Is G4 a thing?

[Caysie]

Since I've been away from pony collecting for so long, I've almost lost the whole thing about the old "real" MLPs. What about the G4? Does anyone collect them, or is that not a thing? Is it a neigh say or YAAY say?

[Barnacle_lady]

Don't believe the rumours. G4 is still a thing There are still conventions where you can buy G4 things either official or fanmade.
I collect them besides G1 to G3 but not all the merch like you would do with the older gens.

[Caysie]

Don't believe the rumours. G4 is still a thing There are still conventions where you can buy G4 things either official or fanmade.
I collect them besides G1 to G3 but not all the merch like you would do with the older gens.

I know that it is still big, I am involved myself. 

But I mean here in the MLP Arena? 

[Flitter]

I'm only really into g4 still, but I'm not remotely as active on the arena as I used to be.

[dippindot]

G4 is still a thing, but not as big on the arena as it was in its heyday. The arena's been around since long before G4, and earlier generations are more the focus.

Not that people don't collect G4 (that's 90% of what I collect) but the brony culture from G4 has faded a lot. I wish G5 inspired as much activity as G4 did

[Barnacle_lady]

Not that people don't collect G4 (that's 90% of what I collect) but the brony culture from G4 has faded a lot. I wish G5 inspired as much activity as G4 did

That really depends where you are. Where I live if the brony fandom is still very alive and kicking. Several meetups a year on location, bar and even a camping. And once a year a brony convention. G5 is also being embraced by that fandom. Ofcourse people come and people go but that also happens with the earlier gens.

Online most of them can be found on chat servers like Discord. Forums are simply old fashioned.

[Carrehz]

I like the G4 toys, I still collect 'em. Never liked the show though. I think it's not being talked on here much because it's been over for years and there's not as much to talk about as when it was running? Plus the casual fans and/or people who were *only* here for FiM have moved on. I suspect the G4 fans/bronies that are still interested in chatting about it, are clustered together in some other part of the web? Maybe Reddit or something, I dunno.

There's not as much to talk about with G4 as there is for the earlier gens (IMO) because we know basically everything about it! There's no big mysteries, prototypes, etc like with the earlier gens. Everything's already neatly catalogued and documented.

Also yeah the youths of today don't like forums and prefer Discords or Tumblrs or whatever the hottest social media site is, lol

[Taffeta]

I don't think anyone minds G4 being talked about here. It's just not front and centre I suppose?

[BlackCurtains]

You can absolutely talk about G4 here I have a small Applejack army that includes all generations. I enjoy FiM too

[dippindot]

Not that people don't collect G4 (that's 90% of what I collect) but the brony culture from G4 has faded a lot. I wish G5 inspired as much activity as G4 did

That really depends where you are. Where I live if the brony fandom is still very alive and kicking.

Has faded from MLP Arena specifically, I should have said

[jupiterlily]

I can understand why G4's might not be as popular with longtime collectors, but personally I'm a fan. Especially the early release singles of non main 6 characters. So many of them(like Trixie, Flitterheart, Sunny Rays, Lulu Luck) give me G1 vibes which I love, and I like how small they are.

[MJNSEIFER]

As long as I'm on the forum, G4 will always be a thing.

Seriously though, it's still a thing here, but I guess the reason it's not in focus is because most MLP fans, especially the long term fans think of the toyline first (which makes sense, as that's what MLP first and foremost), and G4 onwards seems more focused on the animation - while I admit to thinking of the cartoons first, I do love and respect the toylines, but I barely know what's even in the G4 to G5 toylines, plus what I have seen seems pretty limited, so there probably isn't that much to say for those who think of the toyline first? Of course, I can't speak for other people...

But yeah, G4 will always be a thing for me.

There's not as much to talk about with G4 as there is for the earlier gens (IMO) because we know basically everything about it! There's no big mysteries, prototypes, etc like with the earlier gens. Everything's already neatly catalogued and documented.

Don't really agree with this, no offense - I still find myself learning new things about G4, and might even see new things revealed about it (I'm not sure if they're revealed, or I just saw them late, but it's probably the latter), and we don't know for sure if everything has been revealed yet, so there could be so much out there we haven't seen...

[TheClassCalico]

There's not as much to talk about with G4 as there is for the earlier gens (IMO) because we know basically everything about it! There's no big mysteries, prototypes, etc like with the earlier gens. Everything's already neatly catalogued and documented.

Don't really agree with this, no offense - I still find myself learning new things about G4, and might even see new things revealed about it (I'm not sure if they're revealed, or I just saw them late, but it's probably the latter), and we don't know for sure if everything has been revealed yet, so there could be so much out there we haven't seen...

Regarding prototypes specifically, I know that G4 had a lot of them. Usually ponies with different symbols/cutie marks than generally expected, being a different pony type, etc. rather than entirely unique characters. Many have been documented, but I wouldn't be surprised if some slipped through the cracks and we ended up discovering them in the future.

[Taffeta]

Regardless of all of those production experiments, I understand what Carrehz meant simply because G4 was a streamlined effort in both media and toy production. There's a difference between discovering a detail you never noticed before in an animated episode of a series, and trying to make sense of how seventeen different countries did completely their own things for reasons we're still trying to figure out.

G4 is an entity, for better or worse, and while some ponies were/were not sold in different places, there's no real deviation. Analysing animation is something you can do eternally, true enough - there is no end point for that kind of discussion - but it is still subjective and based on opinion. It's not the same as hey, hang on, why did x pony come with x accessory here and not here?

I understand these are different driving motives, but given that G1 ended in 1995 and we're still having these discussions, compared to how compact G4 is and how recently it ended.

MLPMerch demonstrates this perfectly. It has all the G4 stuff organised beautifully...but still has absolutely no idea how G1 works.

There is not a single G1 ID site on the internet (and I include mine) which has a complete picture of how G1 My Little Pony worked. THIRTY YEARS after it ended.

G1 will always have bigger questions to answer, simply because it was not a collectable at the time it began. It was also not very well coordinated, organised or planned, because it was the first.

Nothing I've said here is disrespect to G4. But by the time you get to G4, the process is polished and the intentions are clearcut. And so many of us were here to watch the whole process from start to finish, with the back history of seeing G2 or G3 in the middle...so there were always people watching as collectors and fans even before G4 blew up.

They're just on different scales of understanding.

Not to mention - speaking as someone who has been actively involved in G1 pony information stuff since the late 1990s - a lot of information for G1 has been collectively lost. It hasn't been lost by those of us who dug it up or those of us who bothered to retain it from back then, but the number of people who don't know stuff about G1 these days which ten years ago would have just been basic information...demonstrates that we're always going to have that conversation about who/what/where/why...probably for as long as G1 is collectable.