Gosh, that's so clever and cute! I'm over here struggling to make a mold, and some kid did it with a toy not even sold in their country in the 80s! I love it! Thank you for sharing!!

I went to walmart this past weekend and all the G5 MLP stuff was on clearance! 

That sounds like an exciting sale, but I can't help but feel like it's a bit pointless for me, since my local Walmarts have already gotten rid of the pony section!

I'm not sure 'flopped' is the right word, because I think right now Hasbro is in a bit of a free-fall situation. I didn't realize how bad (or even that it was bad) until I saw Goddessofpeep's explanation in another thread, which I will link here: https://mlparena.com/index.php?topic=405276.msg1909518#msg1909518

But basically, Hasbro messed up their big cash cow line (Magic: The Gathering) which until very recently was basically just printing money for them, and now it's so bad that even their stock tanked, and they got downgraded by Wall Street. Like, it's BAD-bad. So I think right now, Hasbro just isn't focusing much energy (if any) on their other toy lines, especially because they seem to generally consider themselves a "boys toys" company, and thus MLP is more like an afterthought. I have no idea what the internal mechanism is like at Hasbro, and it's hard to believe that they'd just shelve an entire toyline, but I don't think they have the same amount of people devoted to each line as they might have in like, the 80s/90s. And I think if they do have departments, the MLP department is probably just Gary who's been delegated to the janitor's supply closet!

But more accurately, I think if the MLP department said 'okay, here's our budget, we'll need $X millions up front to manufacture the toys', Hasbro's budget might just not have $X millions to spare. I could see MLP being one of their brands being cut for costs - I mean, it's pretty barebones in general, compared to G4, or other lines like Transformers. We didn't even get anniversary-branded products most years, and this year it pretty much fell to Basic Fun.

So with that being said, I don't know if 'flopped' is the right word, but it certainly is/was floundering. I felt like it started off so strong, with the movie and the 'we have to reunite everyone' storyline, and then it petered off into 'friendship problems!' pretty quickly. I appreciate that it's not the same as G4, but I do miss when MLP was more fantastical. The toyline also never got past the same problem of the Bore Five/Six, and although I'm glad they added Misty, it still gets tiresome seeing Sunny Starscout show up in every playset. (Plus, she's orange! Why's she gotta be orange?! And pink too! Aughhh!) The novelty of the toys being jointed was very exciting, but then when your options are 3 stiff Sunny Starscouts, or 3 jointed Sunny Starscouts, I start to care less about the joints.

I mean, take all of this with a grain of salt, I'm still buying whatever I can find. But it's hard not to notice that the MLP section of every store I go to has gotten smaller... and smaller... and often vanishes. My Walmarts don't carry ponies anymore, and neither does my local TRU/Macy's combo, and my local Target has had the same 2-3 items for months. That's not good. (And it makes me miss REAL TRU, because when TRU was still around, they'd ALWAYS have tons of ponies, and a wide variety too!)

I think, for accessories especially, you're dealing with a very niche market. Unless you go to a lot of toy fairs or garage sales and specifically look for the small, easily-discarded little bits of ephemera (or get very lucky and find a meticulous child's adult garage sale!), there's not a lot of 'new' accessories getting added to the market. You'll occasionally see "new" G1 ponies pop up from eBay or the like, from an adult selling their childhood playthings, but a lot of it is from people who don't know the value of all of the little fiddly bits, or already lost them in the past 40 years. So if you're looking for (for eexample) a Happy Tails clip, you can't just hope it'll pop up on eBay from some sweet grandma in the midwest; you're gonna have to wait for someone who is upgrading or liquidating their own collection.

So when you're looking to buy G1 accessories, you generally have to buy them from other collectors, and if other collectors aren't selling, you're kinda out of luck! I know we've seen a big shift into FB groups for buying/selling, and unfortunately a lot of those seem to be turning into "live" style sales, or auctions, which are some of my least favorite sales methods. It's hard to keep up (unless you can clear time for that specific sale), there's often almost no written record of the final sales, and prices often get quite hysterical from what I've seen, while people fight for popular items. I'm sure it's the same for accessories, although I don't follow those as closely. So if you're seeing sky-high prices, I do wonder if that may play a role.

I want to say that, in the current recession our economy (in the US anyway) is in, it seems like people would be needing/wanting to offload their collections, not necessarily cling to them. But it may be that folks are hoping for more of the big price spikes we saw during the pandemic, which I'm not sure is a reasonable goal, either. We may never see those prices again, but I can't fault folks for hoping! (Especially if they bought a pony for $100 and suddenly they can't get that price back, for example. Folks hate to take a loss, me included!)

Phew, that got wordy! I'm super curious what others might be thinking, since I don't follow the accessory market as closely as I do the ponies themselves. And I hope you can track down some of your grails!

Hasbro taking over the Pony Fair was SUCH A MASSIVE AND COLOSSAL MISTAKE!!!

I've said this from the very beginning!  and for what, access to some voice actors and an exclusive pony that we had zero input over???!

*rages , throws fakies* 

This makes me so sad too! It definitely felt like the beginning of the end - especially that first year, when we were all like 'wait, what?' when they started messing with the exclusive! I can't help but feel like Hasbro might have seen it as an easy cash grab (Bronies = $$$) and when they realized it wasn't, just kinda ... dropped it. Like, Hascon, whatever happened with that, anyway? It certainly wasn't a big event for MLP! I hope someday we'll get a tell-all from the organizers, I bet they have some big tea to spill!

Aw man, those are so cute! The closest thing I've seen would be those "giant sized" plush from Nordstrom, but I'm not sure those are the same. Those were Aurora brand plush, and I think they looked a little different? I don't have room for them, but man, I still kinda regret not getting one when they went on clearance for $30! I hope you can track these down!

Whether you like it or not, G4's fandom became infested with people whose sole purpose in life is to make other people miserable on social media - and Hasbro marketed towards those people, at the expense of their real audience, which was the kids. The moment MLP stopped being about kids first and foremost, it died

God, this stopped me in my tracks, and I had to just pluck this little line out of the full response, because it bowls me over with how true it is, and I haven't really seen it summed up so neatly before. But it's true, it was like - the memeification of glorifying cruelty to other people, of bonding over nasty and hateful behavior because it was fun. Like cult behavior, attacking the 'other' when the 'other' was women and children who dared to enjoy MLP 'incorrectly'. I know that's not what everyone in the Brony fandom took from it or enjoyed, but that type seemed to slowly edge more and more people out of public fandom spaces, until it seemed like those were the only people left. I cannot wait until that particular scourge finds a new interest.

Anyway, back on topic - I was thinking about this thread when I went to Walmart last weekend, and I decided to hunt for ponies ... and found absolutely nothing. There's not even a section for them anymore. There's not even those super cute Hairmazing unicorn knockoffs, the ones for like $1? Gone. They did have some of the fairy dolls, so I really hope they bring back the unis - and the ponies!! We need something equine in there!

I was always fond of the “design your own” aspect of the coloring contests too - like the ones where we had to design our own pony! Those were some really creative and fun results! But I voted for coloring contest because that’s where my gut took me! 🤣 I enjoy both!