Maybe the title is a little melodramatic. But this will be my first post here in years. My collecting tapered off once I had my children, but I always kept my childhood ponies tucked safely away in a tote. Or so I thought.

Today we were watching "The Toys that Made Us" and watched the MLP episode. To which my 5 year old daughter officially went NUTS for the G1s. So "FINALLY!" I thought, "I can play ponies with my daughter!" and went to go get my tote. Which is gone. We have searched EVERYWHERE. The house is now an upside down mess. But the ponies? Are gone. Stolen or lost in last year's whole house move.

So now I have a pony crazed little girl who won't let the ONE G1 I found among my G4 collection go. Yay Lickety Split to the rescue.

I have a request, and I know literally none of you probably remember me, but if you have any old G1 baits lying around, would you be willing to share one? They'll be well loved by a little girl whose mom waited ALL THESE YEARS to play with her G1s. I'm literally crushed though...Any help would be amazing.  Happy Holidays, and thanks in advance <3

PS. I live by Disney World so if you want any merchandise picked up for you, I can TOTALLY do that! <3

Eh, I'm apt to believe that nothing you see on Tao Bao is really legitimately Hasbro's until it hit's the store shelves here in the USA. And if it IS really a prototype, do you honestly think they'll say "Oh yeah, that's totally the new Pony prototype we're working on. What do you think?" No. They'll deny existence until they can show it off in an official capacity. That's how the industry works. Honestly, with all the people who LOVE Pony, they'd be absolute fools NOT to go through with the production of this toy. They'd sell a million of 'em. I'd buy five and hang them from my ceiling so I could have a flying Pony ARMY. And my room would be win.

I don't care *how* many she has. She keeps them nicely organized. She keeps them MIB for crissake, and she's not bothering her father in any physical way with these dolls, what's his beef? Let the child have a hobby! Who cares what they're worth now? If SHE is enjoying them, let the child enjoy them and leave her alone. Would he care any differently if they were out of their boxes and strewn about her bedroom floor? Or would he get after her for having a messy room? Let's just get it straight here, he's looking at MIB dolls and seeing dollar signs instead of his daughter's beloved hobby and that's just not okay.

I think you need to be down and honest with him and say that until she loses complete interest in the dolls and HAS an interest in selling them herself, his hands stay OFF those dolls regardless of how much he thinks they're worth. And if she decides she wants to pack them away and sell them 20 years from now? That's HER choice, and they are HER belongings, NOT his. You need to be absolutely firm on that point. But really, that just blows my mind. Telling your child that you're going to sell their beloved toys because they're worth money to you is just...scummy. (I apologize.) As a parent, I couldn't imagine even *thinking* of doing that to my child, regardless of what they're collecting or its value It's just cruel to the kid.

Elisto, it wasn't that she DID something wrong. It was how far and how extreme they took it. It just went way too far for me. They didn't have to make her be that mean. I just kinda don't like how in these episodes where the ponies seem to go, shall I say "Off their rockers" temporairily, they really just go off the deep end. I think they can communicate their message without doing that.

Also, Vintergarten. I know my posts are long winded sometimes, but I thought I was pretty clear. In no way did I ever compare, or say that FiM was LIKE South Park in any way. Comparisons are saying one thing is like another. I said they were opposites. What I said is that South Park takes genuine stabs at mentally challenged people and can be racist for the sake of laughs, whereas FiM's percieved offensive moments have always been completely unintentional. It's not really a comparison, so much as it's just a statement of fact.

Um. Regarding thesse "prototype ponies" from Taobao...Has there been any word from Hasbro regarding their legitimacy? Also, assuming that they're legitimate, that means thta they're from Hasbro's factories. Which means that people are taking them from the factories without permission from Hasbro, since obviously Hasbro doesn't make it a habit of releasing their prototypes to the public...SO, following this reasoning, does this mean that the Taobao ponies are technically stolen property from Hasbro factories?   This is one reason I've never bought them because I've always wondered WHERE people were getting these "prototypes" from..

Now that I've watched the episode (Now definitely replacing Lesson Zero as my least favorite), the reason I had hesitations AGAIN-- If you had read. Was that I had feared that they would change Fluttershy's character permanently in a manner that just wasn't canon to FLUTTERSHY. Like how they changed Pony. Simple as that.

The entire episode genuinely made no sense. All they did was make Fluttershy into Flutterbrute for an episode. In "The Staremaster" as well as "Dragonshy" It was already established that she had the ability to assert herself without being a complete scream-your-head-off, kick your butt, a-hole. Why did Hasbro feel the need to bring out the "Psycho-brute" side of Fluttershy (again)? It was completely unnecessary. And talk about a great example to present to kids! Some of the ponies horrid behavior around ponyville left me flabbergasted. It was like Ponyville had been horribly transformed into the Northern VA/DC area, a town full of ba$+)*ds. I watched it with my husband, but without our son. Of all the episodes, we just sort of agreed that this wouldn't be one that we'd share with him. While it ended up well as all episodes do, and they didn't change her character irreparably to some super-dominant tough pony, I was still very disappointed in the overall content of the episode.

Snapdragon, let me start by saying that I never said that being part of a minority group automatically made *anyone* wrong. I feel in this particular *case* there was wrongdoing on the part of Hasbro, simply because this was a case where it was SO FREAKING EASY to make everyone happy by simply editing the episode and making it available for the people that wanted an edited version, and leaving the unedited version up for download as well. Instead they made a furor by just making the small group happy and to heck with everyone else. In the case of any future DVD releases, all they had to do was make separate audio tracks (Like they do for different language tracks) so people could MAKE the choice. Instead, they just took the choice away, and I really think that's what upset people, is that the choice was taken from them.

Malicieuse, I absolutely agree that racial jokes made in kids shows are not okay just because they fly over their heads. But I think people going after Pony in Last Roundup and getting all upset over Over a Barrel is just going a bit overboard. There are honestly WAY bigger fish to fry in media when it comes to genuine and intentional stabs at race and mentally challenged children that have gone unchallenged and unchanged for years, and no one has gotten all in an uproar about them. Has anyone watched an episode of South Park lately? If you want to talk offensive material, South Park is about as genuinely offensive to just about anyone as you can get! And that stuff is on during daytime hours when kids could easily get a hold of it if they were unsupervised or got the remote by accident, or Mom never set up parental controls. Come on. Timmeh? I mean, kids have way worse stuff that they could be exposed to than a sweet little cross-eyed pony who is really accident prone, or a conflict between settlers and natives that is resolved in a relatively non-violent manner that benefits both parties in the end. Did no one have a friend as a kid that had crossed eyes that was accident prone with a low voice? I did, she was on my softball team and she was *awful* but we never cared because we loved her anyway because we always had fun playing the game! Didn't anyone ever play cowboys and indians as a kid in their back yard with the neighborhood kids or on the play ground? Of course we did, because we were kids, and racism didn't compute with us!

There's being sensitive to the needs of others, which is perfectly fine and great and you should always try your best to do; and then there's being overly sensitive to the point where you can't say or do anything at all without fearing offense. EVERYONE gets offended. But I think society seems to have forgotten that a big part of being offended is being able to swallow your offense and move on with your life. Especially when it doesn't cause any major interruption or disruption to your daily life. And sometimes, we just need to remember that it's okay to just agree to disagree without flaming each other. (That last part is particularly true in politics )

And I'll finish by saying, I know some folks love South Park. It's a funny show for adults sure. But I've heard horror stories (horror stories to me as a parent at least) of parents watching South Park with their SIX YEAR OLDS. And I'm just like. No. Ponies. Kids watch PONIES. (And Mickey Mouse.) And ponies to me are not Racist, they do not try to or outright change their friends because they're different. And everything that's been said about "Oh, this is racist this!" and "She's mentally disabled and offensive that!" that just really upsets me because just...No. Ponies love everyone, and solve everything through love and friendship. And we should follow suit, and enjoy the show, and stop with all this over-analyzing stuff.