Story of Life by Sierra

The Tiger's Apprentice 10/10

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

I honestly thought it was weird new G4 merchandise was coming out after G5 started.

I think the problem is more to do with the state of Hasbro than anything else, though they did not make good decisions about MLP’s G5 from day one.  I personally thought they should have taken a break from MLP for a few years after G4 ended, and then brought the brand back with a lot of fanfare to build excitement.

Anyway, bear with me. I apologize for this getting long.

Hasbro has been in freefall for a while now, and I’m betting this is a symptom of that.   Hasbro is not doing well at all, and their leadership has been actively destroying the company with very, very bad decisions for a while now.  I keep a toe into Magic the Gathering, and about a year or so ago Hasbro tanked that entire brand. I didn’t know this, but Magic the Gathering cards were basically so profitable for Hasbro, that they were propping up the entire company.  It was basically a money printing machine for them. Unfortunately Hasbro took this as a justification to try to squeeze as much money as possible from players, so they have been making decisions designed to not only gouge players, but to keep as much money for themselves as possible(cutting out the local stores which were vital to the health if the brand).

They’ve been churning out sets at an unsustainable pace for years, cutting costs on production leading to warped cards and low quality products even from their “premium” sets, and overall just abusing their cash cow. This came to a head with the 30th anniversary set which was $1000 for 4 packs of random reprints that were only available direct from Hasbro(bypassing the game stores that basically keeps the tournament community alive and vitally bring in a steady stream of new players), and weren’t even tournament legal. The cards were reprints of cards that were on the “never to be reprinted” list, basically destroying the entire second hand market for cards as well.  A lot of people buy Magic cards for investment purposes, and Hasbro violating their “will not reprint ever” list ruined the investor/collector market for cards as well.

This did two things: it pissed off the player base so badly that the *entire* community revolted as a whole to reject the set and Hasbro as a company, and it caused hundreds of local mom & pop stores to close.  Apparently, profit margins for local game stores are razor thin, and Hasbro’s polices made it impossible for many stores to survive with the repeated bad sets and keeping the most profitable stuff to be sold exclusively through Hasbro directly.  That’s a big one since it was those mom and pop stores that ran the local tournaments and “Friday night Magic” events, and that was a huge factor in keeping the demand for cards high and bringing in new players. Hundreds of game stores went out of business due to this, and players were *pissed*.

This all came to a head a little while ago, and the community backlash was so bad that it actually tanked Hasbro’s stock price.  It was so bad, Wall Street downgraded them. 

https://www.thegamer.com/magic-the-gathering-release-fatigue-leads-to-plummeting-hasbro-stock/

Magic the Gathering was basically propping the entire company up, and kept Hasbro alive though the pandemic.  Unfortunately the same idiots that ran MLP into the ground got greedy and destroyed the brand keeping the company in the black.  Everything that Hasbro touches is affected by this. I can’t overstate how important those cards were to Hasbro’s overall health as a company. They’ve been trying to claw back from this, but they broke the community trust and destroyed the entire local game store system that drove the game’s success for 30 years, and even destroyed the collector’s market to boot. Those stores that closed are never coming back, and the new place to get cards(Amazon) is filled with scammers repacking boxes.  The 30th anniversary reprints of cards that were never supposed to be reprinted also blew a nasty hole in the secondhand/collector market, and several of the biggest online stores stopped selling loose cards.

So basically, Hasbro is run by greedy stupid people who slaughtered their cash cow for a quick buck.  This is affecting all the Hasbro brands, and they’re in panic mode.  They’re looking for quick cash, and they’re not going to be supporting anything that isn’t going to line their pockets asap. The G4 brony fad is over, so unless G5 unexpectedly suddenly takes off, I think we can expect Hasbro to cut back on releases, and for stores to cut back on orders. Odds are, what’s coming out now is stuff that’s been in the pipeline since before this all happened.  Nobody fired the greedy stupid people that did this, so they’re still in charge and as greedy and stupid as ever. Also, selling directly on Amazon is Hasbro’s new thing, so we can expect a lot more of that.  They like keeping all the profits to themselves.

The leadership at Hasbro screwed up so badly, and they didn’t learn from it.   It’s not “maybe G6 will be better”, it’s “will Hasbro still be in business to make a G6?”


 

Wow. I had no idea Hasbroken had taken that nickname to such a new level with Magic the Gathering. Think this helps explain the virtually non existent pony sections. x.o

Went to Walmart for the first time in I can't remember and decided to check out their pony section and it's really sad and pitiful how it's virtually non existent now. I saw large figures of Jazz and Izzy and some kind of small boxes that looked like tiny house playsets or something. Not sure what those were but yeah. It was sad to see how little there is now.

Happy New Year^^

I really like G5 also. My favorite characters this generation are Misty because I definitely identify with the most introverted characters and Queen Haven. Opaline made an entertaining villain as well.  I'm honestly not a fan of the legs and feet on the dragons but glad that there were still dragons this generation. Can't say much for the toys. Mainly due to a lack of room I haven't gotten a single G5 toy or piece of merchandise yet.