Core Groups?

[Leave a Whisper]

Out of the generations that had a core group of ponies which was your favorite? Discuss reasons why. If you have toys, which ones did you like best? Which ones do you think are the prettiest toys? Which was your first? How would you rank them?

My ranking:

Core 7: I really do like some of these ponies. Sweetie Belle is my favorite toy, she's really pretty. Rainbowdash was my first, she's quite cute. And while I don't have them I would not mind having Cheerilee who is the most beautiful impo, and TAF Starsong.

Tales: Growing up on the other side of the pond, I dreamed and wished and waited for the Tales ponies to show up in stores. They never did for some reason? I think Clover and Bon Bon are the prettiest toys, and Sweetheart and Patch are some of my favorite characters. Pity they never made the boys who were just as much part of the permanent group. Would have loved to have Lancer, oh well. I don't have any of them unfortunately. I'd rank this over the G3s if they'd been sold in the states as well.

New Generation: Their faces will always look off, which is a shame because of their detailed legs and beautiful wings. That said, neither pegasus is my favorite because of the dumb paintbrush hairdo on Zipp, and the dull colors on Pipp. Shame, because Zipp has pretty colors. I like Trailblazer best because he has such a fun color palette. Moonbow looks better as a toy, and I like that her hair is a gradient. Despite my not being a big fan of the overdone orange/purple/pink combo, Sunny is pretty darn cute, especially with the added orange/yellow/blue stripes. I got Sunny, Zipp, Moonbow, and Pipp first in the Royal Gala pack, but customized Pipp. I have Trailblazer too.

The Mane Six: The first I ever got was Rarity in a Happy Meal, didn't keep her. The ones I like best are Rainbowdash and Fluttershy. The bloated, unfinished, unhorsey heads, and Hasbro's hyper obsessive toy fatigue killed this generation for me very quickly. I do have part of the retro mane six pack which are horsey and pretty.

[BlackCurtains]

I do like the Mane Six. I enjoyed FiM for the seasons I watched. Pinkie Pie is my favorite from the show. Toy-wise it's Applejack. It's always Applejack

Core 7 I'm mainly familiar with when it comes to the toys since I customize G3 more than any other gen. I do like some of the cute cartoons from that era and like Rainbowdash the best (she was the one that always said "dah-ling" right?). Toy-wise again, it's the orange one, Scootaloo. I like Starsong too, she had the best McDonald's toy.

I'd call myself a G5 fan. I've enjoyed the movies and I think the toys are an upgrade from G4. I like the variety so far. Pipp has weird wings, but they're different and different is good. I like Sunny and Hutch too. Well, I like them all actually. I still need a big Sunny, I only have the three inch version.

I always wanted Tales Bright Eyes. I think she's so pretty. I'm not very familiar with the rest though and I don't think I've ever seen the show.

[Shaiyeh]

Thank you for writing the Tales ponies in the order of the song, haha, I sung it in my head whilst reading

I have to say g3>Tales>G5>G4! But g3 and tales are very close. both have ponies I love and ponies I don't care for as much ^^'

I love g5 a lot! but they're not quite up there with Tales & G3.
G4 comes last. I don't dislike them, at all, and I have them in my collection, but g4 is the least exciting gen to me.

[Taffeta]

Tales. It's maybe fortunate that G1 ended when it did, before they became stale as toys - we've seen with all the other gens that repetition is not always a great thing.

I'd have included G2's Ivy/Sunsparkle/Lightheart/Petal Blossom etc mix in the core group list btw. It's a little more complicated but it's definitely a core group.

And in a sense I feel like G3 had two cores, because at the start for a while there were a lot of Sunny Daze/Sparkleworks/Pinkie Pie/Rainbow Dash things going on, before the official core at the end of the line.

I grew up with Tales, they were here in the UK. The comic had them. I bought Bright Eyes on holiday in Barmouth in 1992 (I still remember, it was from Woolworths, LOL). I never saw the series till 1995 when my sister's friend had them taped off cable tv and my sister borrowed the tapes. But the comics gave a good enough idea of the characters (and Bright Eyes was less pushy and a lot more shy in the comics which I liked). My sister and I had all of the other tales ponies between us from clearance stores, and I'm pretty sure my rollerskate Melody came from one in Aberystwyth. I got Nurse Sweetheart and hairdo Starlight at carboot sales but the rest we had from new.     

I didn't pay much attention to the G3 core. I'd got disillusioned with G3's US exclusive bias by that point, and it was proving too expensive to keep up with, so I kind of backed off them.

I can't stand the M6, although I am fond of my original AJ and Rarity who came from Finland I think, when I was in Porvoo iirc.

I am meh about G5 in general.

I would rank the G2 core second, probably. But in the absence of those, it's probably going to be G1-G3-G5-G4. Because having no opinion of something still ranks higher than contempt.

[Snapdragon]

I'm gonna go with the slightly unpopular choice here it looks like, and vote G5. Now before you throw fakies, hear me out - for me, it comes down to toy repetition, market saturation, and simply the base designs.

I love Rarity as a character, and her colors are divine! But if I'd seen Izzy as a kid, I think I would have lost my mind. She's purple, with a blue gradient???? And she has long flowy hair?! And she's silly and loves to make crafts and has a SUPER catchy song?! HELP, WE MUST STAN! I would have also loved having a boy in the 'main group', because especially as a youngster, I loved making families, and I was a little fixated on 'we need a mommy AND a daddy pony!', to the point where I had several girl ponies get conscripted. So having Hitch as a main character and toy, even if he is clearly getting the Applejack treatment in the toy releases, would have meant a lot.

I really enjoyed G4 as a show and toyline, but sadly I've seen SO many cheaply produced and sloppy releases that it's hard for them to feel as special in my mind, and ditto for Core Seven. I thought I had reached maximum hate with the "now with hat! now with name painted on! now with pinwheel!" cheap re-releases, and then Hasbro pushed out oodles of G4 with polypropylene hair and needle-thin tails... oof. At least G3 never sank THAT low!

It's hard to not love the Tales girls, obviously! I grew up with the cartoon and loved it! But I didn't get the toys until I was an adult, and there's still a bit of a disconnect for me, personally, between the clunkier G1 designs and the very-young-coded Tales cartoon. I mean, their whole thing is obsessing over BOYS and homework and school and babysitting! G1 to me looks more ... idk, staid? laid-back? Maybe if I'd had access to the toys as a kid I'd feel differently, but while I still love the show and the toys, it's harder for me to make that 1:1 connection like I do with the G4 and G5 lines. (G5 definitely has some issues with translating the cute 3D cartoon animation into toys.)

So if I had to rank, with awareness that this may also be due to recency bias (and I may be sick of G5 releases in a couple years, ha!), trying to mesh show vs toy quality overall, I'd say:

G5
G1/G4 (almost equal IMO!)
G3

Wait a minute, I realize you didn't include G3.5... big oversight, Leave A Whisper! We mustn't forget the Newborn Cuties!

[Ponybookworm]

This is hard because I hate core groups with a vengeance, because then all the focus is on said group, with little to no love for extras or background characters.
Having said that, I went for Tales as the fave because there are only one version of four of them, with two versions of the other three: Nurse Sweetheart, Roller Skate Melody, & Hairdo Starlight, & I despise rereleasing the same Ponies ad nauseum.
Next up is Core 7. Yep, they started pretty much the WORST trend ever in Pony: repeated rereleases of the SAME PONIES. But we got a couple of new Ponies out of it, particularly Starsong & Sweetiebelle, & we got mermaids, anthros, Clone pose, G3.5 older, & Newborn Cuties. Yep, I like the Newborn Cuties, & love the accessories they came with!!! NC Pinkie Pie's Playhouse is the last of the proper MLP playsets before the cardboard-backed insanity of G4, or just as bad, the single-walled ones. What's the point of that??? Another thing I like is they had Mum Ponies with the Newborn Cuties too, & I have all three.
Next up comes G5, yep higher than G4, for one reason: the core group includes a Boy who's made into toys sometimes. I don't yet have a Hitch, but I will get one I just know it!!! Soon after I get myself a Zipp
And G4 Mane Six is exactly what's wrong with core group toys: cheap, mass-produced stuff which every now & then gets a slight twist, but doesn't really add to a collection in a meaningful way. Those who've seen my TS collection know how big it is, & also know how far from complete it still is, partly because I haven't got all the variants with enough of a difference to notice yet, partly because I refuse to get variants which don't look any different once you get them out of the packaging. The only good thing about the whole Mane Six thing is I can get a common variant easily enough from a charity shop to Customise into the one thing we collectors most value: a different Pony!!!

TL;DR: Tales
G3
G5
G4 Mane Suxx, from fave to least fave

[DreamvalleyMLP]

It would have to be the so softs & twinkle eyes for me; I consider them a core group for G1 (allbeit a large one...) since they made up the lead in mlp n' friends - the show I grew up with.

Tales doesn't quite do it for me; once they moved the ponies into a town and humanized them, they kind of lost their magic.

G4 had a well crafted group as well though.

[Leave a Whisper]

@Taffeta Sorry about the lack of G2s I didn't know they had a core group. 

@PBW Yeah I'm not crazy about the core group trend either. I might have been alright with it, if Hasbro didn't push it so aggressively to the detriment of everything else.

[KarentheUnicorn]

I don't know that I think of ponies in terms of 'core groups'. And maybe it's just a term thing, but I think my mind more goes towards the term 'sets'. As in, these are the new sets of ponies this year. Usually in the beginning each set was around 4-6 ponies.

But I really have never though of it as THIS is the main set of ponies, it was more like this is this years NEW sets of ponies.

So it's probably more a G1 frame of mind/ toy collecting mindset. Where no individual group of ponies is meant to outshine all the other ponies. It's more these are organized into year release or grouped in 'types' of ponies VS, these are the most awesome of all the ponies, etc.

[Leave a Whisper]

I don't know that I think of ponies in terms of 'core groups'. And maybe it's just a term thing, but I think my mind more goes towards the term 'sets'. As in, these are the new sets of ponies this year. Usually in the beginning each set was around 4-6 ponies.

But I really have never though of it as THIS is the main set of ponies, it was more like this is this years NEW sets of ponies.

So it's probably more a G1 frame of mind/ toy collecting mindset. Where no individual group of ponies is meant to outshine all the other ponies. It's more these are organized into year release or grouped in 'types' of ponies VS, these are the most awesome of all the ponies, etc.

All good points. And they were really never supposed to. But hasbro unfortunately went and did exactly that anyway. 

[Taffeta]

I think for G1 collectors especially it's a kind of alien concept, it's only by looking back with the hindsight of later gens that it's clear that they were dipping their toe in the water with the tales ponies. I'm with PBW though. If the tales ponies had gone on for ages and had tons of rehashes, I may feel differently. But as it was, even though they were released twice (Set with comb and ribbon! Set with stickers!), where I lived only the first (comb/ribbon) release ever surfaced, so it felt like they were just 'the set', rather than on rerelease. And it was a bit odd having Melody and Starlight and (nurse) Sweetheart (who I never saw as most 1994 ponies I never saw in stores) in other modes, it wasn't miles away from things that already existed (baby lickety split p&c vs baby lickety split first tooth, for example. Or in the US, BBE/FT).

So one rerelease didn't feel like they were going for a big deal core release type thing.

It's true that in 1985 Hasbro UK made a big deal out of the groom and style set - the song tape and stuff, they were in the comics a lot, and Posey and CJ had two releases here as well...but again, it didn't feel like they were trying to make them the 'core'.

I think that's why it's easier to love them. But I 100% understand the disconnect between seeing them on TV and not having them in stores. As a kid I never believed Scoops, Truly, Cupcake were real ponies. Just made up for the tv show. Similar thing I think.

@LAW, np. I mean, I think they experimented a bit more with G2 and the core idea, but G2 is messy because so much was driven by Europe, and so you get different names/translations of names that make it harder to identify related ponies. Plus the original Sunsparkle was Sundance in the US, so it's easier not to connect her to Queen Sunsparkle and later releases on that line...

[mlp4me]

Tales ponies get my vote.

[WingedDragon]

Now as a G3 fan, one thing I am curious is that who do most G3 fans consider to be the "main characters" of G3. Core7 came to be very late in G3 life span, and I personally consider them to be the face of G 3.5 instead.

We have the original group:
(Kimono, Minty, Pinkie Pie, Rainbow Dash, Sunny Daze, Sparkle Works, Sweetberry, Wysteria, and notable support characters such as Cotton Candy, Razzaroo, etc.)

Then, we have the Twinkle Twirl's Dance studio/Friendship ball cast from the books and one VSH:
(Skywishes, Star Catcher, TWinkle Twirl and recurring Twinkle Twirl's students, Desert Rose, Star Beam, etc.)

Unicornia/Run Away Rainbow team:
(Rarity, Cheerilee, Pinkie Pie, Rainbow Dash, Spikes, Minty, Zipzee, Tiddly Wink, Tralala, and supporting casts, Brights Brightly, Whistle Wishes, etc.)

[Leave a Whisper]

Now as a G3 fan, one thing I am curious is that who do most G3 fans consider to be the "main characters" of G3. Core7 came to be very late in G3 life span, and I personally consider them to be the face of G 3.5 instead.

We have the original group:
(Kimono, Minty, Pinkie Pie, Rainbow Dash, Sunny Daze, Sparkle Works, Sweetberry, Wysteria, and notable support characters such as Cotton Candy, Razzaroo, etc.)

Then, we have the Twinkle Twirl's Dance studio/Friendship ball cast from the books and one VSH:
(Skywishes, Star Catcher, TWinkle Twirl and recurring Twinkle Twirl's students, Desert Rose, Star Beam, etc.)

Unicornia/Run Away Rainbow team:
(Rarity, Cheerilee, Pinkie Pie, Rainbow Dash, Spikes, Minty, Zipzee, Tiddly Wink, Tralala, and supporting casts, Brights Brightly, Whistle Wishes, etc.)

Good points

[brightberry]

I will always prefer G1 toy ponies to any other.  But for a very long time, I had no idea any of those pony toys actually existed.  For G3, I didn't pay enough attention to the toys to know that they were repeating.  I only bought a few early on.  So, G4 was really the only core I was aware of.   

It would had been cool if Glory & Gusty got a Twice as Fancy version.  But, it's probably best that they didn't.