The MLP Arena
Pony Talk => Pony Corral => Topic started by: kingluke on November 15, 2020, 01:01:55 PM
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Hello everyone,
I listened to baby Ember's dream. The tape that came with the pony baby Ember with her star cutie mark/symbol.
It was a cute story but it didn't explain how Ember got her mark.
Was that never revealed? Did she just get a random star? Was it maybe revealed in a comic or backward story?
Let me know if you know please. Or if you have any fun theories about it.
Cheers,
Luke
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I wonder if G1 ponies just chose their symbols. Maybe the baby ones can get new symbols later on, like someone with a rattle just likes their rattle. Ember probably was like "I'm a star, I'm going to be famous".
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Hello everyone,
I listened to baby Ember's dream. The tape that came with the pony baby Ember with her star cutie mark/symbol.
It was a cute story but it didn't explain how Ember got her mark.
Was that never revealed? Did she just get a random star? Was it maybe revealed in a comic or backward story?
Let me know if you know please. Or if you have any fun theories about it.
Cheers,
Luke
In G1, ponies were just sorta born with them. A lot of G1 babies without matching mothers have baby items as symbols, such as rattles (Cuddles), bibs (Tiddly-Winks), and others. What this implies is unknown, but perhaps they work like Tales.
In Tales, Madame Percheron is shown younger with a different symbol (a sunflower) in a photograph in Shop Talk; in her other appearance(s) in at least Send in the Clown, she is shown with ballet shoes. Perhaps in the Tales universe, their symbols change over time with their interests and roles... But Ember is pre-Tales, so that doesn't mean much.
The first release of Ember had her referred to as "My Beautiful Baby Pony" and had three colors; I don't know if the 1984 special (Midnight Castle) or the "Ember, My Beautiful Baby Pony" order form (which gave you the same three color options) came first, but both came after the original order form. The original idea behind the pony eventually called Ember could have been to name her yourself, perhaps supplying her with her own symbol (similar to the original UK Activity Club baby).
In the aforementioned special, Twilight tells Ember that she'll "grow up to be [her] own special Little Pony," which may imply a FiM-like system for symbols, but no such system was ever explicitly stated in G1 canon. It's no secret that Lauren Faust watched said special a lot as a child, so perhaps this is where her idea originated.
If we are to apply FiM logic to this, and we assume that Ember's star appeared in Ember's Dream, it was probably after the Rainbow Ponies (criminally lacking Skydancer and STARSHINE!) apologize. Prophetic dreams seem like a pretty special talent to me; the entire theme of Ember's Dream is Ember realizing that, despite being "ordinary," she IS special, and that the Rainbow Ponies are only human (equine, whatever) and can make mistakes despite them being older and "special." If there were any time in a young filly's life to receive her unnamed-until-G3 Cutie Mark, I think that would be it.
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because Hasbro put one there.
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Once I found out about Ember’s Dream Ember, I’ve always seen star Ember and MO Ember as different ponies. Maybe they are cousins? :lol:
I think MO Ember not having a symbol came about when Hasbro was still experimenting with the idea of baby ponies so they created her without one but by the time Ember’s Dream and the Play and Care babies came out Hasbro decided that baby ponies were born with symbols.
Ponyfan
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If the TV special came out first, it may have been assumed that she would develop a symbol when she grew up and they therefore didn't give her one. When the Play-n-Care baby pony line was conceptualized, perhaps it was originally assumed that they were just younger versions of the adult ponies, much like in later generations (3.5 maybe?) where they had the newborn Rainbow Dash/Pinkie Pie, etc. that were just baby versions of regular RD and PP. By the time Ember's Dream came out, perhaps it was then established that baby ponies had symbols, and they figured, oh, maybe we should give her one. (I've not listened to Ember's Dream-no tape player- so I'm saying this without knowing if anything in the story gives any clues about any of this!)
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LadyMoondancer has “Ember’s Dream” on her YouTube channel.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gwQUZAifaXw
Ponyfan
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because Hasbro put one there.
Exactly what I was going to say. :silly:
Chalk it up to early instalment weirdness (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/EarlyInstallmentWeirdness).
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It's not a cutie mark, it's a symbol, a rump mark, a rump design...but not a cutie mark.
Does that matter? Since 'cutie mark' has a specific acquired meaning since G4, and since it postdates Ember by at least 20 years, I think it does. It's difficult to have an anachronistic conversation based on concepts that didn't exist at the time when Ember was created. Ponies in G1 didn't have some magical epiphany that gave them their symbols. They just had them. And any attempt to skew the discussion into something more G4 related IMO does disservice to older generations for having their own way of doing things.
I also dislike the idea that because in G4 there's this whole stuff about 'cutie marks' that we should then go and revise what we think of pre-G4 ponies and give their symbols special destiny related meanings.
For me Ember's Dream Ember had a symbol because she had a symbol, just as LAW said.
Going onto something more informative, I certainly know the UK leaflet for Ember - at least the ones I have - actually tell the child to give the pony a name themselves. And I remember for the pony club baby, there was a similar kind of idea, that they were blank to give the child the opportunity to name and design for themselves. I don't remember either encouraging a child to draw on a symbol, just that that option was there. Taking care of baby - including naming her, and making stuff for her - was a big theme from that year's club release.
I don't know why there was that shift in the US, but Ember with a star and the MO Embers for me are like Twilight who is a unicorn and Twilight who is a So Soft pony. They're ponies who share a name. There is probably some deep meaningful reason why Ember for all of them early on, and why they added Ember's name to the MO release, but yeah, nothing other than that.
It may well be that Lauren took that comment from RaMC and applied it to her concept - which would in fact be a decent thing for a writer to do, creatively speaking - but it absolutely doesn't mean we should change the whole way G1 works to fit this concept. If anything, Ember's animated confusion inspired Lauren to construct something for G4, not the other way around.
On the comic note - Ember with a star didn't exist in the UK, thus she wasn't in the comic. In fact none of the Embers are, because they also predate the comic by about a year even in their UK release. Another key point here is that the US cassettes and stories that exist paint a very different kind of world than the ones we had over here (where the comic existed). I think Ember's story relates to a guy in New York stealing hair or some such thing, doesn't it? The other one that springs to mind is Glory who is sad that in ponyland there isn't much magic, and she ends up in some other world where a magician steals her horn or...something. The 'other world' that is described in Glory's tape is much more like the world that the comics portray (and also, actually, the animation series, albeit in different ways). So the US cassette stories etc present a less magical world than the one we think of for MLP. Whether they're on the same canon as each other or not I couldn't tell you, but G1 has so many canons going on that I think it's fair to say that Ember with a star has nothing to do with Ember in RaMC and nothing to do with the comic concepts. And none of them deal with her symbol.
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Initially ponies weren't even going to have their own unique markings. Giving the original six individual symbols seems to have been a somewhat late change during development, since on some artwork they all have the same appaloosa markings as Cotton Candy.
Ember was the first baby pony, so there was no rule saying baby ponies would have the same markings as the adult ones. Sea ponies didn't have any markings either, colors were enough to distinguish them. Maybe baby ponies would've stayed symbol-less if Hasbro hadn't gotten the idea to make matching mothers & babies.
Ember was also a main-in offer, and the lack of symbol could've been a cost cutting measure. But as others have pointed out, the babies weren't named Ember in the beginning. They were just "My Beautiful Baby Pony" on the offer. They weren't meant to be the same character. The point was that kids would give them a name and personality of their own. That could also be a reason they lacked symbols, to not limit kids' imaginations. (although I think there's some pretty overt gender coding in the colors chosen for the three ponies)
Hasbro really weren't thinking about any storyline or how the ponies' world worked when they were designing the toys back then. It was all about what they thought would sell as toy, nothing else really mattered. (They talk about this in the Toys That Made US documentary)
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I also dislike the idea that because in G4 there's this whole stuff about 'cutie marks' that we should then go and revise what we think of pre-G4 ponies and give their symbols special destiny related meanings.
We don't have to, it's just fun to do so if we choose too. I respect if if you don't like the idea of this, but I do enjoy imagining what pre-FiM ponies cutie marks* could mean, even if it was never officially talent related until G4 (some pre-G4s are easier for me to imagine it this way than others) mostly because I have a sentimental and nostalgic attachment to the cutie mark storyline of FiM.
I even considered including an (obviously fanon) explanation as to how the pre-FiM ponies got their cutie marks and/or what talents they mean in a fanseries (which takes place in Equestria, and still follows the cutie mark rule), but despite my interest in this, I realise I would be unable to, as it would slow the series down too much to stop and explain every cutie mark. Obviously this only counts in the fanseries - I am aware that this was not the case for the pre-FiM ponies, or even the actual FiM ponies whose cutie marks were not explained.
Maybe kingluke simply didn't know that earning cutie marks was a G4 thing (or that the term cutie mark was a G3 onwards thing)?
*And yes, I know that "Symbol" is preferred for pre-G3 ponies, and I do try to use that term when directly talking about those ponies (though I may slip up, due to simply being used to, and liking the term "cutie mark"), but in the context of the project, they are cutie marks even with G1 and G2 ponies (even if they're not in canon.)
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I also dislike the idea that because in G4 there's this whole stuff about 'cutie marks' that we should then go and revise what we think of pre-G4 ponies and give their symbols special destiny related meanings.
We don't have to, it's just fun to do so if we choose too. I respect if if you don't like the idea of this, but I do enjoy imagining what pre-FiM ponies cutie marks* could mean, even if it was never officially talent related until G4 (some pre-G4s are easier for me to imagine it this way than others) mostly because I have a sentimental and nostalgic attachment to the cutie mark storyline of FiM.
I just don't see the point of it. Aside the fact it reinforces the arrogance that G4 is somehow special, it's just not necessary. There's no realistic reason why a concept which came into being in 2011 should be applied anachronistically to a much older release in an entirely different generation. It's obvious that that concept would have been a bigger part of G1 if it had existed in the 1980s, and it wasn't. So it didn't. End of conversation really.
It's not really 'fun' so much as disrespectful to those earlier generations, because it overrides the concepts and ideas that went into their creation with something much newer. Kind of like Pinkie Pie and RD did when they went to the griffons, destroyed their sacred statue and then acted like it was fine because they had 'friendship instead', it's like we're expected to go, oh, well, older generations were fine but we can MAKE THEM BETTER WITH FIM IDEAS.
No, you can't. It may be strange to you as someone who came in with FIM, but MLP did just fine before the mane 6, and absolutely didn't need a meaning for their symbols (or G3, cutie marks) until Lauren Faust decided to give them one. Not that there's a problem (well, there are problems, but that's another conversation) with introducing that concept. It just doesn't backdate well.
The fact that Lauren was a fan of G1 and based some of her ideas on stuff she remembered from her games as a child is kind of irrelevant. I feel like sometimes people think that emphasises a link between G1 and G4 which validates these kinds of discussions - but if there is one, it's because G1 put ideas into G4, not the other way around. Lauren was also fan who created her own idea of G1, but what she created for G4 is still nothing to do with G1 overall. It's her concept of MLP, which again, is fine, but needs to be firmly put in context. The Toys that Made Us handled that badly, because it gave the impression that her opinions on G1 were somehow important. They're only important in how they influenced her to create FIM - they have no bearing on what G1 was or wasn't. If that makes sense. So a conversation about whether Ember's dialogue influenced the idea of cutie marks in G4, I can understand. But trying to revise ideas backwards is not the same thing. It's like G4 fans looking for some kind of legitimacy that proves their generation is somehow superior...and it isn't. You can talk about My Little Pony without needing to qualify it with what happened in FIM. And of course, that also applies to the terminology being used.
Though I will be honest - this is in context. If there wasn't a universal narrative still stifling the internet about how all the gens evolved into the perfect gen of G4, this would seem like a much more harmless topic of conversation. Unfortunately bronyverse created that context, and so here we are.
Let's not forget that G4 is just another generation. It's no better or worse than its predecessors. The only thing that makes G1 stand out over the others is that it was the beginning, and its concepts help to shape and frame what came after. But no generation is exactly the same and that's a good thing. And being the first does not automatically make G1 the best one. That's subjective. It's just that you can't go back and impose something on the past that didn't exist there. As a historian in real life I am also particularly picky about this.
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Thanks for all your interesting points of view. Good read really.
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Unfortunately, earlier gens didn’t have any explanation for cutie marks - ponies just sort of had them. Considering how symbolic cutie marks are to the MLP franchise across all gens, how much the whole “intricate butt tattoo” thing set MLPs apart from other toy animals, I can’t imagine why earlier lore creators didn’t want to throw in their own two cents as to how cutie marks come to be. It’s so fascinating to think about! Cutie marks clearly aren’t natural - are they genetic? Are they manifestations of magic within a pony’s DNA that show up as a picture on a pony’s flank? Are they ever-changing pictures, evidence that ponies are like chameleons and can change their appearance at will? I guess gaps in early gen lore are just opportunities for us to make our own :biggrin:
Since no official explanation for G1 ponies’ cutie marks exists, you’re free to imagine whatever you want. If you want G1 ponies to follow G4’s concept of a talent-based cutie mark, you can. If you want to imagine ponies tattoo their young from an early age, you can. If you want to come up with something else entirely, you can! And they’re all equally valid. When I was a kid, I called my G3 ponies’ cutie marks “tattoos” and assumes they got tattoos at a certain age in some sort of coming-of-age ceremony. I like G4’s explanation better than mine, haha. Like MJNSEIFER said, it’s fun to imagine earlier gen ponies getting talent-based cutie marks, since they weren’t designed with that concept in mind.
Post Merge: November 16, 2020, 08:47:21 AM
because Hasbro put one there.
My Little Nihilist: Nothing in Life Matters, Everything About Us was Created For Someone Else’s Profit, and We are All Doomed to Ceaselessly Perpetuate a Plastic Pony-Making Machine
I’m kidding, but teen angst Ember is my new headcanon (we’re supposed to give her our own personality, after all!). “What does your cutie mark symbolize?” “It’s a metaphor.”
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To Taffeta: I have a (hopefully) respectful answer to what you're saying, but it would derail the thread, and would fit in to a thread I'm hoping to start one day, so I'll save it for there. The short version that I can write here though is that it has nothing to do with "using FiM to make the earlier generations better" nor does it have anything to do with retrospectively adding something to the earlier generations, it is simply how I have chosen to write this storyline, and something I enjoy thinking about for sentimental/nostalgic reasons.
All of My Little Pony that I have seen in someway is special to me, the cutie mark storyline is just one of the things that is special to me about G4.
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In G1, it sometimes seemed that the ponies had their symbols and names bestowed on them from some interaction they had from the elements/environment around them. That's kind of what I got from backcard stories as a kid. I mean, Bubbles didn't have a name until she got a bath? How weird is that. A lot of ponies are like that. My other childhood theory was that literally someone imagined them and they suddenly came to be like in the Neverending story. They just were and no drawn out canon and backstory needed. Ponies just sprang out from thin air. And that, to me is far more interesting.
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My Little Nihilist: Nothing in Life Matters, Everything About Us was Created For Someone Else’s Profit, and We are All Doomed to Ceaselessly Perpetuate a Plastic Pony-Making Machine
I’m kidding, but teen angst Ember is my new headcanon (we’re supposed to give her our own personality, after all!). “What does your cutie mark symbolize?” “It’s a metaphor.”
*crying with laughter*
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Hello everyone,
I listened to baby Ember's dream. The tape that came with the pony baby Ember with her star cutie mark/symbol.
It was a cute story but it didn't explain how Ember got her mark.
Was that never revealed? Did she just get a random star? Was it maybe revealed in a comic or backward story?
Let me know if you know please. Or if you have any fun theories about it.
Cheers,
Luke
In Tales, Madame Percheron is shown younger with a different symbol (a sunflower) in a photograph in Shop Talk; in her other appearance(s) in at least Send in the Clown, she is shown with ballet shoes. Perhaps in the Tales universe, their symbols change over time with their interests and roles...
I always liked this version the best! The FiM version is now so popular because they made a big deal about symbols/marks on the show, but a symbol that can change as the pony changes feels just more natural somehow. A pony symbol as some kind of reflection of their being instead of their talent.
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Hello everyone,
I listened to baby Ember's dream. The tape that came with the pony baby Ember with her star cutie mark/symbol.
It was a cute story but it didn't explain how Ember got her mark.
Was that never revealed? Did she just get a random star? Was it maybe revealed in a comic or backward story?
Let me know if you know please. Or if you have any fun theories about it.
Cheers,
Luke
In Tales, Madame Percheron is shown younger with a different symbol (a sunflower) in a photograph in Shop Talk; in her other appearance(s) in at least Send in the Clown, she is shown with ballet shoes. Perhaps in the Tales universe, their symbols change over time with their interests and roles...
I always liked this version the best! The FiM version is now so popular because they made a big deal about symbols/marks on the show, but a symbol that can change as the pony changes feels just more natural somehow. A pony symbol as some kind of reflection of their being instead of their talent.
I have to agree on this. It's a slightly different topic and why I didn't go into it earlier, but you cannot have a whole life defined by the inconvenience of what turns up on your butt. :/
The thing is that earlier generations were defined by how broad the imagination of the child was. So anything goes. Of course that doesn't rule out using the G4 ethos if that's your poison, but it's the least imaginative option to just cling to the invention of G4.
I think individual ponies in G1 sometimes did have stuff around their symbols...but not just their symbols. For example the TE ponies (comic only, possibly) and the Sparkle Ponies (backcard/comic, I believe) each had different stories behind their key gimmick features as well. I'm sure there are more, but just to point out that in G1 at least, ponies were more than just some random butt tattoo. :P
The toys in G1-3 were designed for imaginative play. Not as avatars for the TV show as the main theme. I guess that does make a difference in how they are marketed. I wouldn't call it 'gaps' in earlier generations. They aren't gaps. They're opportunities for imaginative play inspired by the child themselves.
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Mm, I would call it a gap, as it's a part of the universe that's never fully explained. That's not a bad thing, though - every fictional universe has gaps in the lore. It's just part of fiction; we can never fully capture or recreate the complexity of the real universe. I don't mean "gaps" as "failures", just as "things up to interpretation".
Also, what exactly fosters imaginative play varies by child. As a kid, I preferred universes with pre-existing rules and lore (if a toylike didn't have any I'd incorporate some from some kind of media) so I could focus on imagining how different characters would fit in the established world. I've always been more interested in characterization than worldbuilding, haha. I still got in endless trouble at school for my "overactive imagination" AKA undiagnosed ADHD, but my imagination ran more towards characters and still does.
Child me would've loved FiM for that reason, and would've loved using the toys to make my own adventures within the established G4 world, while G3's books and TV specials didn't hold my attention for long and thus I sold my G3s at a young age and didn't regret it until I started collecting as a teenager.
That's the great thing about play - there's no real wrong way to do it (as long as you're not playing with swords or something like that).
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Mm, I would call it a gap, as it's a part of the universe that's never fully explained. That's not a bad thing, though - every fictional universe has gaps in the lore. It's just part of fiction; we can never fully capture or recreate the complexity of the real universe. I don't mean "gaps" as "failures", just as "things up to interpretation".
I wasn't really reading 'gap' as failure, just that in my view there aren't really gaps. But I grew up with the comics which did provide a more detailed world than the TV series or the backcards could do in the US, which may be a different perspective. Even given that nothing was set in stone and things were still open for individual imagination. For example as a kid I used some things from the fact file as a basis for the stories I wrote, but I still wrote the stories based on my own ideas. I didn't need to have that bigger overarching 'canon' set in stone.
In G1 Magic Star is either a down to earth logical earth pony (animation) or the most magical pony in ponyland (Factfile). These two interpretations seem to contradict each other completely. They don't have to, they can be put together, but that requires child + imagination to achieve. And frankly the latter is much more interesting as a character prompt in my opinion - but the former is the better known iteration. In the G1 animation, earth ponies weren't magical. Unicorns each had one special magic and could wink in and out. Pegasus ponies could fly over the rainbow. Those were sort of rules...but at the same time some of those things were being contradicted in the comics, where earth ponies often had magic (so did pegasus ponies), flying over the rainbow hardly ever happened, and at least one unicorn spent her life organising parties rather than doing magic (Sunbeam).
...I don't know if this makes sense, but what I'm getting at is that by having multiple canons G1 gives more opportunity for imagination than G4 can. I am quite character driven when it comes to my writing and so on, and G4 doesn't (for me) have any original characters, just familiar tropes that don't really develop beyond a handful of set-in-stone ideas (friendship, elements of harmony, princesses are alicorns, etc). Whereas G1 really doesn't have those or any other limits. And maybe that's not suitable for all kids, but for me it was perfect.
I have said it before but if I was a kid now I would not have got into MLP. For me the things you call 'gaps' are points of imagination and ultimately, for me as a kid, inspiration. :) This idea that FIM has the best canon because it is the only formalised canon is a bit of a misnoma in my view. I would never have wanted to play games in which I was tied to Equestria and the concepts it put forth. I get that some kids will and do and that's fine. My point is that trying to then extrapolate those ideas out and impose them on earlier generations is disrespectful to those other generations. It wouldn't be right to impose any or all of the G1 world rules (Such as they are) on G4 and expect other people to just accept that without question. G4 has its own concepts and rules, but they belong TO G4. And that's basically where I stand on this.
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To me, pony symbols are basically tattoos :lol:. Whoever it was mentioned ponies getting tattoos in a coming of age ceremony: that's my headcanon too! I suppose it's a bit of a prosaic idea for such a magic-filled world but I like it, and it's a good explanation for why babies often have the same symbols as their mothers (perhaps everyone in the family has that tattoo), and why some ponies have symbols that have nothing to do with their personality (the tattoo could symbolise what their parents wanted for them/it could just be a nice design that doesn't mean anything). It could also explain TAF symbols and other variations: perhaps they come from specific cultures within PonyLand who have different traditions. And if you really hated the mark your family gave you, perhaps you can have it lasered off and replaced (though this seems uncommon; if the tattoos are culturally important, it might be frowned on or seen as severing your family ties).
But what about babies with babyish symbols? Hmm. Perhaps in some PonyLand cultures, the tattoos are seen as charms that keep ponies safe from various evil spirits. Therefore a pony has to be tattooed as soon as possible after birth, much like a christening ceremony. However, you can't know what sort of personality the pony will have and which symbol might be appropriate, so perhaps it became the fashion to give the baby a cute 'babyish' symbol, which can then be changed in a coming of age ceremony when they're older. Perhaps sometimes these coming of age ceremonies involve getting a new name as well (it's ok, Rattles, you don't have to be named after a baby toy forever!).
So my theory for Ember (if the two Embers are the same character) is that she came from a part of PonyLand where foals are first tattooed when they're young, but not as babies. Perhaps the tattoo is received when they perform their first magic or an important deed.
I'm assuming ponies have developed tattooing to be quite painless and very precise, since it's obviously a big part of their culture.
So that doesn't involve any canon at all really (I've never even listened to Ember's Dream). Imaginative play for the win! (I'm 27, possibly I'm not part of the demographic Hasbro is encouraging to play imaginatively....)
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It seems like people are trying to shoehorn G1 into some kind of Marvel comic universe with an all encompassing story world that explains everything? But, in the early 80s that really wasn't a thing with MLP. It just wasn't what they were going for. To do that, you would have to throw out part of G1 history, make other parts "unofficial" and give meanings other than what was intended to still more parts. That's too much of a distortion of actual history.
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It seems like people are trying to shoehorn G1 into some kind of Marvel comic universe with an all encompassing story world that explains everything? But, in the early 80s that really wasn't a thing with MLP. It just wasn't what they were going for. To do that, you would have to throw out part of G1 history, make other parts "unofficial" and give meanings other than what was intended to still more parts. That's too much of a distortion of actual history.
Exactly.
It's an anachronism.
And it really isn't necessary.
Besides, if you start on that path, someone's childhood is going to be trampled on. Whether you had your own world (like Faust clearly did), the animation, the comics, the backcards or whatever as your background - someone is going to get pushed out if you start trying to streamline it.
It's applying the "must have canon" logic of FIM to a generation that neither had nor needed that rigidity.
I know that folk have said it's not about that, but it is, because I'm pretty sure there never were conversations about one 'canon' and whatever for older generations before FIM.
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I'm not trying to say G4's lore is better than G1's - I'm exactly trying to say that they're both equal in different ways. G1's world/canon is more up to interpretation, whereas G4's world/canon has more set rules if you want to focus your imagination on something else besides worldbuilding. Both are equally great for different reasons, and appeal to different people. I'm not trying to force G4 canon on earlier gens by imagining G1 elements/characters in a G4-inspired context, but it is true that I've seen very few of the reverse happening. Which is a right shame, imo - G1's world, while not my cup of tea, is fascinating in its own right and deserves more attention. Not just in the case of generational crossovers, of course, but in any context.
And Shaz, that's a super cool idea! I love the thought of ponies having cultural traditions surrounding tattoos. G2, with its tendency to have ponies switch names, symbols, hair colors or even species (as in the case of Silver Swirl/Star Swirl), is especially fascinating to think about. What are the rites behind ponies changing symbols or names, or dyeing their hair, or somehow changing species? Is it natural or deliberate? Are they like frogs and have dramatically different appearances based on what stage of their life they're in? This has turned into a speculative thread for pre-G4 symbols and I love it.
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I'm not trying to say G4's lore is better than G1's - I'm exactly trying to say that they're both equal in different ways. G1's world/canon is more up to interpretation, whereas G4's world/canon has more set rules if you want to focus your imagination on something else besides worldbuilding. Both are equally great for different reasons, and appeal to different people. I'm not trying to force G4 canon on earlier gens by imagining G1 elements/characters in a G4-inspired context, but it is true that I've seen very few of the reverse happening. Which is a right shame, imo - G1's world, while not my cup of tea, is fascinating in its own right and deserves more attention. Not just in the case of generational crossovers, of course, but in any context.
I am guessing because canon is less important for pre-G4 generation fans, although I admit it could be because of G4 fatigue and just wanting away from the M6 as well.
I agree they are both fine - IN their own worlds. The CM destiny concept is a G4 concept. It's neither fun nor interesting IMO to apply that to G1 just because it exists :/ It simply sends a message that G4 canon should override whatever G1 was doing because it doesn't have a proper 'canon'. And while I'm sure that's not the motive of everyone, I have seen people write that exact thing in other places before - hence context.
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Don't see why every symbol pre-G4 needs to be explained officially? They're colorful plastic ponies, and the symbol is there to help identify and make them unique, and sometimes ties into their interests. I don't even like the way G4 tried to finally shoehorn a reason in. It was handled poorly story-wise imo. A symbol magically appearing on your hip once you've found your destiny or talent or whatever was annoying.
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LaW - my thoughts exactly. If FiM wants to explain the symbols then that's fine, if future instalments want to give reasons for them then that's fine too! But I agree, there doesn't need to be an explanation.
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Don't see why every symbol pre-G4 needs to be explained officially? They're colorful plastic ponies, and the symbol is there to help identify and make them unique, and sometimes ties into their interests. I don't even like the way G4 tried to finally shoehorn a reason in. It was handled poorly story-wise imo. A symbol magically appearing on your hip once you've found your destiny or talent or whatever was annoying.
:iconclap:
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I guess it really is a generational (human, not pony lol) thing, because I feel like everything needs an explanation. We'll agree to disagree! :lol:
Anyway, harking back to the thread's original intent (connecting two generational concepts just because they exist, not to assert the dominance of one over the other, just because I'm a sucker for crossovers simply for the sake of crossing things over) I like the idea that Ember got her cutie mark by looking through a telescope and finding a star that hadn't been charted before.
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I like the idea that Ember got her cutie mark rump marking/symbol by looking through a telescope and finding a star that hadn't been charted before.
Just fixing that for you.
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How did baby Ember get her cutie mark?
By sacrificing the souls of the other ponies...muwhahahah..
OR
My original Ember was the blue mail order ember and was I decided a boy. He never got a symbol, he was sort of the class clown and he and baby moondancer were boyfriend and girlfriend.
OR
It was left open for you do decide because at one time toys actually gave you the ability to dream up your own ideas about each pony, instead of strictly following along someone elses ideas. Even back in the day the cartoon for G1 didn't play a huge part in how I thought about my ponies. It was an accessory, take it or leave it, my ponies were nothing like the ones portrayed on the cartoon.
Which was technically what MLP was created to do. It was the idea of a child being able to have their own ponies. Even the backstories invented didn't fully flesh out the personality of ponies. Although since the UK sort of had the comics it might have been a tad different...but I can only speak from my own experience with MLP back in the 80's.
I can still remember getting my first ponies and that it was my mom who bought me Moondancer and Firefly. Then we went to visit my cousin the same day and she had also purchased Moondancer!! It was so funny, we bought looked over the backcard and all the other ponies and were totally IN. We both wanted to collect all the ponies pictured there. I was 11-12 and that would have made my cousin probably 7-8 years old. We were sorta bff/sisters instead of cousins.
We also both took super good care of our ponies, we did play with them a little but we were never really abusive. Although I do remember that one time I'd gotten to the point of having almost 50ish ponies and for some weird reason I could not leave any of them at home while we went on our week long vacation to Florida...YES, all my ponies came with me. So it was me and 50 ponies piled up in the backseat. (haha)
I remember it was around my birthday the year I started collecting ponies and my dad taking me out of town and we went to a store called Woolworths where to my surprise they still had the show stable. And I really wanted it and dad got it for me for my birthday. I didn't have many ponies then, maybe a handful but I thought it was so awesome I'd have a house for my ponies. I still remember how it felt sitting in the truck on the way home with the box in my lap.
It really wasn't about a particular 'character' in G1. I felt like the ponies were one big family and I, as the caretaker needed to collect all the ponies and bring them home. So, even at that age it was a 'collection'. But in that I was always seeing the ponies how I wanted, not how hasbro said the ponies had to be, which again, I never felt like Hasbro originally was pushing for the ponies to be set in stone as far as their personality goes, it was supposed to be about play and imagination and your own ideas.
Back to the symbols on each ponies. Clearly back at the origins, Hasbro wasn't going for some kind of coming of age, your life MISSION if you choose to accept it and too bad if you don't as you'r stuck with a purple cupcake on your flaks. It was more a way to identify the pony and make it 'different' from the other ponies. Which to a certain extend does give the ponies a vague personality. But was Moondancer a space pony, was she a magical wizard unicorn? Or was it just a way to reflect the name and color sceme back then?
I mean ya know, newborns already had their symbols/name in package. (haha) Maybe G1 ponies were just so far advanced of their G4 decendants they knew out of the Hasbro womb who they were and what they're future would be. But I have a difficult time imagining the newborn twins as adults. What exactly is a job profile for Bunkie?
or Tattles...maybe she's a FBI or CIA informant...
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How did baby Ember get her cutie mark?
By sacrificing the souls of the other ponies...muwhahahah..
OR
My original Ember was the blue mail order ember and was I decided a boy. He never got a symbol, he was sort of the class clown and he and baby moondancer were boyfriend and girlfriend.
OR
It was left open for you do decide because at one time toys actually gave you the ability to dream up your own ideas about each pony, instead of strictly following along someone elses ideas. Even back in the day the cartoon for G1 didn't play a huge part in how I thought about my ponies. It was an accessory, take it or leave it, my ponies were nothing like the ones portrayed on the cartoon.
Which was technically what MLP was created to do. It was the idea of a child being able to have their own ponies. Even the backstories invented didn't fully flesh out the personality of ponies. Although since the UK sort of had the comics it might have been a tad different...but I can only speak from my own experience with MLP back in the 80's.
I can still remember getting my first ponies and that it was my mom who bought me Moondancer and Firefly. Then we went to visit my cousin the same day and she had also purchased Moondancer!! It was so funny, we bought looked over the backcard and all the other ponies and were totally IN. We both wanted to collect all the ponies pictured there. I was 11-12 and that would have made my cousin probably 7-8 years old. We were sorta bff/sisters instead of cousins.
We also both took super good care of our ponies, we did play with them a little but we were never really abusive. Although I do remember that one time I'd gotten to the point of having almost 50ish ponies and for some weird reason I could not leave any of them at home while we went on our week long vacation to Florida...YES, all my ponies came with me. So it was me and 50 ponies piled up in the backseat. (haha)
I remember it was around my birthday the year I started collecting ponies and my dad taking me out of town and we went to a store called Woolworths where to my surprise they still had the show stable. And I really wanted it and dad got it for me for my birthday. I didn't have many ponies then, maybe a handful but I thought it was so awesome I'd have a house for my ponies. I still remember how it felt sitting in the truck on the way home with the box in my lap.
It really wasn't about a particular 'character' in G1. I felt like the ponies were one big family and I, as the caretaker needed to collect all the ponies and bring them home. So, even at that age it was a 'collection'. But in that I was always seeing the ponies how I wanted, not how hasbro said the ponies had to be, which again, I never felt like Hasbro originally was pushing for the ponies to be set in stone as far as their personality goes, it was supposed to be about play and imagination and your own ideas.
Back to the symbols on each ponies. Clearly back at the origins, Hasbro wasn't going for some kind of coming of age, your life MISSION if you choose to accept it and too bad if you don't as you'r stuck with a purple cupcake on your flaks. It was more a way to identify the pony and make it 'different' from the other ponies. Which to a certain extend does give the ponies a vague personality. But was Moondancer a space pony, was she a magical wizard unicorn? Or was it just a way to reflect the name and color sceme back then?
I mean ya know, newborns already had their symbols/name in package. (haha) Maybe G1 ponies were just so far advanced of their G4 decendants they knew out of the Hasbro womb who they were and what they're future would be. But I have a difficult time imagining the newborn twins as adults. What exactly is a job profile for Bunkie?
or Tattles...maybe she's a FBI or CIA informant...
Fantastic! :thumb: :devious:
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Bunkie builds bunkers, of course. And Tattles the spy is incredible.
Meanwhile, what do Sticky and Sniffles do?
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And the Unicorn has arrived xD :D So nicely put <3 Well said.
On the comics - I don't think they really dictated anything tbh. I mean, I read them obsessively, I chose favourite ponies sometimes based on things in the comic, not just on how they looked - but I never ever played games based on the comic world and the pony stories I wrote didn't involve the characters or settings in the comic - just odd details like the thing I mentioned earlier.
The nice thing about the comic was the two-way approach it had interacting with the kids sending in letters, their own pony designs, photos, and getting replies from Majesty or Spike or whichever pony. And then certain ponies giving tips or craft stuff based on something that happened in a story. It felt kind of like they were giving you all these things you COULD try - but didn't have to if you didn't want to.
I also remember Blue Peter doing a stable or something on their craft section but that's something else.
What's interesting is that quite a lot of pony commercials don't even mention the names of the ponies. I mean ones without those jingles.xD. I can think of at least 2 UK ones which just refer to "My Little Pony" as the central character. So instead of Peachy it's "My Little Pony" in the grooming parlour advert here. And the ponywear ad names a lot of the other ponies but it says something like "My little pony is having a party because today's her birthday." So it almost puts even that in the hands of the child. "You can change the name if you want to, its YOUR little pony."
...So yeah.
The UK had the storybooks and (on VHS) the TV eps as well. And backcards, which sometimes had stories (the very early ones didn't, and the ones that did are not as long as the US ones until some time later). And the UK comics used some stuff from US backcards we never had...so yeah, go figure that out. Shady's UK persona is based on SS Shady's backcard, as Movie Star Shady doesn't have a backcard story. But the G1 animation's Shady is not really based on more than one line of the US backcard story. Because that makes sense...
Things like Shady's sunglasses and Baby Shady's boat came back several times in the comic but I never wanted to make Shady any sunglasses (and Baby Shady wasn't sold here, but if she had been...I would not have made her a boat just because I saw it in the comic.)
Even the writers picked and chose what they thought was important. And with a semi-rotating cast they were free to do so.
I'm afraid speckles and bunkie to me sound contagious.
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this thread is like reading a book that is falling apart
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And Shaz, that's a super cool idea! I love the thought of ponies having cultural traditions surrounding tattoos. G2, with its tendency to have ponies switch names, symbols, hair colors or even species (as in the case of Silver Swirl/Star Swirl), is especially fascinating to think about. What are the rites behind ponies changing symbols or names, or dyeing their hair, or somehow changing species? Is it natural or deliberate? Are they like frogs and have dramatically different appearances based on what stage of their life they're in? This has turned into a speculative thread for pre-G4 symbols and I love it.
Thanks :)
I don't have many G2 ponies so I haven't really thought about them, but it's definitely interesting to think about. I like inventing elaborate worlds for my ponies!
Just to be clear, my thoughts on tattoos were just about my imaginings for my own pony world, I wasn't intending to trample on anyone else's pony memories/headcanons/adherence to Hasbro facts. My pony 'canon' is just based on stories I've made up about my collection, sometimes inspired by the UK factfile or the G1 cartoon, sometimes just my own ideas. It's no secret that I'm not a huge fan of G4 (each to their own), so I haven't used much of that canon. I also often give my ponies different names and stuff. I like the space to invent my own ideas, and I was always into that as a child (my favourite toys included Ty Beanies and Kitty in my Pocket, who don't really have much overarching canon, you can just do your own thing).
Here's something cute about symbol nomenclature: when my girlfriend was little, she had a pony annual with a story about the Pocket Ponies in it, but she never owned/saw any Pocket Ponies and didn't know about their 3D symbols. So she thought that ponies' symbols were universally referred to as pockets, and would refer to e.g. Posey as being 'a yellow pony with flowers on her pocket'. It wasn't till we started collecting ponies together in 2013 that she realised they weren't called pockets! So I suppose everyone has their own version of the pony world - and if you invented it as a child, it might be quite surreal! (Kitti's childhood PonyLand apparently included a lot of holes which ponies would fall down and get trapped. A pony known as Musical Note [Twirler] would have to twirl her magic horn and send down bubbles to rescue them. This happened a lot, to the extent that Musical Note was basically a full-time rescuer of trapped ponies. I suppose the bubbles were inspired by Fizzy in the cartoon, but the falling down holes is pretty random :lol:. Kitti's family still reminisce about it, and her dad still doesn't understand why they never filled the holes in. I think the answer to that is probably 'because ponies falling down holes and getting rescued is a fun game when you're four'!)
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Also, what exactly fosters imaginative play varies by child. As a kid, I preferred universes with pre-existing rules and lore (if a toylike didn't have any I'd incorporate some from some kind of media) so I could focus on imagining how different characters would fit in the established world. I've always been more interested in characterization than worldbuilding, haha. I still got in endless trouble at school for my "overactive imagination" AKA undiagnosed ADHD, but my imagination ran more towards characters and still does.
This was how I worked as a kid too. I preferred having an established universe and characters to work with and expand on that, rather than making everything up from scratch. I would also have loved growing up with the rich world of FIM rather than the lackluster one of the G1 cartoon. If people want to say "kids these days don't use their imagination", you might as well argue kids shouldn't be given toys at all, they should make their own out of sticks and rocks. :lol:
Granted I do think there is a lot in MLP that can't have a satisfactory in-story explanation (but it can be a fun challenge trying to come up with one). The UK comic attempted to explain twinkle eyes and where baby ponies come from, but I don't feel like those explanations really add anything meaningful to their world. It would've been just as good to not address those things.
Maybe you don't necessarily need to explain why ponies have pictures on their butts, but it is a bit weird to go 25+ years without ever addressing such an important part of their design. I think FIM's basic idea, that a pony receives their cutie mark when they've found their calling in life works fine in the context of a fairytale world. I don't think kids will take the message as "I need to decide early what I want to do in life, and then I can only do that one thing". It's also a great nod to G1, where the first baby ponies indeed didn't have a picture on their butt. And if someone wants to headcanon the FIM cutie mark explanation for G1, that's absolutely fine.
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I'd hardly call G1 lackluster.
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All the lands and different characters in the G1 cartoon and you call it "lackluster"? Geez...
this thread is like reading a book that is falling apart
Good analogy.
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TBH I was never inspired by the G1 animated world either. Not that I think it would've been a problem for me to only grow up with the TV series, but I suspect I would've ditched it and done my own thing.
Though I disagree on almost all the other points made. I don't want to see G1 described through G4 filters. It has enough of its own.
Not that it is a bad thing to want rules or guidance to create a play world, or that that is a lack of imagination. But FIM is so tied to those specific characters that it's stifling.
I don't know, maybe it's just me, but I am never particularly drawn to characters that are too explicitly described without any room for me to add my own touch. G1 suited that perfectly, as it gave details but not really rules. I feel like FIM has rules. And they may work for FIM, but I don't want them anywhere near my childhood.
Also, these concepts of the baby pony origins and the TE rules and so on and so forth. I often see generalised comments about the comics doing x and y and sometimes that's a simplification.
The comic DOES indicate how the TE ponies got their twinkles. I think that's fine, honestly - well, the story is a bit notorious, but the idea of explaining a pony gimmick in the comic in some way was not uncommon. It's not random and out of place, it's kind of a part of a bigger attempt to introduce new ideas to the kids reading. The comic began in 1985, so those were some of the earliest new 'gimmick' ponies to come out while the comic was running. I think it's issue 11, so very early on.
The comic does NOT, however, categorise 'how baby ponies happen' as such. Unless you want to generalise and say that baby ponies often happen through magic, which I suppose might work. The first issue has the babies coming out of the mirror, but it's only a handful of babies. Nibbles and Dibbles, Sniffles and Snookums are drawings brought to life by Baby Lucky's magic. Most baby ponies move to ponyland, rather than have a magical origin. The Rainbow Babies are the charges of the Rainbow Curl ponies, but we don't know if they are related or how that relationship came about. A lot of babies live in the nursery under the guardianship of Gusty/Lollipop and later Caramel Crunch, but aside the loving families there's no sense of ponies living in family groups in G1. They more often live with their peers, but not always in the nursery. We do have that moment of Lickety Split cousins which suggests extended family, but that is a one off example as far as I know. Baby Half Note is discovered on an island by Locket.
In any case, absolutely no other baby ponies ever come out of Majesty's mirror after issue 1, so it can't really be called an attempt to explain where babies come from overall. And Ember is never in the comics, so Ember's origin is completely unknown and unexplained. The comic seems to present Baby Glory, etc as the earliest babies (because at the time of the comic they would have been, if Hasbro UK had bothered to sell them), so Ember is left entirely with the animation - she doesn't exist.
Of course all of this is later contradicted by Surprise Twins Missile Launcher - although because she comes so late, she is never in the comic - who demonstrates that baby ponies apparently come about the same way as baby people.
Just because there's a couple of stories where a handful of babies come into being by a particular method, that's a long way from attempting to explain where baby ponies come from.
What the comic DOES do is provide a more coherent 'world' in terms of geography and other peoples. It doesn't really attempt to set rules about the ponies down in stone. The rules it does mention usually relate only to one pony/one handful of ponies.. I think it's more coherent than the TV series in regards to the setting that is 'Ponyland' (Dream Valley is only in the animation). That's partly because the TV series comes in chunks, though. There are a number of ongoing locations, characters and other races in the comics that appear from time to time. Because it's a longer run, there's more chance of those elements coming up time and time again. The animation would probably have done this too, but didn't have that same length of time to establish more than a handful of other locations. At best most of them only appear once, with only a few exceptions.
@Shaz - you were absolutely not trampling on anyone with your idea :) In fact the opposite, your idea is exactly what I mean when talking about everyone having their own concepts of pony.
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All the lands and different characters in the G1 cartoon and you call it "lackluster"? Geez...
It's my personal opinion, but yes I think the world in the G1 MLP cartoon is very boring and doesn't inspire much imagination. For most of the part you just have a bunch of ponies (all of which can be switched out to advertise new toys) living in a big pink building, which of course is a toy you can buy. Their closest community is super small and basically 100% dictated by which toys Hasbro are selling. They travel to different places and meet various creatures, but everything feels invented by the writers as they went along, not like it's part of a larger, coherent world. Most of the time the creatures they meet don't have any meaningful connection to the ponies (and once the episode is over, they're instantly forgotten). It's ok to like this style of storytelling of course, but I much prefer FIM's world where you have so many ponies and creatures living in different locations. Everything feels more coherent and connected, while still always having lots of room for expansion.
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Bunkie builds bunkers, of course. And Tattles the spy is incredible.
Meanwhile, what do Sticky and Sniffles do?
Bio-warfare. :p
Clearly they're mad scientists.
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this is totally a generational thing.
In G1, not all kids had access to the TV show, and UK kids didn't all have pocket money for comics every month.
So the commercials were yes, "BUY MY LITTLE PONY" but it absolutely was not in the same manner that other toylines had - like if you don't have He-man AND Skeletor, how will you play MOTU? GI Joe, you gotta have the WHOLE team. MLP was "pony pony pony" but it wasn't "Firefly Blossom Medley Starshine Applejack". I don't know if that makes sense?
But you can look at the commercials - the herd of ponies is standing around the playset and they are wearing outfits and accessories and the girls are playing with the latest gimmick, and the narrator is talking about buying "MY LITTLE PONY" - they are not talking about "re-play Star Wars in your living room with X, Y, Z, etc."
Buy a pony, any pony, buy MLP, that's the message.
with FiM, it's pretty clear: you need the WHOLE team! it's not generally just buying more ponies with fun and different gimmicks. and the WHOLE team is repeated over and over in front of your face with the TV show. yes there are background characters, but we all have acknowledged that Hasbro really fell flat on releasing G4 in the same way as G1, they have this "sentai" thing that works for them in 5 year cycles....
I prefer the term symbol, that keeps it nice and fantasy for me. If you've had to attend to the reality of branding a horse, it's not a delightful experience like Ember is dreaming it's gonna be. LOL
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It's my personal opinion, but yes I think the world in the G1 MLP cartoon is very boring and doesn't inspire much imagination. For most of the part you just have a bunch of ponies (all of which can be switched out to advertise new toys) living in a big pink building, which of course is a toy you can buy. Their closest community is super small and basically 100% dictated by which toys Hasbro are selling. They travel to different places and meet various creatures, but everything feels invented by the writers as they went along, not like it's part of a larger, coherent world. Most of the time the creatures they meet don't have any meaningful connection to the ponies (and once the episode is over, they're instantly forgotten). It's ok to like this style of storytelling of course, but I much prefer FIM's world where you have so many ponies and creatures living in different locations. Everything feels more coherent and connected, while still always having lots of room for expansion.
I feel the same way about the show. It's so disjointed; like each episode was written by a different person without having watched any of the others to even have a consistent feel of the world they were writing about. I liked it as a kid, but I had a hard time slogging through it as an adult.
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It's my personal opinion, but yes I think the world in the G1 MLP cartoon is very boring and doesn't inspire much imagination. For most of the part you just have a bunch of ponies (all of which can be switched out to advertise new toys) living in a big pink building, which of course is a toy you can buy. Their closest community is super small and basically 100% dictated by which toys Hasbro are selling. They travel to different places and meet various creatures, but everything feels invented by the writers as they went along, not like it's part of a larger, coherent world. Most of the time the creatures they meet don't have any meaningful connection to the ponies (and once the episode is over, they're instantly forgotten). It's ok to like this style of storytelling of course, but I much prefer FIM's world where you have so many ponies and creatures living in different locations. Everything feels more coherent and connected, while still always having lots of room for expansion.
The entire point of the G1 cartoon was to act as an advertisement for the toys. Not the other way around, like G4 was. And MLP wasn't the only cartoon to do this, either. GI Joe, Transformers, He-Man, She-Ra, Ninja Turtles...almost every 80s cartoon was designed to be an ad for the toy lines. Some of the cartoons succeeded in having a more coherent and connected storyline but they were there every Saturday Morning to sell toys.
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It's also basically the case that the original series was written like that. You have some repeat writers and others who write one off episodes. I have no idea if G1 MLP had a bible like Jem did, but even with Jem some of the writers chose to ignore continuity things that would have made so much more sense. Although that also made parts of the Jemverse interesting because you could theorise some of those coincidental small details together into something bigger for certain characters.
I don't think that's the case with the pony episodes so much as it's more about arcs. You can almost think about some of those eps with their multiple parts as mini specials in their own right, rather than a continuity.
I actually agree with Lilja about the TV series continuity as being somewhat vague. But for me G1 was about picking and choosing the bits and pieces from different continuities and my own imagination to figure out what ponies were for me. I only had 4 TV eps as a kid and I didn't really consider anything in them meaningful except that Paradise existed. :/ I don't really see G1's animation as a 'series' because I never saw them air on TV as such as a kid. They were released on VHS tapes which also made them more like a special to me.
While the comic (which was also advertising, let's not mistake that) had a rolling cast, there were a number of repeat characters in the world (JunkIt, Wizard Wantall, Weather Witch, Miranda, Kelpie etc), and a number of repeat locations (Weird Wood, Misty Mountain, Rainbow Mountain, Whispering Wood) which did give this sense of a 'world' that had other places in it beyond the borders of ponyland. The ponies "coming to live in ponyland" rarely explained why they came there though. Some did - like the MGR ponies being rescued from the Whirligig and the TE ponies rescued from the mine - but many just decided to move in...;)
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There was a series bible, Wildshadow has it and has posted pics from it in the past.
http://mlparena.com/index.php/topic,294582.0.html
I'm pretty sure most, if not all, series have bibles or something similar.
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At Lilja and LadyAmalthea
Being invented by writers as they went along? Why its almost as if that is how you write a story. Furthermore there were some overarcing plotlines that got tied up. And there were plenty of characters. And yes different writers did write it, so its not that surprising.
I find it interesting that you bash n Friends for centering on a community of ponies. Because last I checked, that's every MLP cartoon. So you'd better apply that criticism to Tales, G3 animation and FiM as well, because its My Little Pony. Sorry but that's hypocritical. Its like griping about Smurfs focusing mostly on Smurfs. And yet they still traveled and met different sorts of creatures good and bad in other lands. And there were 2 other communities of talking ponies in the cartoon. Or did you forget that Flutter Valley and Greyvale exists? Oh and what about Tales island ponies? And the unexplained existence of Glow n Shows? And G3's Butterfly Island and Unicornia?
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There was a series bible, Wildshadow has it and has posted pics from it in the past.
http://mlparena.com/index.php/topic,294582.0.html
I'm pretty sure most, if not all, series have bibles or something similar.
Ah, that's true. Now you mention it I remember it being discussed before.
It does make sense. I don't know as much about the stuff behind the pony series as I do the Jem one, and haven't checked up on writer names for the pony eps to see how many overlap. I am also not sure who was the overriding creator if there was one. With Jem it was Christy Marx and Roger Slifer who took on the bulk of that (Christy being the bible creator) but there were occasional episodes which were written or cowritten and didn't really adhere to the bible. It strikes me maybe MLP had more variety in that sense, so you have the multi part eps that connect as a series but there isn't massive continuity between for example Bright Lights and Crunch the Rock Dog outside the pony cast.
Not that there's anything wrong with this, they just seem more like encapsulated stories in themselves rather than a series continuity.
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The entire point of the G1 cartoon was to act as an advertisement for the toys. Not the other way around, like G4 was.
The G4 show also exists to sell toys just as much as G1. Not saying there's anything wrong with that, I just don't think G1 did a good job as far as making an enjoyable cartoon out of it. The first two specials are fine, but from the movie onwards I can really only enjoy it as a subject of study nowadays (but I've watched the episodes hundreds of times since childhood).
I find it interesting that you bash n Friends for centering on a community of ponies. Because last I checked, that's every MLP cartoon. So you'd better apply that criticism to Tales, G3 animation and FiM as well, because its My Little Pony. Sorry but that's hypocritical. Its like griping about Smurfs focusing mostly on Smurfs.
Actually the opposite is true. The one thing that always bothered me with the show since childhood was how little many of the stories focused on the ponies, and more on guest characters each episode (I like Tales a lot more, partly for this reason). Basically you seem to have misunderstood just about everything I said, but either way I don't think there's any reason to get this worked up about me not liking a piece of MLP media.
This thread seems to have strayed very far from the original subject.
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Meanwhile, we all spend our time on a forum dedicated to us talking about plastic toys made by hasbro, while at the same time some of us accuse the 80's cartoon of only being an advertisement to sell toys.
Somehow, I'm feeling like the manipulation seems like a 30+ year success. Apparently, I'm not the only sucker round here.
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At Lilja and LadyAmalthea
Being invented by writers as they went along? Why its almost as if that is how you write a story. Furthermore there were some overarcing plotlines that got tied up. And there were plenty of characters. And yes different writers did write it, so its not that surprising.
I find it interesting that you bash n Friends for centering on a community of ponies. Because last I checked, that's every MLP cartoon. So you'd better apply that criticism to Tales, G3 animation and FiM as well, because its My Little Pony. Sorry but that's hypocritical. Its like griping about Smurfs focusing mostly on Smurfs. And yet they still traveled and met different sorts of creatures good and bad in other lands. And there were 2 other communities of talking ponies in the cartoon. Or did you forget that Flutter Valley and Greyvale exists? Oh and what about Tales island ponies? And the unexplained existence of Glow n Shows? And G3's Butterfly Island and Unicornia?
What overarching plotlines ? The closest i see is the witches from the movie coming back in end of flutter valley but that isn't really an overarching plotline, just villains coming back.
Also idk if i read their messages or yours wrong but i don't see anywhere them criticizing the fact it centers on a community of ponies? To me their criticism was more about the fact n friends is composed of disjointed adventures that have no consequence on the previous or next ones, and while i don't mind that, i can see how it would bother some people.
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At Lilja and LadyAmalthea
Being invented by writers as they went along? Why its almost as if that is how you write a story. Furthermore there were some overarcing plotlines that got tied up. And there were plenty of characters. And yes different writers did write it, so its not that surprising.
I find it interesting that you bash n Friends for centering on a community of ponies. Because last I checked, that's every MLP cartoon. So you'd better apply that criticism to Tales, G3 animation and FiM as well, because its My Little Pony. Sorry but that's hypocritical. Its like griping about Smurfs focusing mostly on Smurfs. And yet they still traveled and met different sorts of creatures good and bad in other lands. And there were 2 other communities of talking ponies in the cartoon. Or did you forget that Flutter Valley and Greyvale exists? Oh and what about Tales island ponies? And the unexplained existence of Glow n Shows? And G3's Butterfly Island and Unicornia?
What overarching plotlines ? The closest i see is the witches from the movie coming back in end of flutter valley but that isn't really an overarching plotline, just villains coming back.
Also idk if i read their messages or yours wrong but i don't see anywhere them criticizing the fact it centers on a community of ponies? To me their criticism was more about the fact n friends is composed of disjointed adventures that have no consequence on the previous or next ones, and while i don't mind that, i can see how it would bother some people.
Not every story was always finished in one episode obviously. And the episodic stand-alones were and are still in use of modern cartoons today. One may not like the originals, but to call them lackluster when there was lots to see and adventures in nearly every one, as well as to gripe about them being centered on the titular group is odd.
With the episodes being so short, they kind of had to do overarching plots, otherwise we'd get the poorly written types of cartoon like Fully Charged or Cyberverse.
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Meanwhile, we all spend our time on a forum dedicated to us talking about plastic toys made by hasbro, while at the same time some of us accuse the 80's cartoon of only being an advertisement to sell toys.
Somehow, I'm feeling like the manipulation seems like a 30+ year success. Apparently, I'm not the only sucker round here.
It is what it is. I'm not saying it was a bad thing, that's just what they did in the 80s.
In case people are interested, I'm going to leave this here.
https://www.gamespot.com/gallery/20-amazing-cartoons-created-to-simply-sell-toys/2900-2623/#1
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The entire point of the G1 cartoon was to act as an advertisement for the toys. Not the other way around, like G4 was.
The G4 show also exists to sell toys just as much as G1. Not saying there's anything wrong with that, I just don't think G1 did a good job as far as making an enjoyable cartoon out of it. The first two specials are fine, but from the movie onwards I can really only enjoy it as a subject of study nowadays (but I've watched the episodes hundreds of times since childhood).
I find it interesting that you bash n Friends for centering on a community of ponies. Because last I checked, that's every MLP cartoon. So you'd better apply that criticism to Tales, G3 animation and FiM as well, because its My Little Pony. Sorry but that's hypocritical. Its like griping about Smurfs focusing mostly on Smurfs.
Actually the opposite is true. The one thing that always bothered me with the show since childhood was how little many of the stories focused on the ponies, and more on guest characters each episode (I like Tales a lot more, partly for this reason). Basically you seem to have misunderstood just about everything I said, but either way I don't think there's any reason to get this worked up about me not liking a piece of MLP media.
This thread seems to have strayed very far from the original subject.
Ok, now your flip-flopping.
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Meanwhile, we all spend our time on a forum dedicated to us talking about plastic toys made by hasbro, while at the same time some of us accuse the 80's cartoon of only being an advertisement to sell toys.
Somehow, I'm feeling like the manipulation seems like a 30+ year success. Apparently, I'm not the only sucker round here.
It is what it is. I'm not saying it was a bad thing, that's just what they did in the 80s.
In case people are interested, I'm going to leave this here.
https://www.gamespot.com/gallery/20-amazing-cartoons-created-to-simply-sell-toys/2900-2623/#1
meh, actually I don't need a refresher, as I was there and from just scrolling and looking at the pictures I probably watched a majority of the cartoons. I'm pretty sure anyone that grew up in the 80's watching those, even at the time we knew it was to sell toys, however it was because we liked the toys that we watched the cartoon.
Maybe that isn't always expressed so well (At least with MLP it's not, since the cartoon came a while after the toys were already popular, regardless of what some of the FIM centered forums and fandoms suggest); It was because the toyline was successful that there was a cartoon about them, not the reverse.
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I'm pretty sure anyone that grew up in the 80's watching those, even at the time we knew it was to sell toys, however it was because we liked the toys that we watched the cartoon.
Absolutely this! I loved the MLP toys as a child, that's why I watched the cartoon over and over. As an adult I still think the toys are great, but the cartoon not as much anymore. It is what it is. You look at things differently with adult eyes, but I still find plenty of ways to get enjoyment out of it. :)
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I'm still going to put my overall explanation into the big thread I'm planning, but I feel I should clear some things up, just in case I've given people the wrong impression here. I'm not sure how much of this, if any, came from what I said, and how much of it is what other people have done.
I am in no way saying that G4 rules should be canonically applied to previous generations, nor am I saying that any pre-G4 cutie marks/symbols need to be explained using G4 logic. I simply said that I enjoy using my imagination this way, because I enjoy using my imagination about things that mean something to me, and FiM's way of how cutie marks work means something to me. I have no idea if anyone (who wasn't simply unaware that G4 was the first generation to treat cutie marks/symbols this way) has insisted on actually explaining the cutie marks/symbols of pre-G4 ponies this way, but that is not what I am doing. I am simply saying that if anyone wants to imagine or even write things that way, they can do so, the same way people who don't like the way cutie marks were handled in G4 can totally ignore that, and imagine and/or write that those ponies are born with their cutie marks too – it's your world, you can do what you want with it.
I am not in anyway saying that G4 or it's logic is superior to the previous generations either. Yes, I prefer G4's way of how cutie marks are earned, and relate to talent, and yes, in our (myself and a friend's) fanseries we are applying this rule to pre-FiM ponies, but that isn't supposed to even imply that G4 is superior. For one thing, if the fanseries is set in a G4 world, then it is ultimately it is G4 rules that will mostly apply; it wouldn't make sense to include pre-G4 ponies and have them be born with their cutie marks, and to have the G1 and G2 ponies call them symbols, or have the G3 unicorns be the only unicorns incapable of teleportation etc. that would make sense in something that's litterally meant to be a cross-over between generations, like all universes meeting, but that isn't what this fanseries is – it's a fanseries that is set in Equestria, but can include ponies from previous generations, as well as other elements (if there are things that fit from other generations, then we can include them.) It is not because either of us view G4 to be superior (in fact, our shared favorite generation is G3), it is ultimately because the storyline takes place in a fanon version of a G4 world, so most of the logic of how things work would come from there. If we viewed G4 to be the special and only good generation, then we wouldn't be including anything from the previous generations at all.
In fact, even FiM's canon is not taken as gospel (the fanseries includes CheeriMac for pony's sake!) we are simply including what we like about FiM and/or what we feel fits in with our storyline, and creating our own fanon. We do not in any way intend to even imply that our version of things is the correct canon of any and all versions of My Little Pony, that everyone should follow, and I in no way intended to give this impression, if I did.
Leaving our fanseries aside, this is just who I am in general – if something interests me, it fuels me to use my imagination. I have no idea if it's a generational thing (to be honest though, I don't really like to think generational things apply to me – it's my own personality, tastes and opinions that define me, not what generation I'm part of), but it is definitely a “me” thing; I'm the guy who has the desire to turn a simple cute moment between two fictional characters into a full romantic storyline, the guy who enjoys taking a throwaway gag in a cartoon and building a storyline around it, the guy who sees a character who isn't given enough of a personality (due to not being a character important enough, or used enough to be given one) and gives them a personality and makes them a full character based on how he interprets the character (some of which can be based on what I've seen of how the character behaves in canon and/or even fanon of them, but even with that it's ultimately the version I've gone with for them.) I'm not the only one who has imagination, nor am I the only one who has the desire to create from said imagination, but it's something I love doing – I mean, one of my future non-pony projects is a story about a minor, one scene (I think) character in a movie that I haven't even seen yet! Once inspiration opens the door, there's no stopping me from going in!
On the subject of cutie marks/symbols, like I said, I prefer G4's way of doing it, because it's a storyline that interests me, and I like the idea of it. I have never felt from the show that a pony has to be defined by their cutie mark, or that it means that each pony is only good at one thing, and I certainly haven't been given the impression that they can end up being stuck with ones they don't want. I simply feel that it represents what the pony is best at out of all the things they can do and/or something that matches their personality – it can at times be a destiny thing, but that's if it matters to the storyline that it is. Ultimately it is each pony's own choice whether they choose to be defined by their cutie mark or not, in my mind. The show also made it clear to me personally that ponies have other talents other than whatever their cutie mark talent is, and that they don't have to follow goals that their cutie mark talent represents.
But that's just my interpretation, and I have no intention on stopping anyone from viewing it differently, or even not liking FiM's cutie mark storyline at all – it's up to us all how we view things individually. The same as how it's up to each of us what “canon” of any generation we follow (all generations up to, and including G4 have more than one canon as far as I can see, though I need to check on G2) or if we just ignore everything and simply create our own world from scratch, or do any combination of the above (which is ultimately what the fanseries does – it combines bits of different canons with each other, and with its own fanon, other people don't have to do this themselves, but it's what we're doing, and at times it will simply be a shout-out to a specific generation and/or canon rather than outright stating it as fact within the fanseries.)
At the end of the day, I love My Little Pony, all of My Little Pony (up to G4.) I may have (mostly) started with G4, and as an adult, and I may have missed out on growing up with what came before FiM, and getting to play with the toys, and maybe I would have ended up with the same views as how canon should work, or maybe I wouldn't – I have no way of knowing, that reality never happened for me, but this is who I am now; a fan of My Little Pony who loves, and is inspired by all generations and wants to share his love and nostalgia for all of them with everyone else who loves My Little Pony, as they enjoy their own nostalgia for it.
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@MJSNEIFER
The irony is that everyone having their own idea about pony is kind of the mantra behind G1 (and probably G2 and G3) as well. And despite all the disagreements, nobody is saying it's wrong to have your own personal concept, preference, whatever. In your own creative work and project and space it's entirely your own ideas anyway. Nobody is saying that that is wrong in the slightest. Actually the opposite. But this multi-generational forum is an entirely separate space away from those projects, where fans with a wide range of opinions and backgrounds roam. People who read your work probably agree with your concepts. That isn't the same on a forum like this one, where some will agree and some will not.
You also mentioned that you like the CM concept because it means something to you. In which case maybe you'll understand my position best when I say there are many things from G1 - the comics especially - that mean stuff to me too. And they have nothing to do with FIM whatsoever.
I am sure there are others for whom moments in the G1 tv series matter in the same kind of way.
I am sure there are others who have precious self-developed canons from some childhood game or interpretation of a character because of a particular memory or childhood friend/game.
...Those things are just as valid as the thing that is important to you. And we shouldn't have to keep defending them in this groundhog-day thread topic that keeps coming up over and over again. It's like FIM fans are obsessed with this Ember symbol thing, because it somehow gives legitimacy to the concept in G4 back in the eighties. And maybe it does - but only because RaMC may have inspired Faust to develop it. Not because it has any meaning for G1 ponies overall.
As I said before, other features than just the symbol were also the focus in the comics around ponies in G1.
And in terms of things that are important to me personally - please don't use cutie mark to refer to G1 ponies, whatever the context. Maybe it doesn't bother you - but if we're talking about everyone's freedom, I think I have the right to ask that you use the proper terminology, even despite the thread title.
On another note, I don't know what your other thread idea is, but we really don't need any more threads about how G4 is relevant to G1, because, quite honestly, it isn't.
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I agree with pretty much everything MJNSEIFER, Lilja and LadyAmalthea have said (well said by the way! I can't articulate as well). I also don't take everything FiM says as gospel, and I cherrypick what I want to include in my own fantasy pony world. I also agree with lovesbanysquirmy saying it's a generational thing - not in what we like, but in how kids' shows are structured. G1 is a product of its time. G4 is a product of its time. One is a high-fantasy, mysterious, open and largely unexplored/unexplained world. One is a modern state with magical elements and a system of government that seems to be a mixture of anarchy, democracy (they have a mayor, after all) and monarchy. Both are cool in their own ways.
Also yeah this thread hasn't just derailed, it's spilled hazardous materials and is now on fire. Sorry kingluke. Also, any interest in a thread where people share their own imaginary pony worlds?
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One is a high-fantasy, mysterious, open and largely unexplored/unexplained world. One is a modern state with magical elements and a system of government that seems to be a mixture of anarchy, democracy (they have a mayor, after all) and monarchy. Both are cool in their own ways.
Is that only based on the G1 cartoon? I ask because the comic world is essentially an unofficial monarchy of sorts. And several of the neighbouring kingdoms/lands are also monarchies or principalities.
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I sincerely apologize if I have said anything to upset anyone. I'm confused about how it was interpreted that I said anything about the show being centered around a community of characters...in fact, if anything, I found the cast of protagonist characters to be rather inconsistent (not that that's a bad thing; I would rather have that than Mane 6 over and over!). All I said was that it seemed disjointed, maybe 'lack of continuity' as others have said is a better way to put it. It felt, even as a kid, that I was watching episodes out of order, but I chalked that up to the fact that I was likely watching reruns and the episodes I was watching were being played randomly. Then I bought the DVDs last year thinking, oh good, I can watch them in order now. But it still seemed like every episode was a separate show from the others; no reference back to anything that had happened in previous episodes. Such may have been the nature of 80's cartoons...I was not a big enough TV watcher as a kid (as I am still not now) to know; only that modern shows usually seem to have an ongoing storyline from what I can see. I hardly think I was 'bashing' it...I did state that I enjoyed it well enough as a kid. It just didn't have an in-depth enough ongoing storyline to keep me interested as an adult. I did like seeing the art style of it, and it was a nice trip down memory lane. I certainly didn't mean to hurt anyone's feelings, if I did. I'm glad that the show still brings joy to people, as it did to me as a child.
Sorry kingluke for going so far off your original thread.
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On another note, I don't know what your other thread idea is, but we really don't need any more threads about how G4 is relevant to G1, because, quite honestly, it isn't.
I think these kinds of threads are fine as long as the poster doesn't claim his/her opinions are fact-based. It happens to so many theory threads, too. Posting headcanons is totally fine with me, I like to read them. But they gotta admit it's all in their heads. I am tired of seeing youtube-style essays about hidden truths and agendas and stuff :lol:
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On another note, I don't know what your other thread idea is, but we really don't need any more threads about how G4 is relevant to G1, because, quite honestly, it isn't.
I think these kinds of threads are fine as long as the poster doesn't claim his/her opinions are fact-based. It happens to so many theory threads, too. Posting headcanons is totally fine with me, I like to read them. But they gotta admit it's all in their heads. I am tired of seeing youtube-style essays about hidden truths and agendas and stuff :lol:
I think my problem is that we get a lot of these kinds of discussion threads and they are fundamentally all the same. We never get threads wondering about how G1 might feed into G2, or G3 might be connected to G1. We don't even really get threads about G3 into G4 or connections between G2 and G4. What we get are:
Threads comparing G1 and G4
Threads comparing the cartoons from G1 and G4.
Threads trying to explain how G1 ponies/concepts fit into G4.
Threads trying to validate why it's ok to reinvent G1 into a G4 concept
Threads that assume a G4 concept goes back to previous generations (like this one).
Pretty much all of these threads are underscored with scant knowledge of G1 (at best, just "the cartoon!"), and thus reinforced by a surfeit of G4 knowledge. This usually results (like this one) in comparing two TV series that are not really comparable. FIM is 90% of G4, MLP & Friends/Tales is maybe 20% of G1 in terms of storytelling, so it's easy to see how those conversations then get dominated by FIM examples.
Lately there's also a trend of a handful of G4 fans (not those who have posted in this thread, I hasten to add!) who complain that people are 'picking on' G4 and 'being hurtful' by having opinions that differ from the main point of the thread. TBH I find it really stifling that apparently it's fine to trample all over other pony generations in an attempt to make them FIM friendly, but it's not fine to say, hang on a minute, maybe it's ok just left as it is.
I would genuinely be more engaged in a thread that compared G1 to another generation than G4, since they don't happen. But the G4 ones always go the same way, and usually cover the exact same topics. Take this one for example. Ember's symbol has been discussed on here so many times I'm considering saving a copy-paste response.
It's just not necessary to regurgigate the same thing over and over again. Especially since most of the sweeping judgements about G1 or how G1 works seem to come from people who only have a general overview of G1 anyway. I see random comments about the 'might of majesty' or whatever else, which is usually a sign of someone who read an online wiki/watched a yt video but doesn't actually know about Majesty. (This is usually resolved by comparing her to Celestia.).
@Unicorn - yep, that's about the size of it :)
The thread is not on fire. The thread is engaged in a debate where people share differing opinions. Big difference.
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@Unicorn - yep, that's about the size of it :)
The thread is not on fire. The thread is engaged in a debate where people share differing opinions. Big difference.
Okay, I totally misinterpreted the picture. I thought it was being suggested that maybe Ember got her mark as the result of a burn-perhaps from a family member who had fire magic. (You know, since her name is Ember.) :lol:
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The cassette story really had nothing to do with Baby Ember getting a symbol/cutiemark.
It was a story about ember dealing with her feelings of envy but also of her having a prophetic dream about the RB ponies being in danger and having their rainbow hair stolen and being turned into wigs, which would be sold in a place called....NewYorkCity...
LOL's, oh the memories.
And I want pink angel pony...hasbro never made her (sad)
Baby Ponies are sometimes very wise and grown up ponies are sometimes very foolish...(best words of wisdom angel pony)
So the story really had nothing to do with Baby Ember getting a symbol, it was all about prophetic dreams and some dude stealing rainbow pony hair to sell it in newyorkcity.
Wait, my biggest question is, why does Majesty know someone from new york city who she'd invite to the castle LOLs!!!
And at the end of the story the narrator says, You'll have fun creating your own stories an adventures with Ember and all of her friends in the world of My Little Pony.
If we go back to original Baby Ember, the mail order version. There are 3 versions of this toy. A all blue, a lavender with pink hair, and one is pink with lavender hair - This was kinda the first thing I remember we could get through the mail so If memory serves me right this was the start of the mail order system. Pretty sure it would have been in the 84'ish time frame so it was probably to see how well the mail order system would work, see if baby ponies would be something to make in future and also to promote the first special. She had no symbol in the first special and thus that's why she didn't have one on the toy.
As to why she has a symbol in the cassette/pony package. Well, she's also a different color from all the original embers. She was a dull lavender body with lavender hair and a white star on her flank. I feel like the more important question is which baby Ember is the REAL baby Ember?
Edit: And Fire Repunzel is my go to when a thread is on fire. Cause I'm silly.
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I think star Ember is the real Ember.
The others were not always marketed as Ember, so they're questionable :)
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I think star Ember is the real Ember.
The others were not always marketed as Ember, so they're questionable :)
Well, as I said in an earlier post, the one I ordered through the mail was the all blue one. Which I deemed a boy. But going back to then, thinking, there were no actual photographs on the pamphlet, only a black and white drawing/artwork. So we that ordered her/him through the mail had no way of knowing what the baby pony was really going to look like. I don't know for sure when the cassette and baby pony combo was sold in stores but I don't remember seeing it till much later, I already had my blue ember, but this is me going back in memory to 84-85, so as a kid, a lot time could have only been a few months. But I do remember already having blue baby ember. (shrugs)
But originally if you ordered the mail order version you really didn't know what you were going to get other than going by the drawing. So it was sort of a surprise when you got the baby in the mail. I had no way of knowing what 'kind' of shade of blue the pony would be till I got it.
And this was obviously pre-internet so nobody had a way of sharing their toys online, showing them off. So, it was kind of 'fun' to expect an unseen item in the mail, etc.
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As to why she has a symbol in the cassette/pony package. Well, she's also a different color from all the original embers. She was a dull lavender body with lavender hair and a white star on her flank. I feel like the more important question is which baby Ember is the REAL baby Ember.
Same here - I've mostly wondered which is the 'true' Ember or if they're all the same pony in the first place. Headcannoning that one (or all?) of them turned into Ember's Dream and therefore got a symbol implies that they are? But it raises more questions as to the color changes and the other Embers. It's very unclear if Ember's Dream has any relation to the MO ones, so for all anyone knows, she could've been born with a symbol like most of the rest of the G1 ponies.
(If we're still sharing, I personally headcannon that they are the same pony; Ember's Dream is her 'true form' while she can shapeshift into the other three.)
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If Ive got it right, the MO babies were original sold as a beautiful baby pony, and then may have added the name Ember. I do have a US leaflet for this somewhere but I've never opened it as it's sealed up with the sticker of another pony. It might make sense that Ember came about as a name around the time of Ember's dream.
I know here in the UK there was a push for kids to name the symbolless ones themselves. I feel like this came up recently, but the leaflet I have for the UK actually encourages the new owner to give the pony a name themselves.
Whereas Ember's Dream seems to have been named Ember purposefully from the off.
I was only about 2 when these ponies came out though. XD And there is remarkably little about Ember other than her mail order leaflet stuff, the cassette release and that appearance in RaMC.
It could easily be argued that lavender Ember and ember with star are both formally Ember, but the other versions are undecided ;)
I also feel like Ember's Dream is a rare appearance for Majesty...
And that there's a second G1 story canon in the US which is more grounded in real life concepts (like the nyc reference) which rarely gets talked about because people know the G1 animation much better.
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Don't quote me on this because I don't have any pamphlets in front of me. I think originally the baby ponies may have been advertised as, as taff says, baby ponies or beautiful baby pony but then sometime after the pamphlets changed to read 'baby ember' for the mail order ponies.
Because I knew the pony as baby ember before I ever saw a special and before I ever saw the cassette tape version in the store. And for some reason, I do believe this was discussed on the forums before among collectors, that there are multiple versions of the original mail order forms/pamphlet thingie.
Again, I'm working off memory right now so don't shoot me if I'm mixing something up.
But just like with the mail order birthflower and other mail order forms, there was multiple versions of some forms.
I'm thinking maybe over the years when they did the printing, it's possible they ran out and then printed more, but sometimes they'd change it or they'd add new mail orders, so thus they'd update the pamphlets to reflect that. The mail order programs usually had an end date but it was usually months to a year beyond when they originally started putting them in the packages. And sometimes even though the end date hadn't passed yet you'd sometimes be unlucky as they would run out of whatever pony you were ordering. As I had that happen to me with baby Gametime and Sugarcake as I got one of them but the other they sent me a post card to tell me they were no longer available.
So I have a feeling that originally Ember may have been baby pony but then changed at some point to Ember because they were having the TV special and had decided to give the baby a name.
I don't remember ever watching the special on tv originally, I saw it on video that I rented at the video store, etc. Then at some point I did see it again when I was able to watch the episode tv show they eventually re-showed the specials on tv. But this was back in the day when you could only watch things like Wizard of Oz on TV once a year. So I have no clue what year/dates I actually was first exposed to all the specials, I know it was later than when they originally aired.
I think maybe it's very possible that originally the mail order program was an attempt to see how 'popular' the ponies were. Back in the day there was no internet to tell you. But if you could see results from people actually WANTING to mail in to get a pony, you knew that hay...people do actually want this item. It's not just mom or grandma buying a kid a toy off the shelf. Kids actually do wanna save the points and order these 'special edition' ponies you can only get through the mail.
It's one reason you can go back and see the Original 6 were already being described as 'collector' ponies, even back in the 80's. Hasbro knew apparently that both kids and adults were already seeing it as a collection, not just some random average toy.
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Same here - I've mostly wondered which is the 'true' Ember or if they're all the same pony in the first place. Headcannoning that one (or all?) of them turned into Ember's Dream and therefore got a symbol implies that they are? But it raises more questions as to the color changes and the other Embers. It's very unclear if Ember's Dream has any relation to the MO ones, so for all anyone knows, she could've been born with a symbol like most of the rest of the G1 ponies.
It's a bit difficult to say for certain. On one mail offer they're just referred to as nameless baby ponies, so likely not meant to be the same character. But on another the name Ember is given which implies they all represent one character. Personally I'd rather think of them as separate ponies, because that gives Ember (whichever of them you want to give that name) two friends rather than being the one lonely baby pony in Year 2. But since Ember is the only official name for all of them, that's what collectors will always call them. There are lots of ponies that share names in G1, but they're usually not released in the same year and the same set! :lol:
If Ive got it right, the MO babies were original sold as a beautiful baby pony, and then may have added the name Ember. I do have a US leaflet for this somewhere but I've never opened it as it's sealed up with the sticker of another pony. It might make sense that Ember came about as a name around the time of Ember's dream.
The first special aired in 1984, and the Listen 'n Fun set has the year 1985 on the card, so the name likely came from the special (but possibly it had been chosen by Hasbro beforehand).
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There are MO pamphlets that call the 3 Embers "My Beautiful Baby Pony" and also "Ember."
http://www.mylittlewiki.org/wiki/Ember
Both have a copyright date of 1983.
Also the original VHS tape of Rescue at Midnight Castle has a copyright date of 1984 for the program and I think 1985 for the boxart and description.
Ponyfan
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I do remember the pamphlet that said "Ember" and it was a little confusing as I knew the TV special was purple but the option of getting another color was welcome. I mean, if they offered all the ponies in other colors I wouldn't have complained. I did want the lavender one though. I ended up with both Blue and Lavender because the pony was late and my father called to follow up. The blue came first and lavender 2nd. I was thrilled with the blue one so I felt lucky to get the 2nd. I named one Blueberry and the other Ember.
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Thanks Ponyfan. It makes sense that that's the case, because of Ember's Dream and RaMC.
What I don't know is whether this is also true over here. It matters a bit because we didn't do the MO programme very well here, not for ponies - but we did have Ember and Baby Lucky. I can remember getting Lucky in his little box with his white comb and bowtie and letter - which I still have, randomly - but I was too young for Ember. I do have a UK insert for her which came with her. It doesn't name her but I don't know if there is another one naming her Ember. I know Chrissytree has a box for Ember which I have photos of but it just has tickboxes on the side for the colour that was being sent out. It's a plain brown box otherwise as far as I can see. She may be able to comment more on that. So right now I don't have any evidence for the name Ember in the UK.
And since star baby wasn't sold her either, to me she's the true Ember. Although by habit I call them all Ember now :) since it's easier than baby with no name o.o.
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The UK letter that came with Ember (dated 1984, so postdating the naming of Ember on the US leaflet). It's a bit funny that it's Megan because Megan didn't really exist here in 1984 O.o. Except of course with RaMC but then you'd expect to see the Ember name. It makes me wonder if the text is basically the same as a letter that might have come with Ember in the US, before she was formally named - but I can't be sure.
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Oh my god that letter is adorable. I love it!!!
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The UK letter that came with Ember (dated 1984, so postdating the naming of Ember on the US leaflet). It's a bit funny that it's Megan because Megan didn't really exist here in 1984 O.o. Except of course with RaMC but then you'd expect to see the Ember name. It makes me wonder if the text is basically the same as a letter that might have come with Ember in the US, before she was formally named - but I can't be sure.
The text seems very British (I feel like every other piece of early UK material wanted you to "make a real fuss" of your pony :lol:), but it could've been edited of course. It's good to keep in mind that this type of stuff is often prepared far in advance, so the copyright year can be one year before actual release (because yeah, 1984 sounds a bit early for them to be mentioning Megan). For example, the US Ember offer is copyrighted 1983, but the Ember pose is stamped 1984 so she can't have been shipped out any earlier than that.
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Yeah, I know what you mean. :/
But Megan didn't come out in the UK till 1986.
What I can't remember off-hand is if she's in the UK comics in 1985. She didn't play a major role in the comics but that seems like a bit of a long gap compared to if she was released in 1985.
It's a shade off topic but Lucky's is also Megan.
This one is very British; it even references the comic :D
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Megan here makes more sense though. His is dated 1986.
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But the Megan doll would likely at least have been released in the US by that point, so her UK release could've been planned. Or they just looked at US material and didn't pay too close attention. After all, Gusty appeared in the UK comic two years before she was actually released in the Movie Star set. :biggrin:
I don't know if the US fan club or any other of their offers had letters from Megan. I know some Swedish fan club letters were also signed Megan.
This all makes me wonder if the MO babies were first unnamed, and received the name Ember later. Or if they were named Ember from the beginning, and Hasbro decided to remove the name for whatever reason. Since the name Ember doesn't seem to have carried over to the UK, which must've been released later than in the US.
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Hasbro UK is a bit murky prior to 1985. The comic etc featured all the y2 and y3 unicorns and pegasus ponies, and the 2nd set rainbow ponies, which were not sold here. Gusty was a movie star but I feel like that was an afterthought.
But the first exclusives for the UK happened in 1984 as well and fed into 1985. You can tell by the packaging styles.
It's not clear what role Megan played overall, but she was so ignored by the comic that it's a bit of an oddball. I can only imagine that it was something in the bigger pipeline but it didn't happen until 1986.
On the Ember front, I would ignore what the UK did as the UK did its own thing a lot. It makes more sense for the pony to have no name and then have a name, which may well have come about for RaMC so they could feature her in the animation with an identity. Ember with star was perhaps the evolution of that concept...in a time when all baby ponies were called Ember. And then by the time Catrina was released, there were other babies and Ember was no longer around.
I suspect it went from no name = name = replaced by other baby ponies. Y2 cards seem to have the ember offer but not y3 cards or later. (Speaking for the US). I have some packages from the UK as well but the only one I think might have the offer mentioned on the card is Blossom's which is also the most securely in 1984 of all of them. The ones that ran over into 1985...not sure it's on their packages, and that's probably because end 1984/into 1985 is when you see the first set of baby ponies here as well (PACs and Baby Bow Tie's Stroller).
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It's weird that megan signed the UK stuff.
The only thing I can compare it to is this where it's signed by My Little Pony
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(https://app.photobucket.com/u/karentheunicorn/a/6b8ef96b-542b-4da6-ba81-1593982abe95/p/8274ba28-ae49-4a5a-ab55-c362edb5f0ca)
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@Taffeta
Thank you for responding to what I said, and I'm pleased I was able to clear things up.
The irony is that everyone having their own idea about pony is kind of the mantra behind G1 (and probably G2 and G3) as well.
And despite all the disagreements, nobody is saying it's wrong to have your own personal concept, preference, whatever. In your own creative work and project and space it's entirely your own ideas anyway. Nobody is saying that that is wrong in the slightest. Actually the opposite. But this multi-generational forum is an entirely separate space away from those projects, where fans with a wide range of opinions and backgrounds roam. People who read your work probably agree with your concepts. That isn't the same on a forum like this one, where some will agree and some will not.
Indeed. That was in a sense what I was trying to say in places, and I personally would even G4 to that list, at least in my view (but like you say, all views are/can be different.) I fully support the idea of everyone having their own opinions and the like, and am pleased that I was able to articulate that I was ultimately referring to personal headcanon and creative writing, as that may have been missed before (sorry if it wasn't.)
You also mentioned that you like the CM concept because it means something to you. In which case maybe you'll understand my position best when I say there are many things from G1 - the comics especially - that mean stuff to me too. And they have nothing to do with FIM whatsoever.
I am sure there are others for whom moments in the G1 tv series matter in the same kind of way.
I understand completely, hence why I'm in no way trying to portray any of my headcanons as the only correct one. I fully respect that every one in the My Little Pony fandom/community (whatever you want to call it) have their own special things that mean something to them in the franchise.
I am sure there are others who have precious self-developed canons from some childhood game or interpretation of a character because of a particular memory or childhood friend/game.
...Those things are just as valid as the thing that is important to you
Agreed and fully understood, hence I only ever state mine as "fact" for want of a better word, in creative projects that I am writing, because like you said, the creative work is the ideas of the creator(s) being used as the concept, but I would never state my headcanons as fact over other people and insist that they always have to follow mine, and/or the ones I like - especially knowing that everyone else likely has a reason (such as what we discussed) to want to portray/imagine things their way too.
And we shouldn't have to keep defending them in this groundhog-day thread topic that keeps coming up over and over again. It's like FIM fans are obsessed with this Ember symbol thing, because it somehow gives legitimacy to the concept in G4 back in the eighties. And maybe it does - but only because RaMC may have inspired Faust to develop it. Not because it has any meaning for G1 ponies overall
. Again, understood. I only really intended to answer why someone would like to imagine how pre-FiM symbols or cutie marks (for G3, of course) could be earned if they were earned (be it in imagination, or storytelling) and not to outright say that Cartoon-Ember is or should be proof that earning symbols was a canon thing before FiM - I know it's not. I've thought about it as interesting, especially as wondering if the CMC were meant as a reference/shout out to it, but I don't see it as proof that earning ones symbol/cutie mark came before FiM or whatever the FiM you're talking about are doing.
And in terms of things that are important to me personally - please don't use cutie mark to refer to G1 ponies, whatever the context. Maybe it doesn't bother you - but if we're talking about everyone's freedom, I think I have the right to ask that you use the proper terminology, even despite the thread title.
I respect that, and as I said when I first came into this thread, I always at least try to use the term "symbols" when referring to G1 and G2 ponies, and the only real danger of me referring to them as "cutie marks" is if I slip up out of habit and/or not concentrating (and I'd hopefully correct that as soon as I notice my mistake, or even have it pointed out to me.) The only other time, is during my fanseries which is set in Equestria, but I've thought about it, and it probably won't even come up that much - it's not like every time a pony is introduced (or re-introduced for canon ones) there's going to be a full discussion over what their cutie mark or symbol is or what it's called, so it is likely that any occurrences of a G1 or G2 pony's symbol being called a cutie mark will mainly happen behind the scenes during summaries, scripts, and discussions with my friend/co-writer anyway. Ultimately though, I do at least try to use symbols when talking about the pre-G3 ponies.
On another note, I don't know what your other thread idea is, but we really don't need any more threads about how G4 is relevant to G1, because, quite honestly, it isn't.
It is ultimately an early promotion for the fanseries, and an explanation as to what is, how much of G4 it follows, and how G1-G3.5 fits in with it, and will be used. It is not anything to do with whether or not G4 is relevant to G1.
Again thanks for responding, and I'm pleased that we have a neutral understanding it seems, and this should ultimately be all I need to discuss about it on this thread, unless you have anything else to add and/or ask, and again I'm sorry for any wrong impressions I caused.
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There are MO pamphlets that call the 3 Embers "My Beautiful Baby Pony" and also "Ember."
http://www.mylittlewiki.org/wiki/Ember
Both have a copyright date of 1983.
Also the original VHS tape of Rescue at Midnight Castle has a copyright date of 1984 for the program and I think 1985 for the boxart and description.
Ponyfan
It also doesn’t seem to say all of the babies are Ember. It only says Ember at the top. Everywhere else on the pamphlet it’s “baby pony”. I never realized that before.
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Okay, I totally misinterpreted the picture. I thought it was being suggested that maybe Ember got her mark as the result of a burn-perhaps from a family member who had fire magic. (You know, since her name is Ember.) :lol:
Haha, same here, I thought 'so Ember got her symbol by setting Rapunzel on fire? Cool' :lol:
It's interesting to hear about the different Embers and how they were marketed (the Megan letters are so cute!). I only have blue Ember but if I had them all in my collection I think I would make them into different characters.
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Thanks Ponyfan. It makes sense that that's the case, because of Ember's Dream and RaMC.
What I don't know is whether this is also true over here. It matters a bit because we didn't do the MO programme very well here, not for ponies - but we did have Ember and Baby Lucky. I can remember getting Lucky in his little box with his white comb and bowtie and letter - which I still have, randomly - but I was too young for Ember. I do have a UK insert for her which came with her. It doesn't name her but I don't know if there is another one naming her Ember. I know Chrissytree has a box for Ember which I have photos of but it just has tickboxes on the side for the colour that was being sent out. It's a plain brown box otherwise as far as I can see. She may be able to comment more on that. So right now I don't have any evidence for the name Ember in the UK.
And since star baby wasn't sold her either, to me she's the true Ember. Although by habit I call them all Ember now :) since it's easier than baby with no name o.o.
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The UK letter that came with Ember (dated 1984, so postdating the naming of Ember on the US leaflet). It's a bit funny that it's Megan because Megan didn't really exist here in 1984 O.o. Except of course with RaMC but then you'd expect to see the Ember name. It makes me wonder if the text is basically the same as a letter that might have come with Ember in the US, before she was formally named - but I can't be sure.
That is such a cute letter!