I say Buttons wore it better

It's happened. MLP has finally just become a head, which is why i guess they kept making them bigger.  Hasbro dumped the body to save costs. Next generation will just be giant eyeballs.

I have a craving for chicken quesadillas. I don't know if I can afford everything though. I only get a small package of chicken breast tenders but it's still like 8 bucks. Then I get chucky salsa, spanish rice, black beans, cheese and grande tortillas. When they're done I put sour cream on top and lettuce if I have any. So good!

Together Forever by Rick Astley

Today I'm doing ham, carrots, croissants,  deviled eggs, and a small pot of mashed potatoes for daughter dearest.

Thanks Carrehz, LAW.

Carrehz, do they explicitly mention the DV/Ponyland link in MLP and Friends? I've seen all the episodes but some only a few times and it's been a long time. I don't remember Dream Valley as a location coming up in the comics, but it might have done. I do remember lots of other locations, such as Memory Lane, Misty Mountain, Rainbow Mountain, and so on, and they were all part of Ponyland - new release ponies 'came to live in Ponyland'.

Hasbro did put a lot of money into various versions of a limited cast in G4 but I think it worked for them because of the demand around the series. For that to work for G5, it probably requires an iconic series that will make people want to follow x y z characters rather than variety.

It's interesting how quite a lot of other existing toylines are still going with variety. MH have always done core line/additionals and they have already managed more variety than G5 has done. Rainbow High repeat a few core characters but not so as you'd find them clogging the shelves, plenty of new ones too. LOL seems the same (same company of course). There is an increasing range of stuff from Miraculous, even though it took so long to get here. Even in other kinds of lines, like plush or TY, you see a range of characters or concepts. I feel like maybe that limited core cast thing was a phase and the world's moved past it.

Yes, people will always want popular figures like Pikachu, at the same time, when I was in Japan I remember the stock in the Japan centre in Kyoto cycled in and out pretty much on a weekly schedule, with lines staggered to keep the shop fairly fresh.

I think 'repetitive core cast' may be out of date. At least, so long as there's no meaningful digital component to compensate.

The concert episiode

The thing is that all previous generations broke away from the earlier stuff and did their own thing.

What G5 has done is more in keeping with My Little Pony Tales, which does not reference directly anything from the older G1 material, but you do have the cameos from the Glowing Magic(al) ponies, and then there's some pseudo-mediaeval stuff which I guess you could looooosely tie into the kind of world that existed in the earlier stuff. Albeit very loose.

Tales is G1. MLP & Friends is G1. One is the older version of a world modernised in the other. That's a link albeit it's not as tight a link as G5 has with G4. Yet we're meant to believe G5 is a generation of its own.

This is one of my bugbears because the defining of generations was something we did, not Hasbro, and the mainstreaming of this idea of a G4-G5 transition is their brainchild, not necessarily in keeping with how generations were defined in the past.

To begin with it was Old Ponies and New Ponies, as there were only two generations. Sometimes you got 'new generation', then LM came in with the Transformers concept of G-, around G3's arrival. Because you couldn't have old, new, and newer xD.

But...though there are some name repeats across generations, there is literally nothing canonical connecting Dream Valley (Ponyland in the UK), Friendship Gardens and Ponyville. Whereas Sunny and company live in a later version of Equestria. Just like Tales and MLP Friends.

Actually, do they call it Ponyland in Tales as well? I can't remember what they call it xD.

So basically, G5 scrapes the barrel on being a new generation. It has its own characters but not really its own concepts. And maybe the nod back to older generations is reflecting the age of the brand and the anniversary coming up - but at the same time...it's really quite lazy.

The naming sense is also awful.

But, all that said - if the toys looked less...weird, and had more variety and better QC, would that make the world/narrative/etc feel more fresh and engaging? I guess the question is, is the problem a stagnant toyline or a media concept that's tired and starved of new ideas?

They do call it Ponyland.