New G4 pony toy designs

[WingsOfMasquerade]

"What is so bad about horses or ponies that their every feature must be eliminated"?

Terrible!
I will never own one of these. Collecting OVER.
I didn't particularly like the 'movie styles' or g4.5 whatevers, but I got that fashionstyle shimmery Luna because Luna. I didn't get anything else out of it though because the sphere heads and the way they're not on the neck 'right' any more bothers me more. They're not going to see another dime out of me with this style. However, that doesn't matter because I'm 1 person and Hasbrew doesn't care. (oh no someone is complaining on the internet!)

How did this get created? Answer stolen from Tumblr:

Hasbro "Have u ever seen a horse"
Designer "No wat dat"
Hasbro: "Ok ur hired now make ponny"

These......are not ponies?
Why can we not have ponies in our my little pony?
Why?
Why?
What is so hideous, ugly, stupid and awful about horses that EVERY SINGLE HORSE FEATURE must constantly be eliminated?
Why are ponies so bad that nothing can be allowed to look like them?
I just don't understand. They've got hooves. That's about it. There's no horse-like joints, they've even put a goat knee on the rear leg to eliminate pony-like-ness. Nothing at all horse like about the head, nor the neck which is almost non existent and also a tube. No hair on the neck...which is where horse hair IS...tail better positioned but still meh. Shortened the body again...short neck. It's opposite day. Everything these days seems it has to be stylized into almost unrecognizability for whatever reason but, stylization is one thing and morphing into an unrecognizable creature is something else.

It's like, this toy could be considered cute.
People are allowed to like it, that's fine.
It looks like that Gizmo Gremlin from Gremlins, and people like that.
The quality can be good, paint good, eye detail good, hair good etc. It can be a perfectly ok toy.
But it isn't a pony.

It's like every single thing they could possibly get wrong with the face, they got wrong.
But how?
The ears going all the way down the sides of the head? Flat eyes, eyes on the direct front of the face, nostrils on the front like a pig, total elimination of....face? Yes the lower jaw is out, but no pony has a completely flat face like a Persian cat. Whoever said they're trying more and more to look like emojis is correct...as it seems like the entire end goal of every single toy now is to look as much like a smiley face as possible.

Here's their friend in real life the Damascus Goat*
https://images.app.goo.gl/7i3uxSQrnN7YLwnJ9
Have fun with a great beauty
https://images.app.goo.gl/A4J5iApGVjCqa4qi6

They are breeding these to eliminate the fact that the face was long, so now it is short and good and the eyes are migrating to the front.


G4 could never have an accurate toy anyway, because the show was done with flash so they had 'eye flounder'* going on 100% of the time.
The eyes always migrated around to whatever side of the face was shown, like a flounder fish who is flat but both eyes are either on the left 'side of the coin' or the right. When faced forward, the eyes didn't foreshorten, they just...migrated to the front of the head. G1 cartoon was guilty of this too. The art done by Ragamuffin was actually done looking at the toys and shows the point. It's probably also why that new G1 art is always 100% in profile--because any other angle actually induces difficulty and perspective into art because you're not drawing a flat featureless disk any more.

*Eye flounder is caused because humans think that both eyes must be visible at all times or emotion is impossible to portray. That's because humans have front facing eyes and are meant to only be seen from the front when engaging with one another. You can see this on eeeeeverything, Sven the reindeer, every Disney horse imaginable, Chicken Run, those Spirit Stallion Cimmaron horses, shopkins ponies, etc everything looks like it was either crossed with a chimp or is a big mutant dog with the front facing close-together eyes. ("Emotion impossible to portray"---this is so clearly a lie / wrong belief but here we are)

*Nightmare inducing goat in many opinions

[Spectrum]

At an angle they look okay?

Doubt these are G5. IMO they’re far more likely to be transitional shelf-warmers like G3.5. I think they look better than the G4.5 open-mouths.

[Shaiyeh]

I.... don't hate them. Hope this isn't g5 though, I wouldn't like to see this design over and over for however many years, but honestly, I don't actually hate the design It's definitely something else though...

[Zapper]

G4 could never have an accurate toy anyway, because the show was done with flash so they had 'eye flounder'* going on 100% of the time.
The eyes always migrated around to whatever side of the face was shown, like a flounder fish who is flat but both eyes are either on the left 'side of the coin' or the right. When faced forward, the eyes didn't foreshorten, they just...migrated to the front of the head. G1 cartoon was guilty of this too. The art done by Ragamuffin was actually done looking at the toys and shows the point. It's probably also why that new G1 art is always 100% in profile--because any other angle actually induces difficulty and perspective into art because you're not drawing a flat featureless disk any more.

*Eye flounder is caused because humans think that both eyes must be visible at all times or emotion is impossible to portray. That's because humans have front facing eyes and are meant to only be seen from the front when engaging with one another. You can see this on eeeeeverything, Sven the reindeer, every Disney horse imaginable, Chicken Run, those Spirit Stallion Cimmaron horses, shopkins ponies, etc everything looks like it was either crossed with a chimp or is a big mutant dog with the front facing close-together eyes. ("Emotion impossible to portray"---this is so clearly a lie / wrong belief but here we are)

That's the sad truth right here. It's funny because the horse is such an iconic animal. Human society evolved alongside it and we seem to have a special bond/interest with/in the equine. We consider horses to be very beautiful animals, symmetrical.
And shetland ponies are already extremely cute by our standards. They have childish features. Big eyes with pronounced lashes, bulbous foreheads, short legs and chubby bellies.

The Hairdorables unicorn shown in this thread works well as a superdeformed/chibi pony design because it blends the horsey aspects with what is in demand when it comes to dolls (long hair, big eyes, unnatural colors) but it doesn't look predatory/simean or too freakish.

Ever since G3.5 MLP has been on a kick to make the ponies more and more humanoid. The entire "ponies are little girls" Hello Kitty thing (for anyone who doesn't know, Hello Kitty is not supposed to be a cat. She is a British school girl and owns a non-anthro cat... lol)

[Leave a Whisper]

"What is so bad about horses or ponies that their every feature must be eliminated"?

Terrible!
I will never own one of these. Collecting OVER.
I didn't particularly like the 'movie styles' or g4.5 whatevers, but I got that fashionstyle shimmery Luna because Luna. I didn't get anything else out of it though because the sphere heads and the way they're not on the neck 'right' any more bothers me more. They're not going to see another dime out of me with this style. However, that doesn't matter because I'm 1 person and Hasbrew doesn't care. (oh no someone is complaining on the internet!)

How did this get created? Answer stolen from Tumblr:

Hasbro "Have u ever seen a horse"
Designer "No wat dat"
Hasbro: "Ok ur hired now make ponny"

These......are not ponies?
Why can we not have ponies in our my little pony?
Why?
Why?
What is so hideous, ugly, stupid and awful about horses that EVERY SINGLE HORSE FEATURE must constantly be eliminated?
Why are ponies so bad that nothing can be allowed to look like them?
I just don't understand. They've got hooves. That's about it. There's no horse-like joints, they've even put a goat knee on the rear leg to eliminate pony-like-ness. Nothing at all horse like about the head, nor the neck which is almost non existent and also a tube. No hair on the neck...which is where horse hair IS...tail better positioned but still meh. Shortened the body again...short neck. It's opposite day. Everything these days seems it has to be stylized into almost unrecognizability for whatever reason but, stylization is one thing and morphing into an unrecognizable creature is something else.

It's like, this toy could be considered cute.
People are allowed to like it, that's fine.
It looks like that Gizmo Gremlin from Gremlins, and people like that.
The quality can be good, paint good, eye detail good, hair good etc. It can be a perfectly ok toy.
But it isn't a pony.

It's like every single thing they could possibly get wrong with the face, they got wrong.
But how?
The ears going all the way down the sides of the head? Flat eyes, eyes on the direct front of the face, nostrils on the front like a pig, total elimination of....face? Yes the lower jaw is out, but no pony has a completely flat face like a Persian cat. Whoever said they're trying more and more to look like emojis is correct...as it seems like the entire end goal of every single toy now is to look as much like a smiley face as possible.

Here's their friend in real life the Damascus Goat*
https://images.app.goo.gl/7i3uxSQrnN7YLwnJ9
Have fun with a great beauty
https://images.app.goo.gl/A4J5iApGVjCqa4qi6

They are breeding these to eliminate the fact that the face was long, so now it is short and good and the eyes are migrating to the front.


G4 could never have an accurate toy anyway, because the show was done with flash so they had 'eye flounder'* going on 100% of the time.
The eyes always migrated around to whatever side of the face was shown, like a flounder fish who is flat but both eyes are either on the left 'side of the coin' or the right. When faced forward, the eyes didn't foreshorten, they just...migrated to the front of the head. G1 cartoon was guilty of this too. The art done by Ragamuffin was actually done looking at the toys and shows the point. It's probably also why that new G1 art is always 100% in profile--because any other angle actually induces difficulty and perspective into art because you're not drawing a flat featureless disk any more.

*Eye flounder is caused because humans think that both eyes must be visible at all times or emotion is impossible to portray. That's because humans have front facing eyes and are meant to only be seen from the front when engaging with one another. You can see this on eeeeeverything, Sven the reindeer, every Disney horse imaginable, Chicken Run, those Spirit Stallion Cimmaron horses, shopkins ponies, etc everything looks like it was either crossed with a chimp or is a big mutant dog with the front facing close-together eyes. ("Emotion impossible to portray"---this is so clearly a lie / wrong belief but here we are)

*Nightmare inducing goat in many opinions

I blame Lauren Faust. She's the one who came up with this awful style to begin with.

[Zapper]

I blame Lauren Faust. She's the one who came up with this awful style to begin with.

She worked with the G3.5/Newborn Cuties designs, tho. The blame is on Hasbro's decision makers and their estimation of what the consumers want. Faust is not the single mastermind behind FiM, even tho her fans would like us to believe that.

[Leave a Whisper]

I blame Lauren Faust. She's the one who came up with this awful style to begin with.

She worked with the G3.5/Newborn Cuties designs, tho. The blame is on Hasbro's decision makers and their estimation of what the consumers want. Faust is not the single mastermind behind FiM, even tho her fans would like us to believe that.

I didn't say she was the mastermind. Nor am I a fan of any of her work. But the deformed and ugly designs are apparent in everything she taints, and she hit mlp with the ugly stick until the muzzle was chipped down to a beak.

Hasbro is to blame as well for the awful 3.5 and Newborn Cuties. And they're partially to blame for this.

[Zapper]

I blame Lauren Faust. She's the one who came up with this awful style to begin with.

She worked with the G3.5/Newborn Cuties designs, tho. The blame is on Hasbro's decision makers and their estimation of what the consumers want. Faust is not the single mastermind behind FiM, even tho her fans would like us to believe that.

I didn't say she was the mastermind. Nor am a fan of any of her work. But the deformed and ugly designs are apparent in everything she taints.

Hasbro is to blame as well for the awful 3.5 and Newborn Cuties. And they're partially to blame for this.

They hired her because they thought her style would fit their bobblehead vision. And I am sorry but Hasbro is not "partially" to blame. The are the company who creates these and hires the talents they want to carry out the job. They get full blame
They could have gotten someone else and not Lauren Faust. But they didn't.
LPS went into the same style direction and Lauren wasn't involved in that. In fact, the artist who redesigned MLP so we could have G3 is the same woman who came up with the LPS bobblehead/big eye style.
Hasbro tells the artists what to do, not vice versa.

[Leave a Whisper]

I blame Lauren Faust. She's the one who came up with this awful style to begin with.

She worked with the G3.5/Newborn Cuties designs, tho. The blame is on Hasbro's decision makers and their estimation of what the consumers want. Faust is not the single mastermind behind FiM, even tho her fans would like us to believe that.

I didn't say she was the mastermind. Nor am a fan of any of her work. But the deformed and ugly designs are apparent in everything she taints.

Hasbro is to blame as well for the awful 3.5 and Newborn Cuties. And they're partially to blame for this.

They hired her because they thought her style would fit their bobblehead vision. And I am sorry but Hasbro is not "partially" to blame. The are the company who creates these and hires the talents they want to carry out the job. They get full blame
They could have gotten someone else and not Lauren Faust. But they didn't.
LPS went into the same style direction and Lauren wasn't involved in that. In fact, the artist who redesigned MLP so we could have G3 is the same woman who came up with the LPS bobblehead/big eye style.
Hasbro tells the artists what to do, not vice versa.

Didn't she come to them with her fanart though?

Anywho its too early and I'm too tired to cross swords with you. We'll just agree to disagree and leave it at that.

[Zapper]

Didn't she come to them with her fanart though?

Yes, that's called a pitch.
Style-wise, she gave them what they were looking for: more G3.5 proportions. She wasn't involved with G3.5, she went by these proportions because it fit her style and she essentially drew G1 ponies in that style that Hasbro was favoring. Had she drawn them as more ponyish ponies they probably wouldn't have hired her.
Considering they also didn't want the G1 characters she drew. Only one they okayed was Applejack. That's pretty much MLP history at this point Rainbow Dash was Firefly, Pinkie Pie was Surprise and so on.
Lauren Faust pitched a sort of G1 reboot to them and they torpedoed a lot of her plans but wanted her style.

That's just how she draws. Also, these new designs don't really look Faustish. She's been gone from Hasbro for a while now.

[Leave a Whisper]

Didn't she come to them with her fanart though?

Yes, that's called a pitch.
Style-wise, she gave them what they were looking for: more G3.5 proportions. She wasn't involved with G3.5, she went by these proportions because it fit her style and she essentially drew G1 ponies in that style that Hasbro was favoring. Had she drawn them as more ponyish ponies they probably wouldn't have hired her.
Considering they also didn't want the G1 characters she drew. Only one they okayed was Applejack. That's pretty much MLP history at this point Rainbow Dash was Firefly, Pinkie Pie was Surprise and so on.
Lauren Faust pitched a sort of G1 reboot to them and they torpedoed a lot of her plans but wanted her style.

That's just how she draws. Also, these new designs don't really look Faustish. She's been gone from Hasbro for a while now.

I know she has.

Anywho, these are still ugly.

[The_Loner]

What the....?!?




It makes me sad what My Little Pony has come to With every new design they get further and further away from what they originally were!

[Harmonie]

I want to cry!!! I was hoping for good ponies!!! These are just horrible! These are not ponies! They are cats with hooves! I thought G4 looked like deer. Those are more cute then these things! Hasbro is trying to taint that pony name!!!!!

Agreed. Even if not properly pony-like, the original G4 design of MLP can at least be considered cute.

These just look like... I don’t know. They kind of remind me of the most recent Littlest Pet Shop and let me just say that style has never appealed to me in the slightest.

Whatever they remind me of, it’s always cats. I really don’t like that direction at all. Especially not this over-the-top Littlest Pet Shop/Unikitty/Unicorn Butterfly Kitty style. It’s just not good.

[MJNSEIFER]

To be fair... I don't really see a deformed/bobblehead look in Lauren's design for the ponies at all.  I can easily tell they're ponies, just ponies drawn in a certain style (unlike these cat-like ponies, which don't resemble her style at all.)  Like I said, it was the babies and the colts where I had a hard time telling that they were ponies.

I can see a bobblehead-ish look in Galaxy Girls (which Lauren can't really "taint" as it was her creation anyway, regardless of it never happening), and... there's a sort of "deformed" look (not sure I like saying that... sounds disrespectful of me) in that new Superhero show she's doing, which actually surprised me, as it looked like a departure from her normal style, but maybe she'd done others shows of this style.

I only know the things I mentioned as being Lauren's designs - possibly Wander Over Yonder as well, but that was a joint thing with Craig, so it could be his design, and the alien-esque cast makes it less noticeable to me.  Did she do some designs for Fosters Home For Imaginary Friends as well?  Again, shared with Craig, but looking back Mac and Terrance could be viewed as bobblehead...

Maybe I just like how she draws non-humans/humanoid characters better (though Galaxy Girls looked good in my opinion)?

[brightberry]

In the out of the box pics, I think they're kinda cute.  Not ponies, but cute.  But when they're in the box, something goes very wrong.  They look so... intense.   

It's very unlikely I will buy any of these, even as gifts.

I don't think LOL dolls are popular because of their crazy faces.  I'm sure it has more to do with box openings on YouTube/Instagram.  Though, those face designs do work better because they're actually babies.  Or, suppose to be.