DHX hit with major data breach (beware of spoilers)

[Galactica]

Yeah, that makes me suspicious as well.  Hasbro and its partners have never used the G-whatever label for generations.

As far as they are concerned My Little Pony can be divided into:

- My Little Pony

- this space intentionally left blank (aka G2 MLP which Hasbro has completely forgotten they made)

- the other My Little Pony

- My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic

Exactly-  this would be the FIRST time they referred to any "generation".   So possible that these fan-art looking ponies are G5, but I wouldn't count on it.

I'm sure the brony hacker(s) did really steal the cartoons, which would be impossible to fake-  but maybe then thought "what a good opportunity to get people in a frazzle" and added a few more nuggets... it would have been easy for them to do.

[Al-1701]

Regardless, bronies being butthurt brings me a sick kind of pleasure.  Especially when one of my G1 reviews has some idiot brony commenting today that G1 is (and I'm using the exact quote here) "(beep) bad" and how superior G4 is.  Yeah, these people get no sympathy from me.

[Purpleglasses]

Honestly, what companies call things internally and externally is not necessarily the same. Sure, maybe Hasbro never refers to pony generations in their marketing literature that customers see, but they're almost certainly aware of what people call ponies due to market research.

[Taffeta]

Spoiler

Regardless, bronies being butthurt brings me a sick kind of pleasure.  Especially when one of my G1 reviews has some idiot brony commenting today that G1 is (and I'm using the exact quote here) "(beep) bad" and how superior G4 is.  Yeah, these people get no sympathy from me.

Those are the people who I never feel sorry for. But if this is a hoax, some of the genuine fans are also going to be caught up in the upset, and I feel bad for them if that's what is happening.

I did a hunt around on DA for that image and it only came up for me in context with the leak but that doesn't mean it was never there.

I think it is lovely we can just talk about this without a community meltdown because it is interesting as speculation.

Hasbro basically care about selling toys. That's the bottom line. If they can sell Pinkie Pie 100 times, they will. Unfortunately. We have a standing joke in my house about Pinkie Pie's evil since my poor father was faced with Wondermint's huge Pinkie display in Dudley museum a year or two ago. My Dad is fine with MLP, but Pinkie Pie en masse was really too much for him. She is an obnoxious pink all over. It would soften it even if they just made her hair the same shade as Fluttershy's or graded it in different shades of pink a little more. There are generally obnoxiously pink G4 ponies as opposed to pretty pink G4 ponies. Cheerilee is the one exception I can think of currently.

My worry IF this was a G5 leak is simply this.

Mattel with MH tried to reboot the line by keeping the same characters but reinventing them. They ditched Ghoulia (claim they didn't, actually did, she's in the set that was meant to be SDCC and later MattelShop but not in anything else) and instead made Frankie the 'smart' sciency one in her place. THe whole dynamic and canon got changed around to rewrite how the school happened and half the characters vanished mysteriously as a result. And then Mattel started producing every single sibling possibility they could think of (and believe me, they're going to be on Clawdeen's a while, as she seems to have about a hundred cubs in her litter). It totally abandoned all the things that the original MH was in an attempt to reboot the line and generate a new audience.

My point is they changed it but they didn't change it enough to attract lots of new fans and they put off a lot of old ones. Not everything in the reboot is horrible, and somethings, like the hair/not getting goopy is nice - but in a lot of cases, they would have done better ending MH, waiting a few years, then relaunching something different. Trying to tag this onto the dying embers of the original MH basically means MH dying a slow and agonising death instead.

So a break between G4 and G5 would be good. Time to think. Time to plan. Time to conceive a new idea.

I don't think Hasbro care as much about character profiles as they used to - we haven't had proper backcard stories from Hasbro direct for at least 20 years. They seem happy to rely on external media to settle that stuff now.

I think the only real gap that has happened in MLP was between G1 and G2 and that was a lot shorter in Europe (2-3 years, and ponies were still in clearance stores in 95 and even into 96). Realistically some places barely had a year or two without MLP in the last 35. But that doesn't mean a break wouldn't be a good thing. Just I think they see MLP as a moneyspinner now, which they can exploit. It's also something HAsbro unequivocally owns. Dolls are harder to sell, because there are lots of dolls. But though there are other horse related toys, MLP is such a deep rooted thing now that Hasbro have a lot of clout to do things with it. And letting that lapse...I guess isn't appealing to the company at present.

I would worry about 'G5' being like MH's 'G2'. I think if that happens, MLP may die for a long time. And may not even come back at all.

So I guess we hope that this isn't G5 Let the speculating continue.

[goddessofpeep]

It may be a hoax, it might not.  I do know that the G4 toy line has been showing signs of winding down and struggling for a while now.  In the past this has led to the cancellation of the line, and often a rebooting into a new generation. 

I still hope there is a break between lines.  In a few countries, G2s actually almost overlapped with G3s, and for serious collectors of MLP, there hasn't been a real break for 20 years:/  I'm pooped!  And having seen the changeover between generations for every single generation, I can tell you that there was A LOT more excitement between G1 and G2, and G2 and G3 than there was for the changeover to G4.  Before the G2s came out, the pony community was absolutely foaming at the mouth with excitement about the idea of NEW PONIES.  That one didn't turn out so well in the USA due to the design, but the pre-release excitement was definitely there in the beginning.  It just turned into anger when the ponies didn't meet expectations.

In the USA, G2s had been gone for years, so when G3s hit it was *amazing* to be collecting at that time.  Everyone was so excited!  Everyone was talking about what the new ponies might be like and when they were going to hit stores.  Every little scrap of information that came out was poured over by the entire community, and once the ponies started to come out, people went crazy.  I remember running to TRU when I heard reports that the ponies were starting to come out, and I remember FREAKING OUT when I saw that first shelf of ponies and playsets.

When the G4s came out, I was in the community, but I really had no idea they were even coming out until pretty much they hit stores.  I remember someone mentioning new ponies and thinking "New ponies? Eh. Neat I guess."   When I finally did see them in stores, they were sharing space with the leftover G3.5s, and the excitement just wasn't there.  Pony lines tend to die slowly and badly, so by the time Hasbro finally pulls the plug, the MLP toy line is in pretty sorry shape.   People are worn out by the bad, gimmicky releases and spotty distribution of the final years of the generation, so when the new stuff hits it's more a "at least it's out of its misery" moment than anything else.

[Wardah]

Spoiler

It's not that they want to kill AJ because she's too hard to write for, they want to kill her because of her association with anything "country, farm or hick" (taken from the email...) I don't think Hasbro cares in any meaningful capacity that the writers have more of a challenge accommodating a story around her character. My guess is they don't feel a farm pony is appealing anymore, especially since they're throwing around the idea of turning her into a scrappy, tough urban girl who has to act harder because she's small. It feels like they're trying to respond to the current climate, and they want a champion of the underdog-type. AJ is my favorite, so it makes me sad that apparently she's too farm-y and horsey, which is silly. But the idea of her being a tough city pony is interesting, it's just hard to see at this point. Interested to see where she goes...

I wonder if their aversion has anything to do with the tendency of some bronies to put her with the confederate flag.

[Leave a Whisper]

Spoiler

It's not that they want to kill AJ because she's too hard to write for, they want to kill her because of her association with anything "country, farm or hick" (taken from the email...) I don't think Hasbro cares in any meaningful capacity that the writers have more of a challenge accommodating a story around her character. My guess is they don't feel a farm pony is appealing anymore, especially since they're throwing around the idea of turning her into a scrappy, tough urban girl who has to act harder because she's small. It feels like they're trying to respond to the current climate, and they want a champion of the underdog-type. AJ is my favorite, so it makes me sad that apparently she's too farm-y and horsey, which is silly. But the idea of her being a tough city pony is interesting, it's just hard to see at this point. Interested to see where she goes...

I wonder if their aversion has anything to do with the tendency of some bronies to put her with the confederate flag.

Ugh.

[Baby Sugarberry]

Spoiler

It's not that they want to kill AJ because she's too hard to write for, they want to kill her because of her association with anything "country, farm or hick" (taken from the email...) I don't think Hasbro cares in any meaningful capacity that the writers have more of a challenge accommodating a story around her character. My guess is they don't feel a farm pony is appealing anymore, especially since they're throwing around the idea of turning her into a scrappy, tough urban girl who has to act harder because she's small. It feels like they're trying to respond to the current climate, and they want a champion of the underdog-type. AJ is my favorite, so it makes me sad that apparently she's too farm-y and horsey, which is silly. But the idea of her being a tough city pony is interesting, it's just hard to see at this point. Interested to see where she goes...

I wonder if their aversion has anything to do with the tendency of some bronies to put her with the confederate flag.

Ugh.

Seriously?!??!!     For goodness sakes...

[Al-1701]

Spoiler

It's not that they want to kill AJ because she's too hard to write for, they want to kill her because of her association with anything "country, farm or hick" (taken from the email...) I don't think Hasbro cares in any meaningful capacity that the writers have more of a challenge accommodating a story around her character. My guess is they don't feel a farm pony is appealing anymore, especially since they're throwing around the idea of turning her into a scrappy, tough urban girl who has to act harder because she's small. It feels like they're trying to respond to the current climate, and they want a champion of the underdog-type. AJ is my favorite, so it makes me sad that apparently she's too farm-y and horsey, which is silly. But the idea of her being a tough city pony is interesting, it's just hard to see at this point. Interested to see where she goes...

I wonder if their aversion has anything to do with the tendency of some bronies to put her with the confederate flag.

Ugh.

Seriously?!??!!     For goodness sakes...

These are the same people who spent all of Season 5 associating Starlight Glimmer with Nazi and Soviet imagery.

[Lady Frostbite]

Spoiler

I wonder if Starlight Glimmer will be the go-to thing that killed the show now. People didnt like her becoming the 7th member as is, S9 being the last certainly won't help

[Zapper]

I'm excited! I wanted a big change a long time ago. Hoax or not, could someone share the concept arts with me in a PM?
Edit: please don't send me smug answers about reading the entire post. I only found one working picture behind all of your spoiler cuts and many broken links. I would like to see the location concepts as well. Thanks!

Spoiler

I wonder if Starlight Glimmer will be the go-to thing that killed the show now. People didnt like her becoming the 7th member as is, S9 being the last certainly won't help

Starlight is a pink and purple unicorn with magic powers. She does well with kids. People need to understand that a couple of angry adults on the internet are not the main target audience, no matter how hard they try to be. Not even us who supported MLP since childhood are the main target.
I never heard a little kid say "well Starlight is just too powerful. And she is a communist!" Only people who analyze the show do that.

[Taffeta]

I think Zapper's right. We probably also get a disproportionate amount of Bronyness rather than the actual target audience for MLP which are the kids (unless we have kids, in which case, different situation). I often see small kids clutching ponies. I should say that the Luna beanie is hugely popular here whenever its in stock - and Starlight Glimmer doesn't shelf sit in my areas of the UK.

I think Hasbro - if they DO try and change up the line - may actually be doing it in part to shift away from the sense of entitlement that some areas of the brony community put out. It can't be nice to deal with on top of trying to produce a marketable toy (their main focus).

I have seen a lot of stupid analysis comments trying to impose nonexistent adult themes into this kids' cartoon. I like analysing deeper meanings as much as the next person, but I've seen enough psycho brony analyses where they're clearly imposing their own personal hangups into the show to make themselves feel better about their imagined victim status. The outside world began with a certain sense of enthusiasm for bronyism and Hasbro rode that wave as publicity, but now that brony has become a somewhat tainted term, I wonder whether Hasbro might want to act to sever those people from association with their product. I can imagine that there are some parents out there concerned about some of the not-kid friendly material online about MLP and that it might end up denting their sales and their product image.

MLP should always be about the kids first and everyone else second - us included. There are too many bronies who have forgotten that fact. And if Starlight Glimmer sells, then she'll stay in G4 to the end of the line.

[Leave a Whisper]

Spoiler

It's not that they want to kill AJ because she's too hard to write for, they want to kill her because of her association with anything "country, farm or hick" (taken from the email...) I don't think Hasbro cares in any meaningful capacity that the writers have more of a challenge accommodating a story around her character. My guess is they don't feel a farm pony is appealing anymore, especially since they're throwing around the idea of turning her into a scrappy, tough urban girl who has to act harder because she's small. It feels like they're trying to respond to the current climate, and they want a champion of the underdog-type. AJ is my favorite, so it makes me sad that apparently she's too farm-y and horsey, which is silly. But the idea of her being a tough city pony is interesting, it's just hard to see at this point. Interested to see where she goes...

I wonder if their aversion has anything to do with the tendency of some bronies to put her with the confederate flag.

Ugh.

Seriously?!??!!     For goodness sakes...

These are the same people who spent all of Season 5 associating Starlight Glimmer with Nazi and Soviet imagery.

This is why we can't have nice things.

[Zapper]

Having seen the pic with AJ and Fluttershy on it....

....it looks like someone's fanart. Nothing I will lose sleep over. Character design concepts can also rapidly change during the various stages of design. If this one is legit then I assume it could be the early stages when multiple artists and designers throw their ideas out there.
You can get an idea of this when you look at "The Art Of" books for various animated movies. You'll notice a lot of characters looked vastly different in the early stages and the images vary in style and quality based on the artist.

That being said, I think an eventual G5 wouldn't look like this pic. Why? Because Hasbro is cheap. Animating all those details is a hassle and they are notoriously stingy when it comes to different body molds. AJ looks really cool, imo. I would embrace that G2 on FIMroids look.

[legodrew]

Change is always good and welcome, and I sincerely hope we can go back to having lots of characters to collect (like G1), and the show is not so core (ponies) driven. Also I don’t know why they didn’t invent new characters altogether, it sounds lazy to just change characteristics of the G4 main six and stamp them as G5.