Weird experiences with other generations as a kid

[Kitcatepic]

I grew up with g4 as a kid. One time I went to the library and decided to look for my little pony in the DVD section because for some reason I thought they might have different episodes than on Netflix. This was way before I understood what a reboot was. They did have my little pony, but it was the g1 movie and I ended up checking that out. When I watched it I was like "wait a minute what the heck is this". I didn't understand why it had the same name as the my little pony I knew but it had completely different characters. It didn't scare me or anything but it was very confusing. Eventually I got older and the memory faded I was convinced that the smooze and the other bizarre occurrences I saw in that movie were just some fever dream I made up in my head.

I find this pretty funny looking back on it and was wondering if anyone else experienced something similar.

[Queen Sophie]

Before I was 10 I grew up with g3 and I knew about g1 or what called it “the old my little pony” I remember there would be fakes loose at Walmart and I thought those were the old my little ponies and when I started to get a hyper fixation on them, I checked to see if they were g1s but of course they were fakies, I still gave them with me while I don’t collect fakies I’ll still keep those two that I randomly got from the Walmart self, how did it get out? Who knows

[cowboyopossum]

I grew up with g3 and g3.5, and one of my fondest memories was playing with the ponyville playsets. I loved everything as long as they were ponies, and I didn't exactly understand how g3 and g4 were different. I never watched any g3 movies though, back then (and now) I find them super boring

[Rika_of_Thunder]

I grew up with g1 cartoons and g2 toys, and despite the wildly different art styles i didn't really think anything of it, it was all just my little pony to me! i even remember mistaking the unnamed rainbow background pony in escape from midnight castle for lightheart lol.

[Koudoawaia]

I grew up with G1 and mainly ignored G2 because I really didn't like how the G2 ponies looked.

[ponyprincess2021]

I grew up with g4 as well though i also had a few from g3 and g3.5 given to me from family members. I never really questioned it though i always wondered if there was older generations since i used to think mlp was only a thing in the 2000s. Eventually i saw videos about g1 and it just made me into mlp even more lol. For a while i thought g2 didnt exist or it was just the same as g1 though the first time i saw g2 though it did take me a while to accept them as mlp. Since they were so different from what i was used to.

[TheClassCalico]

I grew up with a mixture of G1, G2, G3, and G4. I watched the G1 cartoons (primarily My Little Pony & Friends) and had a G1 toy that I ended up customising poorly, oops!, played the Friendship Gardens game and owned a single G2, was a young child whilst G3 was active (and G2 if we go back even further), and watched G4's show and owned some of the toys primarily during my teens.

Before my preteens, I didn't really have a concept of generations. Everything was pretty much the same in my mind, and I'm pretty sure I believed that fakies were My Little Ponies as well. I was probably aware that they looked different, but I probably assumed that they just varied in body type, and that's it. I started to learn about generations when I was around 11 or 12, but I still wasn't especially familiar with them until a little later. I distinctly remember mistaking my single G1 at the time for a G3, aha!

[Taffeta]

I grew up with G1, but I didn't have massive exposure to the animation until I was in my late teens. I had the comics, but the few episodes I had seen I kind of dismissed because they contained 'wrong information' (aka US rather than UK names, included ponies that I didn't recognise). There were also a lot of ponies that were sold in the US but not here, although they were in our comics. So they felt like mythical story-only ponies (or ponies that had been out before I was born or something, LOL.)

Most of my ponies were new, but we had some second hand ones. And then when pony ended, we'd start to pick up the older ones at carboot sales (we started doing that when I was 13 and my sister was 7).

I was 15 when G2 came out. Berry Bright is still my favourite. This was also the first year I found the internet, and Dream Valley, and the Trading Post, and discovered that all those ponies I had given up hope over actually had existed. They were some of the first ponies I traded for. I still have trouble believing how common Firefly and so on are over there. I have never found a Firefly in the wild second hand in the UK.

So even though I grew up with G1, I still feel like it was a different experience from some other G1 kids.

[pvppyp4ws]

i grew up with g4 but my older sister had some g3 ponies that go passed down to me, i was always a little confused why they looked so different :p other than that not much weird stuff however

[Ponybookworm]

Grew up with G1, but then lost everything at about the end of that time. G2 came out while I was telling myself I "didn't need Ponies" (I had other priorities), so it was a while before I encountered them, except I saw parts of the Rainbow Forest playset & wondered how they were meant to fit together, but thought it was a nice playset; I just didn't know what it was for then. And of course, I "didn't need Ponies" so I just let it all go...
It was only later I found My Little Pony again & stopped telling myself I "didn't need them", & then I learnt all about G2. I haven't looked back, as I love G2, & they fit in my collection.

[BlackCurtains]

It's funny, because I only had a small amount of ponies growing up (G1) and they weren't my main thing. My best friend had Rescue at Midnight Castle on VHS and we watched it several times at her house. Other than that, MLP wasn't really a part of my life.

It actually wasn't until my niece moved here and she had a couple of G3 ponies that I thought about them again.

Then one day I was browsing the internet for Silent Hill stuff and found a pic of a Pyramid Head pony. That led me to custom ponies, which led me to the Arena, which started my collecting. I learned all kinds of things I never knew, like how there was a TV show, that SO MANY ponies even existed and of course, G2 and G3. I thought G2 ponies looked weird when I first saw them, but they grew on me

I came back into ponies just as G4 was about to come out. I remember thinking they looked weird too and didn't like them. They grew on me too.

[Koudoawaia]

I remember I stumbled across the FiM pilot as it was first airing on the Hub and since the guide said My Little Pony I excitedly thought they were airing the original 80s cartoon. Quickly learned it wasn't and the drastically different style was a  huge shock to me at first and I didn't like it but I pretty much completely changed my mind and loved it by the end of the first episode.

[Mrs. Prospector]

I grew up with G3, and I learned that G1 existed around 2007, when the 25th anniversary repros came out. Around that time, I rented a DVD with Bright Lights and some other G1 episodes on it from Blockbuster. I knew it was the older version of MLP and not G3, but I didn't care because MLP is MLP. I was confused as to why there were humans there and I thought the 4 part episodes went on for too long. I liked the Bushwoolies though. I thought they looked like Dots candy. By the time G3.5 came out, I had lost interest in MLP and moved on to LPS. I think I remember seeing the toys in stores, but I assumed that since the Newborn Cuties were a thing, all of the G3.5s were babies, and MLP didn't really change.

G4 came out when I was 10 and long out of my MLP phase, so I didn't really know much about it. I remember seeing the toys at Target and being somewhat shocked that Rainbow Dash was a pegasus and Rarity was white instead of pink-how could they ruin MLP like that? I didn't get into G4, or back into MLP as a whole, until 2014, when the people I was sitting next to in art class started constantly drawing ponies and talking about the show.

[Ragamuffin]

My very first ponies were G2 but due to their short run in the US I didn't have many of them, nor did I know they were "My Little Pony". I had lots of other fakies too, I loved little toy horses in general. I had the Friendship Gardens game and it took a while to put two and two together to realise that the toy ponies I owned were the same as the ones in the game! (Ivy and Sundance.) I still didn't really know that "My Little Pony" was a thing. I figured it was some small thing, idk. Years later I got G3s, which were unmistakably "My Little Pony", and I figured "oh I guess these are new ones?" So I knew there were "old" and "new" My Little Ponys. 2006 I would receive The End of Flutter Valley on DVD as a Valentines Day present (timely story) and "oh, ponies that are even OLDER?". I had a shirt with Gusty on it too at some point, I don't remember whether it was before or after watching TEoFV. I didn't know Tales existed until 2007 when I stumbled upon it somehow on YouTube.

Despite "growing out" of the toys around that time, I still kept up with MLP and held *some* interest in it. I saw them phase into the Core 7 and thought it was odd, "these are all old ponies, but who's Sweetie Belle???". I was in middle school when Twinkle Wish Adventure came out and I saw it premiere on Disney Junior. I figured that MLP was getting an update again and I liked the "chibi style" of it (I was well into my anime phase at that point so maybe I was biased LOL).

[Ponyfan]

This probably isn't what you were going for, but I'm going to share it anyway.  For ages, I thought there was a Daddy, Mommy and Baby Gusty set.  I have a very vague memory of seeing at the store and pointing it out to my mom.  My mom remembers me asking for the Daddy Gusty set too.  As an adult I found out there's no such thing as a Daddy Gusty.  The closet I can figure out, I must have seen the Apple Delight Family and thought they were a Gusty family.


Ponyfan