Everyone's G1 Favorites

[Taffeta]

G1 for me was never about a TV series. I think for a lot of people that's true, the idea of a toy centred around an animated series is a much later MLP concept. But I am also talking from the perspective of a UK person where the TV show didn't really air in full till MLP was basically off the shelf. We had all the eps but one on VHS release and the movie did make our cinemas, but it was so totally peripheral to me growing up. I had four eps on VHS as a kid which I watched a lot but I didn't really take them seriously as to me they were full of mistakes. (By which I mean ponies not sold in the UK and ponies with names that were different in the US to the UK).

I grew up with the comics and UK storybooks (and backcard stories, although I didn't keep many of my early ones) as my key influence of My Little Pony's world (you mentioned you'd got into the comics, I wonder if those are the ones you mean). I often chose my favourites from sets based on their comic personas, although I never played comic based games with them.

But MLP in G1 was about the toy and the idea of creating stories around those toys without needing external media to do it.

The four eps I had were Revolt at Paradise Estate, Ice Cream Wars, Sweet Stuff and the Treasure Hunt and the Wouldbe Dragonslayer and until I was about 13 or 14 I never saw any other MLP eps or the movie. Of those four Revolt at PE was my favourite as a kid and Paradise my favourite character but she never existed over here as a pony so yeah, complicated feelings about that.

Rescue at MC is probably the best pony episode, some of the others are cute as well. I don't understand the furore over Firefly and never have, nor Gusty, I don't hate them but have never grabbed onto them as iconic in the way other people sometimes do. The only pony whose personality is better in the animation than in the comics for me is Wind Whistler, otherwise most of them just seem unnatural to me compared with the comics I grew up with. Fizzy and Ribbon are Ok I guess. The ones that stood out as the most appealing were ones that didn't really exist here like Paradise because ponies like Shady, Magic Star and esp. the Princesses were just ruined by their animated personalities.

Though I watched them all a few times I mostly disregarded the animation as important or relevant to G1 collecting until FIM happened, at which point I suddenly understood how much better G1 episode ideas were and thus gained a new appreciation for it. But for me it's still peripheral and the comics are much more significant.

As an adult, though, the thing that does and has always kept me interested in MLP is piecing together the little bits of information about releases and variations and also backcards and comics and stuff from over here. Unlike the animation, that gave up on MLP for a good chunk of the release period, the comics went from 85 to 93, so almost the whole of the release in the UK, which is pretty cool tbh.

[Glistening Rainlight]

(you mentioned you'd got into the comics, I wonder if those are the ones you mean)

Probably, yeah. They're definitely not US comics. I found someone uploading them online, they don't have all of them so I've been reading what's available. Honestly, as it stands I may be inclined to agree with you about the comics feeling more natural. One way or another, I seem to be able to pick up on individual character traits and personalities more easily with the comics. I haven't gotten that far into them yet, but so far I love comic Twilight. ^^ Taking stars and granting wishes is pretty incredible.

Yeah, Shady.... Shady is one of the few that I can say with certainty, if I'd had to go by just her toy, I would not have given her a personality even remotely similar to what the show gave us.

Sounds like you got short changed pretty hard though. I'm sorry to hear that. I can slightly relate, G2 was actually my introductory generation thanks to the game, but I don't believe I ever saw any of the G2 figures in stores. I'm having to start collecting them now second hand, so I've only got two and a McDonald's toy.

[Einhornbaby]

I know many people here would prefer a world without Megan, but for me, as a lonely kid, I loved to imagine that I, like Megan, could travel to a world full of magic and magical creatures.  It was almost like the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe for me.  The pegasus ponies could travel between worlds through some misty, magical, unseen portal in the sky.  And one day, maybe they would come and take me the way they had Megan. 

OMG, this is soooo ME! <3

[starstrider]

I was born in the mid 80s, so My Little Pony was everywhere when I was a kid. My brother and I would rush from our bedrooms to watch the Saturday morning cartoons, which were a mix of "boy" and "girl" themed shows, like GI Joe, X-Men, Care Bears, and My Little Pony. We loved our cartoons. Our other source of cartoons came from video hire, which we did on a regular basis. My parents had a VHS cassette dubbing setup ((coughnotillegalorimmoralatallcough )) which allowed them to copy any video they wanted, so we had a huge collection of our favourite cartoons on home video for us to watch and rewatch as desired.

I really loved the My Little Pony and Friends cartoons. Their adventures were simplistic but fun, and I was addicted to rainbow pastel coloured toys and games. I loved horses and dreamed of owning my own pony, but plastic toys were as close as I ever got to that dream. The cartoons were a fun romp that I used as inspiration for my horse and pony-themed fantasies. I envied the sisterly relationships of the predominantly female characters. My only sibling was my twin brother, and we fought constantly. I wished I had a sister like Megan whom I could have exciting pony adventures with.

As an adult, watching the cartoons brings back wonderful nostalgic memories. There was a fair amount of turmoil and trauma in my childhood, so safe things like favourite cartoons still reward me with warm fuzzy feelings of security and happiness all these years later. Ponyland was a safe place. Bad things never lasted long, and scary things could be banished quickly by singing a song or completing a simple quest. Life on the other side of the rainbow was a lot easier than life here.

[mlp4me]

Ah, memories. When there were Saturday morning cartoons. I remember that I just adored the Moochick and the songs. As an adult I do not enjoy the songs anymore...

[Sunset]

For me it has always been more about the toys than the media. Being born in 1980, I was smack dab in the target age range for the original toy.  But I lived in a pretty rural area and we didn’t have cable.  I only saw what we could rent from the video store which was the Movie, Escape from Katrina, and my favorite, My Little Pony (I.e RAMC, but it wouldn’t be called that until later and originally was just called the My Little Pony special since it was the first).  I found out that there was a show by catching a couple episodes at my grandparents house but I didn’t get to see more of the tv show until many years later.

I was very horse crazy as a kid and my room was full of various horse things: unicorns, carousels, Fashion Star Fillies, later on Beyer horses.  I also read every horse book I could get my hands on.  So the draw to MLP for me was the fantasy horse aspect combined with the hair play since I was not drawn to (human) dolls.  I was never one to give elaborate personalities to my toys.  I played with them like horses, the hair play, and when I got the Lullaby Nursery I would set them up in little scenes and then close it up and would shine a flashlight inside the windows (treating it like little dioramas).

I did and still do love the colors and the themes and the fantasy.  When I create my own ponies, it’s as a work of art, making the themes and colors match harmoniously.  I don’t attach personalities to them.

All of that being said, what I like about the early G1 cartoon in comparison to later cartoons, including and especially Tales, is that the ponies are more horse like (even if they do live in human like buildings) and it was set in a more pastoral setting.*  All of the other cartoons since have been far more urban and the ponies more and more just human stand-ins.  Say what you will about Megan but she emphasized that the ponies *weren’t* human.    ( I also love the previous poster’s mention of the Chronicles of Narnia.  That was also one of my childhood loves.)

So finally, to answer the original question.  I have a hard time choosing a favorite pony.  I just love owning a whole herd of beautiful ponies.  Between my sister and I, we had 30+ as kids.


*I’ve just had the epiphany that this might have been partly because of my rural upbringing.  There weren’t a lot of other kids in my neighborhood and my sister and I spent a lot of time riding our bikes up and down rural roads and exploring the local woods and pastures.  Plus I was super shy, so the idea of exploring and finding magical creatures and adventures was far more appealing than the idea of stories centered around large communities where all of the stories are interpersonal in nature.

[NightGliderSA]

My pony love was never about the tv shows. It was always about the ponies themselves. We didn't watch a lot of tv as kids: it only came on for limited times each day anyway, so I chose ponies I thought were pretty. And I played with them. I had the Pretty Parlour and Show Stable - still do - and I remember playing for hours. That's what you do when you're an only child. They would also be put into a pink and purple tog bag and carted around with me to visit friends and family members and to go on holiday. Those were some well travelled ponies. However it was more about the fact that they were PONIES and not their individual characters.

[Glistening Rainlight]

I feel like I have a much more rounded understanding of this now. c: Goodness how motivations have changed, haha. And yet.... To be fair, I've always been enamored with unicorns. I didn't really care for horses at the time but unicorns always had a presence in my life. My mother had a bunch of unicorn prints that she ended up giving to me when I was extremely small. At the time I think it was more of a "connection to my mother" kind of deal rather than actually caring much for unicorns themselves, but it just stuck with me and My Little Pony has a lot to do with that..... even though Friendship Gardens and G3 didn't have a lot of unicorns, haha. Actually I don't think they introduced the unicorns into G3 until well after I was already a full-fledged fan of MLP, seems like I found myself looking at the pegasus ponies and wondering where the unicorns were.

Say what you will about Megan but she emphasized that the ponies *weren’t* human.

Hm, I'll have to keep that perspective in mind the next time I watch G1. o: Especially because I've always been kind of the same way, I didn't really care much for straight humans haha. I like humanoids though, things like vampires, demons, centaurs, and so on. I've had literally multiple hundreds of characters at various points in my life and half or more were humanoids, but I maybe have had three or five full human characters in my lifetime. And even then most of them turned into not-full-humans over time, if I kept them at all.

I never personally minded them being humans stand-ins, mostly actually because I didn't like humans much. Like if I'd known a world creator and they came to me with a sketched-up design for humans, little me would have fired them on the spot. I basically thought anything was better with fewer humans haha.

[Ribbs]

I grew up watching the MLP cartoons. I loved both Tales and the original g1 series with the movies. My mom would record the episodes on VHS when I was at school, and I'd always watch the latest episode as soon as I got home! I used to act out the episodes with my own ponies. My favorites from the show were always Fizzy, Ribbon, Magic Star, Paradise and North Star.

[SpacePinto]

I am probably in minority here, but when I was a kid MLP was only about the cartoons and never about toys for me. We didn't have any ponies at home, but our local VHS rental place had three tapes with cartoons. Unfortunately I couldn't find them anywhere online but I suspect they were probably bootlegs (they had some weird cuts and I could swear the My Little Pony title on the covers looked pretty plain IIRC), either way each of them had exactly eight episodes where the first four was one bigger storyarc. I remember the first tape that I watched started with "Return of Tambelon" and that was the story that sold me on MLP, at first I thought it would be lame but then I realized how awesome it actually was with all the fighting and lasers and the evil goat guy. However, the biggest impact was possibly left on me by the second story I watched, which was "Crunch the Rockdog" That was the episode that solidified Wind Whistler as my favorite pony for life. As a kid, I had never found any other cartoon character as relatable as her in that particular episode. I remember I would always overanalyze everything (i.e. I loved "Dexter's Laboratory" but I couldn't stand the fact that he couldn't possibly fit such a huge lab behind his bookcase - not realizing at the time that that was the joke - so I just always imagined the lab to actually be deep underground since one single episode showed there was only a fireman's pole behind the bookcase), meanwhile other kids just wouldn't care anywhere as much, thinking I'm just weird for paying attention to all those details, and whenever I tried to argue my point in such case they would always just eventually resort to petty insults. Which makes it no wonder that Wind Whistler became my spirit animal right after being introduced to her (I knew she appeared in the Tambelon arc, but she barely spoke), and it only became stronger with her subsequent appearances. Unfortunetly, this particular episode is also why I was never very fond of Gusty, Buttons and Truly (even though I adore the Gusty toy), as those three were always "the bully ponies" to me, lol. The other two tapes had "Magic Coins" and "Quest of the Princess Ponies", plus a few other episodes. I loved watching those episodes on VHS, back then plenty of moments looked pretty epic to me (and I still like them to this day), like Megan and Princess Tiffany flying back to Royal Paradise, ponies storming the gates of Tambelon and attacking the guards, Megan landing with Whizzer at Niblick's place, or Locket and Wind Whistler watching the advancing jewel desert from above. It felt strangely awesome as a nine year old boy to watch a pony cartoon for girls and enjoy it so much. Good memories.

[Adarkdraconis]

So as a child I lived with my grandparents, who only watched Andy Griffith and the news.  I was always excited to sleep over at my cousin's house because we would stay up late and they had a VCR!!!  If I recall correctly she had Rescue at Midnight Castle and also The Movie. 

My favorites were the flying ponies, I love both the pegasus and flutter ponies!  I also like Megan because, like others have mentioned, she made it relatable for us and we wanted to be taken on adventures with the ponies like she was.  I only had one pony growing up, Bowtie, but she was in Rescue so that was super cool to me!  My cousin had way more of the ponies (and even a flutter pony!) and I may have been a bit jealous.  She also got to watch the show on Saturday mornings all the time, I would watch it when I slept over and she would fill me in on what happened before in the story, because you know they were always so short that they had several episodes just for one story.  The thing was, yes it was colorful singing ponies, but it had monsters and witches and demons and all kinds of adventure so it wasn't, to me, a girly tea-party kind of show.

As an adult with a child who now loves all thing Pony (and her favorites are the 'old time ponies', as she calls them    ) we have discovered that the Tubi tv app has the entire original series on there (not in order, but still!)  And papa did get her The Movie on the Amazon Prime app because it was on sale for like $2.  We have watched all of them several times and she gets so excited when a pony that we have comes on the screen (although none have Windy, who is her favorite favorite). Tales is also on Tubi as well as the Starz app (there along with several G3 movies that we have watched!)  I have not watched Tales but my partner watched it with her.

From the original show, I will say that Wind Whistler is my favorite, along with Shady and North Star.  My least favorites are probably Gusty, Heart Throb, and the first tooth ponies.

I also love that the Sea ponies have to sing every single time they come on screen!!!  I sing along with them every time!  It annoys the heck out of my family but I love it, haha!  They need to remake the Sea Ponies as a retro remake so we can buy them and play with them!  I would sneak them around the house and make them sing at people...

[Ponybookworm]

Ponies first, everything else (Comics, cartoons rented from the video library, books etc) second. For me it was about collecting lots of Ponies & making a Ponyland. When I got back into it it was, & is to this day, about integrating the Pony Generations & making a Ponyworld. G4s won't integrate so they're another species to me, but G1s, G2s & G3s are all integrated. I like ones of a similar name to be related (this caused G1 Sundance to marry Fireball so G2 Sundance could be their daughter for example)

Too many fave G1s to list, but the first one I ever had was Butterscotch, & my Mascot one is Twisty Tail

[Heelys]

For me, I was born in '97, so obviously I didn't experience G1 as it released. However, I'm prone to the phenomenon of Hyperfixation, so when already G3 obsessed little Heelys discovered G1 through DVD rereleases and the internet, she was hooked.

For me, the discovery was part of what made it magical. I loved to absorb as much information as I could, so discovering that my favorite toyline had not only being going on since the 1980s, but that so much had changed over the years was just about the coolest thing. I'd asked for The Runaway Rainbow on DVD for my birthday while my family was moving, and when my package from my grandma did come in, it was a Rhino DVD release of a couple episodes from the show, Quest of the Princess Ponies and The Golden Horseshoes("what do you mean, they used to have a TV show?! AND THERE WAS A MOVIE?!"). Since then, something about G1 has always stood out to me. There's the element of the nostalgic discovery, the way that hunting for toys and information kept me busy during a very lonely time in my life, but also the soft pastel aesthetic of the line. I especially like how pretty the eyes are on G1s, which is also why I'm not a fan of BBE...

In my youth, my favorites in my collection were Princess Royal Blue, North Star, and Baby Tiddlywinks. Royal Blue due to being my first G1 and part of my first exposure to the toyline through the tv show, the others for aesthetic. I also always loved Fizzy's design and show personality, and wanted a Baby Lickety Split for her role in the movie.

Was this an unnecessary infodump? Maybe. What can you do about it?

[Al-1701]

My first real encounter with MLP was the reruns on the Disney Channel in the early 90's.  So, it had a big impact of my view of G1.  Obviously, Wind Whistler and Fizzy were my favorites, especially together.  However, as I've learned more, my views have broadened.

Though, I'm not into too much past what hit the shelves in 1987.  MLP got...weird from there IMO.  The "My Little Pony Mommy" ads were also nails on a chalkboard and made me long for the Toei animated commercials.