G1 Media Retrospective: Rescue At Midnight Castle

[Khoufu]

I'm sure G4 fans will love that. "See? Originally they DID have to earn their symbols! They were supposed to work that way all along!"

[Taffeta]

I'm sure G4 fans will love that. "See? Originally they DID have to earn their symbols! They were supposed to work that way all along!"

Not really. Nothing is ever said to that extent. I wonder whether we think about that now as a possible interpretation ONLY because G4 has rammed it down our throats. I certainly never thought about when I saw the show originally. Twilight says she'll grow up to be her own special little pony. Not that she'll get a tattoo that contains the meaning of life xD. I imagine it influenced the concept into G4, but assuming that was the original intention is anachronistic unless there's some original notes or something suggesting it's the case. I wonder much more if Ember is like the club baby - a pony you could symbol for yourself. These were the first baby ponies, so why not?

@ Ponyfan - I don't remember it ever being. I don't remember anything from the US animation being in the comic if it wasn't sold as a playset (and then we lacked the Satin Slipper, so that was never there, nor Scoops, either). Megan was in it but she didn't play the same role - Majesty was much more important though Megan's presence is still felt in some of the club and other leaflets. The only exception I can think of is a weird MLP & Friends edition where the smooze attacks and I just remember Majesty and all the ponies sleeping, covered in the smooze...and Megan is on the cover...with the smooze...and a bunch of ponies that weren't out yet when the movie happened...

I probably have a picture.

Otherwise the comic had all its own supporting cast. I mentioned a couple - Wizard Wantall, Weather Witch, Question Mark, Junk It, The Sandman, King Neptune, Miranda the mermaid, Kelpie...anyone think of any others? Oh, the Wizard in Misty Mountain, Thundercloud's great friend. Then some individual ponies had special friends, like Shaggy had Untidy Ted and Squirmy had Solomon the snail and Wiggles Mr Caterpillar? I think Braided Beauty had Sally Starfish as well? I am digging now but yeah. Aside that one comic issue, I don't remember anything animation-y in our stories. And that comic came out well after the movie. Of course, the Movie Star ponies have the most movie centric backcards ever. But for the comic it was like the movie never happened...

Ah yes. The comic I'm thinking of has Beachball as an alicorn, Ice Crystal, Wigwam and Megan on the front, with the Smooze in the background, as well as Hydia, Draggle and Reeka. It's the only time I remember this happening. Slightly OT for this thread but as it came up:

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Sorry for the rough condition, it's from my childhood

[Khoufu]

So that's what the comics look like, eh? I kept hearings about them, and to look up readings on youtube, but those were all single page type comics, like pamphlets. Mow I know what to look for.

[Leave a Whisper]

I'm sure G4 fans will love that. "See? Originally they DID have to earn their symbols! They were supposed to work that way all along!"

How do you figure that? Nowhere did it mention a pony having to earn their symbol. She just said you'll grow up to be your own special pony in regards to her not being able to wink or fly.

[Taffeta]

So that's what the comics look like, eh? I kept hearings about them, and to look up readings on youtube, but those were all single page type comics, like pamphlets. Mow I know what to look for.

Not really. I mean, that's a later comic cover, the art is later style which is not so particular as some of the earlier ones. But they are all about that size and about 20ish pages, maybe more per issue (more in MLP&Friends or Specials). The ones on Youtube are from the earlier comics. There are panel comic stories and full page text comic stories. Also 2 and 3 parters across issues. They ran from 1985 to 1993 so there were many changes in cast and art style, layout etc. There are also a lot more errors in features of ponies brought back from the past into a later comic. Sometimes TE ponies lacked their twinkle eyes in later callback stories. I am not sure what happened with Beachball in this image but you can see Ice Crystal is missing his streak...this comic is probably from around 1990.

Going way off topic now but another interesting thing is how much the comic iterations of many characters strongly resemble the prototypes that appear in Hasbro booklets, many of which are for the US release. Which is why Baby Splashes has purple hair and Baby Sunribbon has her hair crimped...among other things.

[Ponyfan]

Thanks Taffeta.  The more I learn about the comics, the more I wish that the US had them also. I love that winged unicorn Beach Ball.

I think Ember was kind of an experiment for Hasbro when they were still trying to figure out what they wanted to do with baby ponies. I was just wondering myself if Hasbro meant for Ember's owners to decide what her symbol would be/look like instead of giving her one. I just realized that purple Ember might have been chosen for Rescue at Midnight Castle due to her colors (there's already a few pink ponies but Ember is the only purple one)

I would love to know how parents and children reacted to Rescue at Midnight Castle as Catrina is a much less instense villain than Tirek.


Ponyfan

[Khoufu]

I'm sure G4 fans will love that. "See? Originally they DID have to earn their symbols! They were supposed to work that way all along!"

How do you figure that? Nowhere did it mention a pony having to earn their symbol. She just said you'll grow up to be your own special pony in regards to her not being able to wink or fly.

Someone suggested that it was supposed to be that way, where you earn your mark, but that was later dismissed. That comment was a guess, and mine was a lighthearted response.

[Taffeta]

Not to deviate further, but Tirek was an out and out bad guy. Catrina is actually a bit more tricky because it's clearly a message against drugs.

But I dare say we'll be discussing that soon enough in its own thread

Back to purple Ember - I dunno, blue Ember could have worked too? I just wonder whether she was picked out because she was the first design and they built on it from there?

[starstrider]

"Somewhere there's a little piece of rainbow,
I saved it for a rainy day!
It's either underneath the rug, or in the cupboard - UGH, BUG!
But have no fear I'll find it right away!

Wait until you see this piece of rainbow -
It's brighter than a peacock's plume!
It's ocean blue and sunrise pink, I left it by the sink I think...
Or was it in the closet with the broom?
Perhaps we ought to try the other room!

They may have cut it out of the DVD version, but thankfully I still have a digital file with the full uncut version!  Well, somewhere on my hard drive    I always loved that song as a child, I had it completely memorised from a young age.  I loved Rescue at Midnight Castle, the Stratadons and Tirek scared me (I was such a wimpy child!), but it was a movie I still watched over and over again.  Still love it today.

[Leave a Whisper]

Not to deviate further, but Tirek was an out and out bad guy. Catrina is actually a bit more tricky because it's clearly a message against drugs.

But I dare say we'll be discussing that soon enough in its own thread

Back to purple Ember - I dunno, blue Ember could have worked too? I just wonder whether she was picked out because she was the first design and they built on it from there?

Most and probably only subtle Drugs are Bad PSA toon ever. Because I never caught onto that until I came onto the arena and heard you guys talking about it.

[Ponyfan]

Not to deviate further, but Tirek was an out and out bad guy. Catrina is actually a bit more tricky because it's clearly a message against drugs.

The first time I saw Rescue at Midnight Castle as an adult after not having watched it for many years, I still found Tirek scary. He such a ruthless villian and there's no comic reflief in any of the Tirek/Midnight Castle scenes.  When Tirek transforms the 3 ponies in to dragons, it's very clear that he's enjoying them begging to be let go, ignoring their pleas and watching them transform from innocent ponies  I think he even enjoyed trying to send Scorpan to his death from the fall when Scorpan tried to take the Rainbow of Darkness from Tirek. He enjoys forcing Scorpan to serve him.


I also never thought of the Witchweed potion as a message agaisnt drugs either but I can see how it can be intepereted that way.

Ponyfan

[Lilja]

This was my first pony cartoon, as well as one of the earliest cartoons I can remember watching (along with Escape from Catrina). As such, it holds great importance to me, and unlike most other G1 cartoons it's something I can still bear to watch and appreciate as an adult.

It's not the greatest thing ever, but for a cartoon made to advertise a toyline, I think it's pretty good. Some argue that it's rushed and that it could be made longer to flesh out some parts (Scorpan's backstory, Megan adjusting to her new surroundings, getting to know more of the ponies' personalities etc.). But in my opinion I think its short runtime works in its favor. It never gets boring, and all those things that are left unexplained are probably more interesting to think about yourself, rather than if the writers had taken the time to explain them in the special. I think the movie and "The End of Flutter Valley" show that making the ponies' adventures longer doesn't necessarily make them better. I wonder what it would've been like if they had kept this format. One 30 minutes special every year, rather than a movie and TV series. I know the latter is a better advertising tool though.

I think a lot of people forget that at this point in the franchise there was much that hadn't been established yet. When it entered production there wasn't even a set drawing style (just check out some of the earliest commercials), which is why the ponies look so different compared to later cartoons. Ember was the only baby pony at the time, and for all we know baby ponies might not have been planned to have symbols, until they got the idea to make babies that were the offspring of specific adult ponies.

This special definitely sets up a lot of things that will play a big part in later cartoons, but that pretty much only goes for the cartoon. The books, the backcard stories and the UK comics all exist in their own separate worlds. Unless there was a toy made of it, they disregard pretty much anything that the cartoon makes up (and vice versa). In fact, the earliest G1 story books show the ponies living in a stable in our world and interacting with random human children, which is pretty different from any stories that came after.

[Taffeta]

Backcards, books and comics here largely intersected but yeah, the cartoon world was totally separate.

I didn't twig witchweed as a drug message until I was an adult, either. But maybe that was after seeing Alone Again from the Jem series which goes really hard at outlining the dangers of (specifically hallucinogenic) drugs. It possibly then dawned on me that maybe Katrina had had a similar message as well. It is well buried though.

I think Tirek is the right level of bad guy to put in context with other shows at the time. Maybe not Skeletor, because let's face it, he was hilarious but not that scary - but I think that Thundercats went for it a bit with MummRah. Now you might think that this is gender divide territory, but I think that RaMC competes pretty well as a scary kid's tv show that isn't actually gendered one way or the other. As I said way earlier in the thread, it's the ultimate proof that G1 MLP didn't have time for tea parties. They were too busy saving existance from eternal darkness and being enslaved and stuff.

[Lilja]

Backcards, books and comics here largely intersected but yeah, the cartoon world was totally separate.

That's true! Or at least there wasn't anything in them that contradicted the others.  I know UK pony lore takes a lot from US backcard stories, even straight up adapting some parts of them, as well as making up plenty of their own. Some US books also have Majesty play a similar role to what she did in the UK lore, but the US books are as stated really inconsistent with each other.

When I watched the cartoons as child, I didn't even think they all took place in the same world since the characters changed completely between them (I also didn't see the movie until much later, so I didn't know about the transition from Dream Castle to Paradise Estate). I also had a few UK comics as well as US books, so trying to piece all this together into a single continuity was an impossible task for child-me. When Tales debuted a few years later that didn't make it easier. 

[Wildshadow]

A bunch of the production stuff and ads I have for the specials and the tv show is marketed towards family, never specifically for girls, which I enjoy seeing that =D

Now I want to talk about EVERYTHING, but this is for the RaMC =P  Like the coloring books have their own stories too just like the back cards and books and comics. I love all that stuff T.T I love it more than the plastic ponies most times ^.~

The coloring books have humans galore in them, boys and girls and adults! Scott Sullivan has some of the weirdest human expressions in the two he illustrated X D

Er anyway, you can tell how badly I want to talk about so many things ^^" like I cant' WAIT to talk about Catrina stuff =P

Something extra cause it kind of fits in with RaMC:

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Spoiler

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I'm exploding on the inside...

-edited in-

As others have mentioned, it really bothered me how we never saw Majesty.  They showed Dream Castle and Spike quite a few times but no Majesty.  That's weird, because that was her home.  She must have just been a comic book thing or something but why make a playset if she never appears on screen?!

Her only screen time was the animated commercial for the castle. T.T  I want think they made a new commercial with Megan in it but that memory is very vague T.T because I remember seeing a commercial on one of my old 80's tapes in the mid 90's and I was excited over it but then I fear I might have taped over it with something stupid cause I wanted to tape something and thought 'oh I don't need this superhero cartoon! lets tape over it!' not realizing all the commercial potential I was taping over T.T Dumb kid me =P

which I was looking on youtube for commercials and so many of them had GREAT animation T.T

ALSO ABOUT MAJESTY, I wish the Writers Guide still had the omitted/edited pages because they mentioned Majesty but I guess they didn't want to ad her in the show D= I so badly wanted to know what her character sheet was supposed to be...