me there might have been multiple versions of many sunbow episodes and it could just be a case of which versions survive to now.

This is what I was getting at. You said it much better than I did.  Sunbow might not have kept every version of every episode and only have one type remaining. 

Do we know if the episode "Hurry" appeared in is the only one that doesn't have a song (excluding the specials here since we know those were cut to fit the MLP n Friends format) ?


Ponyfan

[aria_elwen]

I've always just thought it was a time issue, but my old VHS copy was missing episode 4 (this was the official Uk release back in the 90s  ) so Glass Princess has always been an odd one.
I think one episode of Tambelon is missing a song but I could be wrong.

Personally I wonder which version the library of congress has. 🤔 I'd never thought about it much until the whole debacle with 'saban moon' (US Live action remake of sailor moon that was thought completely lost) was found in their archives.

I know they have a copy: https://lccn.loc.gov/91791965 and they seem to have copies of other episodes as well but whether those copies are copies of the masters....

Edit to correct: https://catalog.loc.gov/vwebv/search?searchArg1=My+little+pony+&argType1=all&searchCode1=GKEY&searchType=2&combine2=and&searchArg2=&argType2=all&searchCode2=GKEY&combine3=and&searchArg3=&argType3=all&searchCode3=GKEY&year=1522-2022&fromYear=&toYear=&location=all&place=all&type=g%3F&language=all&recCount=25
If the link works. Ironically Glass Princess is the only story from the series but they have both specials and the film.

[Shadowperla]

I'd never thought about it much until the whole debacle with 'saban moon' (US Live action remake of sailor moon that was thought completely lost) was found in their archives.

THEY FOUND THAT?!!

[aria_elwen]

I'd never thought about it much until the whole debacle with 'saban moon' (US Live action remake of sailor moon that was thought completely lost) was found in their archives.

THEY FOUND THAT?!!

Yup! Only a couple of months ago I think.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=SdYD5StqHxk&t=0s

I watched it last month and it's very uhh...  I'm so glad it didn't get made/picked up.

[Carrehz]

Woof, got a lot of posts to catch up on LOL. Sorry - this turned out to be a loooong post

"Rainbow pony special was cancelled being 'too gay'" - first time I've ever heard THAT one. Doesn't make much sense to me; if it's the rainbow thing.... G1 has rainbows all over the place (a lot of 80s toys do!).... if it's because of two of the ponies nuzzling in that clip... that's nothing they'd cancel a whole special over. I wouldn't be surprised if that was a brony thing - though I would be surprised if any of them actually cared about our ancient fandom rumours enough to comment on them! - it just sounds like a rumour that'd come about in more recent times, you know? I could see someone saying in jest, perhaps.
(But yeah, I totally don't believe that special exists at all. I'm 100% sure it's just people misinterpreting what was just meant to be a generic "keep watching for the next adventure" advert.)

(Aside: god the narration in that ad is weird The narrator sounds stoned or something, it's kind of hilarious.)

Re: "Celestial" - First I've ever heard that word being an issue. I looked into it a bit and it seems to be an obscure, archaic slur - not something your average layperson would be aware of (when googling the Who ep you mentioned, I found more people talking about a... more well-known racial slur, that was used in said episode, than the "celestial" thing. Wikipedia's article on the origin of the moniker seems to suggest it had innocent origins and didn't originate as a slur, necessarily, FWIW). By and large, the word is used to mean space, galaxies, stars, etc. So I doubt it would be a problem in general, particularly given that a) we've had Princess Celestia since and b) the line is now being released under the name "Celestial Ponies" (unless they change it before release, I suppose).

But also most importantly - that could never have been a problem, because (unless I'm mistaken) we came up with that name! Hasbro's name for them was Fancy Swirl Ponies. I'm not sure where "Celestial" came from but I'm pretty sure it's a fan nickname, much like "Fairy Brights" which was another name we used to use for them. I'm not sure how or where either nickname came about, but the thing is that (IIRC) we had the art for them a good while before anyone involved with G1 came out and said anything about them, so in lieu of official names, they stuck. Even when the official names WERE discovered, they're still obscure because that info just hasn't been widely spread yet. (It doesn't look like their prototype backcard story is on the wiki, for example - I know I saw it recently - might've been on Tumblr? I know it's out there) So the Celestial name stuck... and it seems like Basic Fun have adopted it and it's become "ascended fanon" now. :B

(Aside from anything else.... you think HASBRO would come up with an elegant name like "Celestial Ponies"?!? )

Re: songs. Apart from the whole "Hurry" debacle, "The Return of Tambelon (Part 3)" and "Flight to Cloud Castle (Part 2)" are the only episodes that don't have a song. To my knowledge, they've ALWAYS been like this, they were never broadcast with a song like "The Glass Princess (Part 4)" was.
What muddies the waters is that they do appear to have intended there to be a song in "Tambelon". If you watch it, there's a bit where - it's been a while since I've seen it, so forgive me if I get any of the details wrong - but, basically, everyone's losing hope and are being all emo, and it REALLY feels like it's leading up to a rousing song, it's basically a classic "setting up for a song" G1 scene... and then there's an abrupt cut and the ponies are all "Yeah you're right Megan! Yay! Let's go save our friends!" etc.
Personally I think they did write a song for that scene, but cut it during the production stage because the episode ran overlong. That episode serial runs HOT, there's a LOT going on in it - snipping out a song that was probably pretty superfluous was likely an obvious choice. (It probably would've just been "Always Another Rainbow" 2.0 anyway ) But I don't think there'd be footage for that song or anything - IF such a thing ever existed - it's not something that ever aired on TV. As far as I know. I've never seen any sort of proof that that one was edited for reruns, anyway.

(People sometimes bring up "the lost Cloud Castle song" but I think it's just wishful thinking, to be frank. People want there to be a song, and I can see the logic... all other eps have songs, so this one MUST have had one cut, right?? But when you look at it, there's no obvious place for a song in the ep - not like there is with "Tambelon", where it's pretty obvious where a song would've gone. I suspect CCpt2 never even had a song written for it, or if it did, it was discarded very early on.)

If the reason for cutting it wasn't "let's try to fit in another few commercials", I do wonder if the safety reason for cutting it might have been the sewing machine. As a child I got the terrifying 'your grandma sewed straight through her thumb' lecture about the sewing machine, so I always regarded it with a great deal of trepidation, and even today I'm a nervous sewer. In contrast, we have the Bushwoolies all but throwing the fabric through the machine, singing about how quickly (and carelessly) they are sewing... I could see that as being a cause for concern in terms of imitable play. I would wager that more households in the 80s had sewing machines than today, and it could be a very real concern that a kid could hurt themselves trying to mimic the scene. That would be my best guess anyway!

YES - this is the sort of thing I meant earlier, when I was speculating perhaps someone decided it was "too imitable". Would that be a stupid reason to cut it? ABSOLUTELY - but censors don't think like that, seriously guys. Censors operate on completely different logic to normal folks like you and me - ESPECIALLY cartoon censors. They won't bat an eye at someone getting ripped in two, but god forbid Our Hero rides a skateboard without wearing his helmet and pads!! Yes, there's absolutely "worse" stuff (for lack of a better word) in the series... but this is a mundane, realistic sort of thing. Kids aren't gonna get turned into Stratadons by an evil centaur wizard, but it's possible, in theory, that they could get a hold of Mummy's sewing machine, try and reenact the episode, and end up minus a thumb. That's the sort of thing censors tend to look out for - is there any way this could possibly result in someone getting hurt.

I mean don't get me wrong, if that actually is why it got cut, then that's stupid as hell. I'm not saying I see a problem with it - I don't, the sequence is completely innocuous. I'm just saying that I could see S&P, or one of these other idiots who spend their day trying to find problems in everything, deciding it's Problematic (TM) and ordering it to be cut. I've heard of much stupider edits and S&P memos, stuff you'd never even dream of being a problem. For example (and I'm sorry to drag another show into the discussion!), the Powerpuff Girls ep "See Me, Feel Me, Gnomey" never aired in the US (but aired in other countries). For YEARS the commonly-accepted explanation for that was the use of strobe lighting effects in the ep (potential epilepsy triggers). Someone eventually asked the creator about it, and he revealed the actual reason it had gone unaired: S&P had decided one minor char looked too much like Jesus and one background looked too much like a cross (crucifix). Not even kidding. Of course that has nothing to do with MLP, but I'm just using it as an example of how completely nonsensical censorship (especially in toons!) can be, and why it is possible something similarly stupid happened here.

Gonna be honest, I really do think it's a time cut just because the shout factory set has issues for so many episodes on fewer discs.

The song is missing from EVERY release of this episode, though, it's not just a Shout Factory issue.

And I still don't see that it could be a time issue because no other eps were edited like this, as far as I know (the specials notwithstanding - they're a whole other thing) and "The Glass Princess" wasn't significantly longer with the song in place. Now if any of the other eps had had their songs snipped for reruns, and it was just that "Hurry" had never been reinstated... THEN I'd believe it was a time edit. As it is... I'm not seeing it, sorry.

(FWIW the wiki article for this ep says "the ep actually slows down after the song cut occurs, to make up for the loss of time", and I've heard that said before, but I don't remember noticing a slowdown on the Shout Factory release. Note to self - look up another copy of the ep and compare them. Not to spread rumours, but it could be that there's two edits of the ep... at this point NOTHING would surprise me )

Personally I wonder which version the library of congress has. 🤔 I'd never thought about it much until the whole debacle with 'saban moon' (US Live action remake of sailor moon that was thought completely lost) was found in their archives.

I know they have a copy: https://lccn.loc.gov/91791965 and they seem to have copies of other episodes as well but whether those copies are copies of the masters....

Edit to correct: https://catalog.loc.gov/vwebv/search?searchArg1=My+little+pony+&argType1=all&searchCode1=GKEY&searchType=2&combine2=and&searchArg2=&argType2=all&searchCode2=GKEY&combine3=and&searchArg3=&argType3=all&searchCode3=GKEY&year=1522-2022&fromYear=&toYear=&location=all&place=all&type=g%3F&language=all&recCount=25
If the link works. Ironically Glass Princess is the only story from the series but they have both specials and the film.

Oh man, if only pony fans were as dedicated as Sailor Moon fans were This would definitely be an interesting thread to follow IMO.

It strikes me there might have been multiple versions of many sunbow episodes and it could just be a case of which versions survive to now.

This is what I was getting at. You said it much better than I did.  Sunbow might not have kept every version of every episode and only have one type remaining.

This is slightly off-topic, but I know that one early DVD release of the Transformers cartoon used earlier (pre-broadcast/pre-retake) masters for at least some episodes - meaning a lot of eps suddenly had a bunch of (new ) animation errors, missing footage, etc. Wasn't there an issue with one of the Jem DVDs too - something like the colours being off? I seem to remember something about Pizzazz's hair... you'd probably know more about that than I would, Taffeta.

Pulling it back to ponies... I didn't want to open this can of worms before because I wasn't sure how relevant it was, and I was meaning to make a whole thread about it at some point, but.... there are differences between DVD releases of MLP and Friends. The Australian DVDs include recap bumpers AND the "to be continued" cards that were originally at the end of the multipart episodes - Shout Factory and Rhino's (I think it's Rhino, the older US release with the pink box that had G2 ponies on it) releases cut those out. I think they're missing some of them, but they do include them. And there's several different title cards for (the TV cuts of) Rescue at Midnight Castle and Escape from Catrina - I think every company that's released those two on DVD, has used a different version. I was looking all into it a while ago, but I had to put the project aside cause of lack of time, etc - I was looking into it again recently and was meaning to make a thread about it once I had five minutes to try and make sense of it all

But yeah point is, there are DEFINITELY multiple versions of these eps and I absolutely think Sunbow/Hasbro/etc haven't taken good care of their shows over the years. I think a big problem is that... frankly, compared to the fandoms for other Sunbow cartoons, MLP fans just don't care about this stuff as much. I mean, go onto the TFWiki and look up a random G1 episode - the lists of errors, nitpicks, etc run a mile long. (I haven't even ever watched Transformers, this is just stuff I've noticed while casually browsing the site!) There's info about model sheets and scripts and all sorts of behind-the-scenes stuff. And I know Jem fandom has a lot of info along those lines too. But MLP fans just don't have the same level of dedication to their cartoon - we're more focused on the toys - and in general no one involved in the release cares enough to see if there's anything that needs fixing, you know? We're just not as vocal about this stuff. (To be fair, it looks like there's a lot of fans-turned-pros in the TF fandom, which probably helps them communicate stuff like this to DVD releasers, etc. I don't think us pony peeps have any "ins" like that.)

(incidentally, that's my main theory on the mystery rainbow pony in RaMC too - they wanted some rep for that set but hadn't finalized any designs at that point)

I believe that may have actually been First Born, the porcelain pony. They have the same blunt hairstyle, and the mystery pony has a symbol similar to the logo on FB's back. I think they also have the same eye and bow colors.

On First Born, I can't remember why but I remember a whole discussion about this where people mostly decided that the animated pony probably wasn't linked to the ceramic? Maybe timing? I wish I recall why, but it's been a while.

Gonna try and keep this short 'n' sweet to avoid the post turning into even more of a filibuster But yeah we've had a few threads about that character. I think the First Born thing is just a happy coincidence - I don't remember exactly what was said before and I'm not going to try and get the Arena's search function to work now, it's late - but I think the timing didn't match up, yeah. The sticking point for me is the presence of Twinkles, there's no reason for her to be there with FB (I'm just gonna call her that for lack of a better name) specifically. She's Peachy's cat! And it'd be really weird for them to just toss her in there for the hell of it, it's like if Duck Soup appeared in an episode. Twinkles isn't exactly the selling point of the set or at least, I doubt Hasbro would see her as such. Twinkles being in this special, without her pony friend or playset, is something of an enigma.
The theory that makes the most sense to me, is that that pony started off as Peachy - thus Twinkles being there. Peachy was a playset pony, so it's natural that they'd want to show her off in the cartoon. Then at some point - presumably before animation had been completed, but after storyboards had been done - Hasbro requested they add in a rainbow pony to promote that set, but either didn't provide any specifics past that, or the set wasn't finalized enough for them to give the cartoon people anything to work with. Cartoons take about a year to be made, it's plausible to me that they could've still been hammering out some of the finer details during production. Or, hell, maybe Hasbro DID give them something to work with and then changed the toy designs later, that's possible too. One way or another, Sunbow wound up with that rainbow pony design, and decided to just swap Peachy out for FB. That character doesn't DO anything, so it'd be easy to switch her out for another one halfway through production - just do a new colour model and correct anything that shows the "old" design. (All of the G1 storyboards etc that I've seen, omit the symbols and just have arrows pointing to each pony listing their names, so I don't think they'd have to redraw it) Et voila, a Rainbow Pony - and Twinkles is just leftover from when she was Peachy.
Wildshadow's copy of the series bible actually DOES include Peachy (and Majesty!) in a list of ponies - no details, just the names - so we know for sure those characters were considered for the cartoon. It'd be weird to include those two in the series, they'd be off the shelves by that point, right? Which makes me suspect they're leftover from an earlier character list. But um, yeah, that's my theory on the RaMC rainbow pony. Just makes more sense to me than them randomly throwing in a reference to the porcelains. The designs are definitely similar, but "white pony with rainbow hair" IS a pretty generic design.

Okay, wow, this turned out waaay longer than I intended it to, cookies to anyone who actually read all of this  Teach me to fall behind on posts for a day, haha.

[lalalei2001]

What a  cool, lost treasure! I had heard the audio for a while but finding the animation is something else!

[starscout]

"Rainbow pony special was cancelled being 'too gay'" - first time I've ever heard THAT one. Doesn't make much sense to me; if it's the rainbow thing.... G1 has rainbows all over the place (a lot of 80s toys do!).... if it's because of two of the ponies nuzzling in that clip... that's nothing they'd cancel a whole special over.

I know the scene where Glory licks Applejack's cheek was censored in some releases of RaMC, so maybe that's where that rumor came from? Either way, it's ridiculous. They're animals.

Even when the official names WERE discovered, they're still obscure because that info just hasn't been widely spread yet. (It doesn't look like their prototype backcard story is on the wiki, for example - I know I saw it recently - might've been on Tumblr? I know it's out there)

Eeee, sorry if this is off-topic but I really love the FS ponies' backcard. I heard it in a video of a panel at one of the Pony Fairs (I think, anyway) where it was being read aloud. I loved it so much I wrote it down and saved it on my computer lol. This is it:

Spoiler

A Night of Sparkles.
 For the fancy swirl ponies, the most fascinating place in Ponyland was the sky where surprises sparkled against a velvet background. One night, the four friends climbed a starbeam stairway to explore this wonder, wonderful world. They peeked into a nursery where baby stars were learning how to twinkle and sang lullabyes at the shining moon. A sparkling river poured from a glowing jar and streams of it fell on the sun, moon, and stars, giving them their brightness. Just then, a pasing comet bumped the jar and spilled bright swirls all over the ponies! The colorful swirls were beautiful, and the ponies were delighted that a part of the magical sky would be with them always.

Wildshadow's copy of the series bible actually DOES include Peachy (and Majesty!) in a list of ponies - no details, just the names - so we know for sure those characters were considered for the cartoon. It'd be weird to include those two in the series, they'd be off the shelves by that point, right? Which makes me suspect they're leftover from an earlier character list.

Would you happen to have a link to the series bible on hand? :0 I'd love to see it.

[Taffeta]

Carrehz, that was an epic post. I read it I'm gonna comment on a couple of things.

I suggested it was a brony conspiracy simply because the bronies are the only generation to start trying to forcibly connect pony rainbow to lgbt and such. I've seen long rants online about Rainbow Dash and symbolism and such around her. So while the rainbow is a long standing symbol of lgbt and pride, when we were kids, the word 'gay' was still being used in kid's stuff (see MLP song tape) without any correlation to the meaning which I think is dominant today. There would have to be something very unwelcome in the special for that to be a reason it was cancelled. Rainbow ponies wouldn't have been produced by HAsbro, period, if it was such a controversial thing. But I can't see a script in the US in the 1980s being written with anything that would result in the WHOLE THING being scrapped. It just doesn't work for me.

Erm, the Jem episodes. I'm never sure whether colour variation is to do with the formatting (PAL/NTSC/editing to DVD), though. But there are definitely different versions of the eps - or something happened in producing some of them to vhs. There are two or three episodes with very messed up soundtracks. I'll save the words and just link the page I have some of the files as soundbytes...

http://etherella.com/britrock/surprise.htm

These are consistent across that release, where the release is commercial. They are NOT caused by an individual vhs being damaged. Npt every release/version of these eps have these flaws though. It is possible that it's just the sound track being warped at the time of the release, rather than the episode - but the differences do show the master copy stuff must have been in multiple locations.

As I mentioned before, I'm sure there's a missing song from Island of Deception, one of the S1 Jem eps, and the song should have been 'Love's Not Easy', which appeared in season 2 instead. I've also got in the Britrock (?) script, a note that Queen of Rock & Roll is meant to be reprised - but in the episode it's not there. Cut songs are a reality - I think probably Tambelon had one, but we don't have a script to confirm it.

I'm totally on board with the pony in the original special being the intended grooming parlour pony, and maybe even Peachy in an alt form. But what's interesting to me as a geek of detail is this. In the argos catalogue here in 1983, we had what I think is the Hasbro prototype image for the parlour, rather than an unboxed actual playset, which is what they did in later years. Peachy isn't shown nor mentioned. Butterscotch is shown but not included. There isn't a pony in that playset, which makes me wonder whether Peachy wasn't meant to be part of that set at all, and then ended up being put in there at a later point. I don't know - it's up for debate, anyway.

It's also possible that the name 'First Born' doesn't have the meaning we think it does. It might not be a pony's name at all, but rather the first designed ceramic, based on something that was never actually made into a pony. The concept art, if you like - the flagship of the ceramic line. Many of the more complex ceramics have non-pony names, so I don't think it's farfetched to assume First Born was never actually a pony name, and that the pony in the ceramic was based on something else.

[Ponyfan]

Re: songs. Apart from the whole "Hurry" debacle, "The Return of Tambelon (Part 3)" and "Flight to Cloud Castle (Part 2)" are the only episodes that don't have a song. To my knowledge, they've ALWAYS been like this, they were never broadcast with a song like "The Glass Princess (Part 4)" was.
What muddies the waters is that they do appear to have intended there to be a song in "Tambelon". If you watch it, there's a bit where - it's been a while since I've seen it, so forgive me if I get any of the details wrong - but, basically, everyone's losing hope and are being all emo, and it REALLY feels like it's leading up to a rousing song, it's basically a classic "setting up for a song" G1 scene... and then there's an abrupt cut and the ponies are all "Yeah you're right Megan! Yay! Let's go save our friends!" etc.
Personally I think they did write a song for that scene, but cut it during the production stage because the episode ran overlong. That episode serial runs HOT, there's a LOT going on in it - snipping out a song that was probably pretty superfluous was likely an obvious choice. (It probably would've just been "Always Another Rainbow" 2.0 anyway ) But I don't think there'd be footage for that song or anything - IF such a thing ever existed - it's not something that ever aired on TV. As far as I know. I've never seen any sort of proof that that one was edited for reruns, anyway.

(People sometimes bring up "the lost Cloud Castle song" but I think it's just wishful thinking, to be frank. People want there to be a song, and I can see the logic... all other eps have songs, so this one MUST have had one cut, right?? But when you look at it, there's no obvious place for a song in the ep - not like there is with "Tambelon", where it's pretty obvious where a song would've gone. I suspect CCpt2 never even had a song written for it, or if it did, it was discarded very early on.)

It's been a while since I've watched MLP n Friends so I couldn't remember the other episodes that don't have songs.  I know one was missing in one part of "Tambelon."  I forgot about Cloud Castle not having one in the 2nd part.  I don't see where a song would have fit in that episode either.

I know the scene where Glory licks Applejack's cheek was censored in some releases of RaMC, so maybe that's where that rumor came from? Either way, it's ridiculous. They're animals.

I always thought that was cut either for time or due to bad editing when they tried to make a 24 minute special fit in to 2 10 minute slots.  It's a lot less obvious than cutting out "A Little Piece of Rainbow." 


I was just wondering if part of the reason "Hurry" was removed and never seen again was due in part to the Buswoolies using their own hair to make the cloak?  Logically though I don't think that's reason or the whole episode would have been lost because we also see the ponies forced to weave the cloak with fabric made from their manes. 

I was also thinking about Madeline Lost in Paris.  There were a few parents complaining about that because Madeline is kidnapped by someone pretending to be a long lost relative who "gives" her to another villain that is forcing young girls to work in a sweat shop making lace.  While there Madeline befriends another girl with black hair.  The villain often threatens the girls and at one point the black haired girl is punished for something she did by the villain cutting her hair short and saying the black haired girl will only make black lace made from human hair.  The black haired girl cries and tells Madeline that she will go blind if that happens because only working on black lace damages the eyes.

Erm, the Jem episodes. I'm never sure whether colour variation is to do with the formatting (PAL/NTSC/editing to DVD), though. But there are definitely different versions of the eps - or something happened in producing some of them to vhs. There are two or three episodes with very messed up soundtracks. I'll save the words and just link the page I have some of the files as soundbytes...

http://etherella.com/britrock/surprise.htm

I'm not sure how it happened either but in Rhino's release of Jem, Pizzaz' hair was too dark.  When Shout Factory released their set, Pizzaz' hair was back to the right color.

Ponyfan

[Wildshadow]

OMG! I still hope I can find my childhood tape that has the song in the episode, recorded from the tv. I still hate that my childhood taped episodes of the two other episodes missing songs, were taped over    the Tambelon one by my dad (possibly) the other, Cloud Castle, by me because I didn't have patience enough to check out the whole tape before I wanted to record on it, I only remember seeing the first episode but not watching the whole tape    stupid kid thoughts of "I already have this one recorded from Disney, I don't need the old one" 

The Cloud Castle might have had the song near the end where the ponies might have convinced Ariel to give Garth a chance? Because that decision was way to quick to not have something happen. Or it was Ariel singing about not ready to fall in love?

The writer's guide wanted a musical element in each 10 minute segment, so I'm sure those should of had one? I sure went down the rabbit hole on this one...

[Carrehz]

"Rainbow pony special was cancelled being 'too gay'" - first time I've ever heard THAT one. Doesn't make much sense to me; if it's the rainbow thing.... G1 has rainbows all over the place (a lot of 80s toys do!).... if it's because of two of the ponies nuzzling in that clip... that's nothing they'd cancel a whole special over.

I know the scene where Glory licks Applejack's cheek was censored in some releases of RaMC, so maybe that's where that rumor came from? Either way, it's ridiculous. They're animals.

The TV edit cuts off abruptly just before Glory licks AJ, yeah. The same thing happens in the generic credits that are on the DVDs so I'm not sure what's up with that... I'm inclined to think it's more shoddy editing like Ponyfan said (they chopped out most of the rest of RaMC's opening sequence too) but who knows. There's a line missing from the TV edit of Catrina - it's when Megan's helping Baby Moondancer with her costume, there's one line in the middle of the scene ("well why not?") that seems to have been accidentally edited out somehow while they were cutting it down into two parts. Not sure what happened there. Like I said, there's a lot of weird stuff going on with the TV edits of the original two specials - I'll try and make a thread about that at the weekend, it's a bit too off-topic for this thread.

Also thanks for posting the Fancy Swirl backcard story It's so cute, I love it. Definitely one of the best backcard stories IMO.

Wildshadow's old thread about the writer's guide is here, and this is the post that mentions Peachy and Majesty specifically.

Speaking of, I was hoping you'd see this thread WS!

The Cloud Castle might have had the song near the end where the ponies might have convinced Ariel to give Garth a chance? Because that decision was way to quick to not have something happen.

I remember an older thread about this where some of us were speculating this was the case. I could see there being a song about that, but there's not really an obvious space for it IMO. I still think that one was cut early in production, whereas Tambelon feels like a much more last-minute edit. It's plausible to me that they could've just decided to forego a song for that one episode, for whatever reason.

Carrehz, that was an epic post. I read it I'm gonna comment on a couple of things.

Hehe thank you

You worded the rainbow thing way better than I could've. Suggesting "rainbow ponies = gay" just seems like a very modern mindset, to me. The association between the two wasn't as... I guess mainstream (can't think of a better word), back then.

God I would kill to see the script for Tambelon. I'm sure it's out there somewhere. And Cloud Castle, for that matter. But yeah, it doesn't surprise me to hear that Jem had songs cut, too. I've heard a couple of cartoon people before say that songs can be tricky to coordinate... it makes sense a song would be the first thing to go if an episode's running overlong - assuming it's not plot-relevant, I mean (like, the Tambelon cut song seems like it would've bridged a gap, but the story works okay without it).

That's interesting about the Pretty Parlour. I could see that too, Hasbro maybe still throwing ideas around for which pony, if any, should be included with the playset, and Sunbow getting an earlier potential design.

Also, I agree that "First Born" was probably meant to be more of a description than an actual name. To me she always seemed to be intended more to represent "the first MLP" or somesuch. Like... I dunno how to put it... she feels more like a figure that embodies the general essence of pony...ness, rather than a specific character. If that makes sense? I like your theory of her perhaps being the first figure designed or somesuch.

Oh man, those Jem soundbytes are amazing x)

Ponyfan - yup that's what I was thinking of! The weird dirty-blonde-haired Pizzazz. No idea how that'd happen though - I know Rhino got pre-retake copies of some Transformers eps - but I wouldn't think a consistent colour difference would be the same thing :s Weird. Glad it got fixed for Shout Factory's release, anyway.