Brightberry and Taffetta, you two are in luck because GnB Jinafire is very sought after these days. I would love to have one but she goes for crazy prices. Recently saw one for 200€ on ebay.

That is a nice photo of a toy lamp.  I hope that means it will be a ghost.

I hope that means she'll have that lamp as an accessory instead of a bag/purse/hot sauce!

Post Merge: March 15, 2024, 09:28:29 AM

Here's a couple high quality images of Jinafire and Venus in the show:


Jinafire really needs the jacket to tie her look together.
Up close she looks better but I still wish her colors were inversed. Gold with mint green instead of mint green with gold.

I think Jinafire was a pun on Jennifer, combining the common name Jin with, well, fire although fire is more a Western dragon thing.

Yeah, you are correct. I think making her fire-based was also a conscoius descision and had nothing to do with cultural unawareness because Jina was introduced together with Skelita and the design team at the time must have done basic research.

Lagoona was already a water monster and at the time MH didn't have that large cast they'd have a few years later and they wanted each character to be distinct. Having a dragon character and market her as a water dragon to a Western child audience was probably just a little before its time and that's it.
I always thought it was funny how her name sort of translated to Golden Fire Dragon. Her name was one of the punnier ones.

They would also release a webisode some time later very nicely showing how Jinafire would use her fire breath to manipulate other elements and solve problems:

https://www.youtube.com/embed/TF-mY0igqvc?si=_UYWbWIvjEMXXW5G

They never portrayed her like a typical Western dragon who breathes fire to destroy stuff. Quite the opposite.

Heh, turns out I'm passionate about G1 Jinafire. I'm currently trying to get a Sig one that is complete without droopy eyes, a feat of impossibility if you don't want to pay 50€ and more for a used doll. People seem to know that Scaris Jinafire with a good face is rare, lol.

Some other comments are going 'it's for kids, not for you'.
Yes, but that doesn't mean older ghouls can't go who the heckity heck is this???

I'm usually on the "it's for kids, it's not that serious" bandwaggon in case of adults getting mad on social media where kids can see, but I really have to wonder who decides which ghoul to change drastically and which ghouls should practically stay the same. Is there any evidence that kids didn't like Jinafire's colors? Because she got a bunch of beautiful designs, imo, and back when in stores the Jinafires always disappeared rather quickly. Or maybe my area is just a gold/green/red loving Christmas town, I dunno...

Funny thing is, her tail looks exactly like G1. Maybe they wanted to reuse the mold

PS: I did some spying myself and found a bunch of comments insisting that IS the Gremlin character but come on... Greta is liscensed, she can't just appear on the show. Then there's the Chinese looking clothing and then there's this:
Comparison to concept art from last year

I agree with most of this, except the schleich part. They look kinda odd. But from what you're saying it seems the quality is good. So that's good.

I can't comment on the quality but the new Schleich lines with brushable manes and tails are advertised and take up most space that used to be MLP in toy stores. I live in Schleich country, there is no Breyer in physical stores except for one single family owned shop. So I noticed the abudance of brushable Schleichs compared to any other brand with small horse toys.

Can't say much about cancellations because I don't keep up with new pony stuff anymore but just by looking at the animation budget and toy quality it wouldn't surprise me if G5 would wrap up soon.
They made the mistake of starting out with a celebrity voiced movie that could have been in theaters, then tone all of that down by going for a lower budget show they releases not in episode format but mini movie format. The time period between each of these brackets was too long for kids so they had the webisodes on youtube as inbetween entertainment and those looked really low budget and quite frankly: ugly.

Their marketing plan must have read: "Cheaper, cheaper, cheaper until interest is gone". Something that baffles me because G4 must have made so much money for them, all they had to do was use some of that money and create something that looks appealing to kids and will hold their interest.
Paw Patrol is still churning out product and movies, they obviously designed the ponies to look like that and yet they failed to understand why Paw Patrol stiĺl works. It's because it's adventure and they present that to kids in more exciting ways. Their movies go to theaters, they are everywhere. Hasbro tends to give up on girl franchises if they can't pull the big numbers but they really don't try hard enough. They lost the Princess liscense and Descendants is over, so now is the time they should start investing in their own girl lines again.

Basic Fun is really coming for them, imo. They are releasing more nostalgic toy repros than ever before and TLS Toy is creating their own lines based on the nostalgic IPs they have. Look at the Rainbow Brite line of mini poseable dolls they are doing now. Hasbro is so much bigger than them and yet they are cheap and treat the big names they have like stepchildren, there is little innovation and that results in little customer engagement.

All my opinions, I have no insight into their marketing plans or anything. I wish I had

EDIT: I corrected my wrong assumption that Basic Fun is doing the new Rainbow Brite line. It's TLS Toy.

A couple of concept arts appeared and I hope this Cleo will make it into some other line because I love her preppy like this! Frankie must be old, it's still using the first prototype.

I'm still not quite sure what it is about G3 Lala dolls that seems off to me, aside the fringe...just something.

For me it's the long arms and something about her constant side glace looks "bitchy" to me. I hate that word and would never use it on an actual girl but dolls are fair game, they're not real
I think her cartoon version looks so much cuter than the doll. Her proportions are nicer, facially and physically. Doll Lala is a bit Orang Utan.