Etymology: When Ponies Became G[X]

[LadyMoondancer]

I dug up my old Tumblr post on this subject . . . here we go!

Do you know why we call pony generations G1, G2, etc?  The term didn’t originate from Hasbro--except it also sort of did.

We must first look not at ponies, but at robots.

The first Transformers line ran from 1984 to 1991.

visitors can't see pics , please register or login


Then in 1993 Hasbro released Transformers Generation 2, a toyline so advanced that the logo was being sucked sideways by some preternatural force.

visitors can't see pics , please register or login


The truth was most of the G2 Transformers were previous Transformers in new color schemes . . .

visitors can't see pics , please register or login


But the point is that if THIS toyline was Generation 2, aka G2, it implied that the 1984 - 1991 Transformers were Generation 1, or G1.  Thus the terms G1 and G2 were born in the Transformers fandom.

Let’s go back to ponies.

visitors can't see pics , please register or login


The original line of MLPs ran from 1982 to 1992 in the US, and a few years more in select other countries.

MLP then lay dormant until it was rebooted in 1997:

visitors can't see pics , please register or login


Collectors did not call the new ponies G2s.  They called them “the ’97 ponies” (even the ones made in 1998, 1999, etc) or “the new ponies”.

The original ponies were called “the 80s ponies” (even the ones made from 1990 to 1992) or “the old ponies”.

Then in 2003, My Little Pony was rebooted again:

visitors can't see pics , please register or login


Suddenly two labels were not enough, because what were THESE ponies supposed to be called?  “The new-new ponies”?  No, the community needed a more clearcut way to describe these three generations iterations of MLP.

And so discussions began on the then-central hub of MLP collecting, the My Little Pony Trading Post. Suggestions included calling the new ponies “the 2003 ponies”, or referring to each generation by their location (Dream Valley, Friendship Garden, and Ponyville).

Then a MLP collector who also collected Transformers remembered the “Generation 2″ robots.  She suggested the ponies be called G1, G2, and G3.  Not only were the terms clear, but they were short--an important consideration when collectors were buying, selling, and trading on forums with limited subject-line space.

There was no “aha” moment or immediate consensus; for a while each collector called the ponies whatever they preferred.  But gradually the G1 / G2 / G3 labels gained favor and became universally accepted.

As for the pony collector who made the suggestion . . .

It was me. 

The Gx term is still mostly fanon, you don’t see it used in official merchandise much.  But when Basic Fun released their retro G3 ponies . . .

visitors can't see pics , please register or login


visitors can't see pics , please register or login


Well, it made me smile.

---

Monster High has also started using G1, G2, and G3 . . . I asked a Monster High collector when this started and she said it really kicked off when the third generation was released.  Which I found really interesting.

[BlackCurtains]

You're an old school influencer

Gx is also used with Littlest Pet Shop. But they call G1 the first bunch of the 2000 ones, not the 90s Kenner ones, which in my opinion, should be OG G1.

[brightberry]

That’s really cool!

[Leave a Whisper]

Thanks for the history lesson Lady M. I thought it was pretty neat.

As for the pony collector who made the suggestion . . .

It was me. 

Also, that part made me 

[Ponybookworm]

Interesting lore, & how chuffed you must be to be part of it!!!

[SunbeamV]

some days i still feel like the baby of the mlp collecting community. and then some other days, someone crucial to mlp history drops by and i have to remember i've been lurking on mlp internet for literally 20 years and i'm considered a bit of a grandpa for having seen even just the tail end of the shift from "80s ponies and 97 ponies" to "g3" 

maybe i shouldnt have been unattended online like that at age 7 but hey 

[Heart Of Midnight]

Wow! Thanks for this interesting lesson! 

[lauranthalasa]

Love this. My boyfriend is a transformer collector and I’m a pony collector 😅

[Loa]

I feel this inspires a custom title...

[Taffeta]

I feel old since I remember all those things happening (lol) but I'm also glad that my memory is the same as yours about the timing and so on and so forth. I've still got old scraps of newsgroup conversations where people were complaining about how the 'new ponies' were different from the 'old ponies' and so on.

It's useful though to have this kind of discussion come up properly every so often. If nothing else it's important when people try to mislabel things like the Tales ponies, and also to show why G1 isn't divided into sub categories, and so on.

I remember you suggesting it xD. But it's kind of like symbols as a term for the pony markings. I'm sure we all grew up with our own versions - I called them rump markings because Hasbro UK did - but symbol is nice and generic and so fits well (in my opinion) across the range of things G1 has to offer.

...Of course G3/G4+ have cutie marks, but you can also tell the vintage of a collector by whether they refer to G1 pony markings as cutie marks or G4 ones as symbols xD.

[Carrehz]

Love history threads like this <3 It's important to keep info like this going.

We were definitely tossing around the "G2" term for Monster High when that started, but I agree it really took off and solidified with G3. Which honestly makes sense to me - my experience has been that when toys switch from one gen to another, without a break in between the two, the terms don't get finalized really until the new generation's over and we're onto the next one. I remember there being some debate over whether the ponies following G3 were "G3.5" or "G4" or some third thing that didn't really get settled on until G4 came out. (That's why I always said "let's wait a few months and see what Hasbro do next" whenever we had threads debating on names for the G4 movie-style ponies... I still have no idea what to call them. I usually just go with "G4 reboot"...)

Gx is also used with Littlest Pet Shop. But they call G1 the first bunch of the 2000 ones, not the 90s Kenner ones, which in my opinion, should be OG G1.

Wait, really? I thought G1 LPS were the Kenner line

[BlackCurtains]

Nope. Kenner is Kenner. If you look on eBay for example, G1 LPS will bring some of the vintage ones, but mostly it's the 2000s. If you want Kenner LPS, that's what people put them under. And whoa... have prices come down on them! I need money!

[SunbeamV]

...Of course G3/G4+ have cutie marks, but you can also tell the vintage of a collector by whether they refer to G1 pony markings as cutie marks or G4 ones as symbols xD.

i have this fun little habit of only calling g1-2 ones symbols and then g3-5 ones are specifically cutie marks. it's confused probably more than my fair share of non pony folks xD

[lovesbabysquirmy]

ahhhhh i remember those days... 

in G3 we went from "not sure about this new design.... to OMG ALL PONY SHALL BE MINE" pretty quick in the collectors' community, didn't we?

there was so much stuff to buy and buy it we did

[Taffeta]

ahhhhh i remember those days... 

in G3 we went from "not sure about this new design.... to OMG ALL PONY SHALL BE MINE" pretty quick in the collectors' community, didn't we?

there was so much stuff to buy and buy it we did

So true! There was a LOT of excitement, and people saying, "at last Hasbro have listened and made ponies that look like ponies!" and stuff like that. It was a major buzz at the time. I think G3 is underestimated by later fans, but I'm pretty sure that, had it not existed, there would never have been a potential audience for G4. In particular G3 restored the viability of the US market in Hasbro's eyes after the failure of G2.

I also agree with Carrehz (and Happy Birthday Carrehz!) that new generation terms can't be created until things settle down and you see whether it really is new or something else.

With G1, subcategories do exist, but they're just the original categories Hasbro put out, rather than anything we needed to add. I'm not talking about set names, but things like Dream Beauties, Petite Ponies - classifications that Hasbro determined that we just took on board wholesale. It's not possible to think of these as G1.5 or anything because they were around alongside the regular line, and if you look at MLP as a whole, whether in the US or in any other part of the world where the mainstream (China/HK made) line was sold, you can see ponies in the same style at the end as at the beginning. Other gimmicks got added in, but, for example, Bow Tie (1983) and Sweetheart (1993) are the exact same pose.

I guess it really shows the changes in how MLP has been marketed, tbh. Within G1, you had different ponies being sold simultaneously in different regions. Although G2 continued beyond the US line, and G3 had various store exclusives, no other MLP line has done this in quite the same way. In general, G4 was universal - with a few exceptions. I think G5 has been as well. Names are also no longer translated, even if packages are.

It makes me think that G1 was always just new idea after new idea within one bigger framework, whereas G3 and later were actually semi-rebooted midline.