"The Toys That Made Us”. Even more Interviews

[FiddlePhan]

I remember Lauren speaking at New York PonyCon about creating the G4 characters and how much shed wanted them to be all G1 ponies but kept getting no's.  Bonnie was there as well and you could easily see the fan girl in Lauren how much she adores Bonnie. 

[Sunset]

I need to speak up on Lauren's behalf.

I introduced her to Bonnie, and you can't fake the emotion she showed in that moment. That day she had a My Pretty Pony, with its box, and hoped I could help her get Bonnie to sign it. You can't fake how genuine she was about it. I handed her tissues during the Creators Panel when she told Bonnie how much My Little Pony meant to her.

2 years later at EQLA 2017, she had worked a long day, and had signed a lot of autographs and met a lot of fans, and at 10 PM she still wanted to go leave the convention venue to see my pony room instead of go home. She couldn't have faked the joy and enthusiasm for the collection as a whole and mostly for the rare G1s I have, and as it was just the 2 of us she had no reason to.

She's the real deal, guys.

Thank you for that insight, BabyMedley   I watched that panel on youtube recently and the interactions between Lauren and Bonnie were very sweet.


On topic, here is a new pic posted on Facebook.

A sculptor on the G1 My Little Pony toy line, Bill Culbertson played a huge part in expanding the toyline and creating some of the most unique My Little Ponies around!

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[Shatyr]

I attended Kirk's panel at the Pony Fair. Wasn't Bill the one who designed the Dance 'n Prance and had the body mold they used to reverse engineer the 25th Anniversary Ponies? How exciting to have an interview with him!

[Cheyennethepony]

Ooh!! So exciting! I've been waiting for an MLP episode, my bro already got his Transformer episode, give me my ponies! 

[Kiwichi]

Curious, did any mlp members here enter their collection?  I'd be very excited to see u & ur collection

[FiddlePhan]

I attended Kirk's panel at the Pony Fair. Wasn't Bill the one who designed the Dance 'n Prance and had the body mold they used to reverse engineer the 25th Anniversary Ponies? How exciting to have an interview with him!

I think you're  right. Wasn't Bill the one that Kirk said loves to experiment to see what kind of new ways there are to make ponies, like the sparkle ponies?  If  that was the guy then he's also the one who made the neat patterned ponies seen in pic of Kirk that the show posted.

[Loa]

THIS SHOW NEEDS Shelti & Sebby!!!

[Pinkie21]

Did you see one of the comments on that Instagram post with Faust "MLP owes a lot to Faust" lololololol haha

Right...

Agree. Unfortunately she will doubtless be involved in this project somewhere. I don't know whether she did or did not make the statements about G1 attributed to her, but she hasn't done anything to dispel them, thus I cannot respect her or consider her a genuine fan of G1. It has nothing even to do with G4, I'm fine about that being involved...but someone involved in FIM which also involved creating misapprehensions about G1? Has no place in a show about real MLP for me I'm afraid.

I have no issue with G4 ponies but for me FIM has damaged MLP and its possibilities of being reinvented or completely fresh and new in the future if rebooted. And that's kind of hard to forgive. I'm not going so far as to say Faust ruined MLP. But FIM - and hasbro's obsession with mane 6 - has.

All this.  Will not be watching this thing. 

[Snapdragon]

Did you see one of the comments on that Instagram post with Faust "MLP owes a lot to Faust" lololololol haha

Right...

Agree. Unfortunately she will doubtless be involved in this project somewhere. I don't know whether she did or did not make the statements about G1 attributed to her, but she hasn't done anything to dispel them, thus I cannot respect her or consider her a genuine fan of G1. It has nothing even to do with G4, I'm fine about that being involved...but someone involved in FIM which also involved creating misapprehensions about G1? Has no place in a show about real MLP for me I'm afraid.

I have no issue with G4 ponies but for me FIM has damaged MLP and its possibilities of being reinvented or completely fresh and new in the future if rebooted. And that's kind of hard to forgive. I'm not going so far as to say Faust ruined MLP. But FIM - and hasbro's obsession with mane 6 - has.

All this.  Will not be watching this thing. 

Well, if it's any comfort, I doubt it'll be The Faust Show - from what I've seen, The Toys That Made Us touches briefly with several different designers and toy-folks, so I imagine she'll be asked to give a brief discussion on how her childhood toys influenced her writing for the first season or so of MLP:FiM. And she does have some interesting insight in that regard! It's nice to see a childhood collector 'make good' as an adult content-creator for the same line. I do agree that her whole 'G1-G3 cartoons were lame' stance is an unfortunate belief that some creators seem to share; namely, "if I didn't make it, it's not worth watching". But that's not unique to her, unfortunately! It happens in the comics realm, too.

I'll be excited to see it, I hope we get to see some unique prototypes or ideas that never got made!! And YES, OMG, I'd love to see Sebby and Shelti represented!! I wish this had happened a few years before, imagine seeing the Delaney's collection ... omg.

[Sweet Daes]

Sure, if you want to avoid the show then more power to anyone who decides that. Do what you do, as you do.

tl;dr rant - open at your own risk

But, I would have to heavily disagree that Faust should be the reason. One should not have to be a drooling fangirl that is a walking wiki to be a fan of any franchise, especially when they had a hand in the 35+ year legacy that wouldn't have had as much notoriety while G3 existed.

Even then, G1's show and movies were terrible- the quality of the animation and the stories were pretty rough. And then the theme song... The theme song was an earworm that was used in the commercials nonsensically that barely rhymed half the time with repeating, droning lyrics meant to sell the toys. Does that mean that anyone who criticizes the created media and believe that G4 media is superior in quality and storytelling means that they are not a fan of MLP as a whole?

If so, then that's really disappointing to hear. As I've grown into my flavor of shows/movies to watch and "what makes them good", the G1 toys certainly didn't improve the show's over-all narrative and animation  ;P

As with all art, it's subjective and opinions will vary on it for different reasons. Just because anyone thinks G1-G3 media has a lameness that not even Jesus could heal doesn't mean that they are wrong for liking the toys.

Suffice it to say, "The Simpsons already did it." In this day and age, in order to reinvent anything when everything has been done death by every other kid-friendly franchise ESPECIALLY by Disney, and likely really well the first time around, that's going to be a difficult task for anyone accomplish.

Anyway, the context of calling G1-G3 "lame" is best put into her own words here:

To look at the quality of most girls’ cartoons -...- more expensive animated productions for girl audiences may look better, but the female characters have been so homogenized with old-fashioned “niceness” that they have no flaws and are unrelatable. They are so pretty, polite and perfect; there is no legitimate conflict and nothing exciting ever happens. In short, animated shows for little girls come across as boring.  Stupid. Lame.

She's not wrong. MLP G1 (I passed by G2 when I was younger) and MLP G3 really do fall into that category.

At the end of the day, she really did have a hand in making candy-colored, magical talking horses much more realistic and believable as people with more realistic stakes and conflicts. There are not many shows (aside from "some" Disney, but that is few and far between) that really do that.

Needless to say, with what has been accomplished with FiM as a show, NOT as a toy line, I am really happy to see her involved.

[Sunset]

There are currently six people (including Summer) interviewed for the show that were heavily involved in the early generations to only the two g4 people.  I really feel like refusing to watch the show because Lauren Faust is in it is throwing the baby out with the bathwater, so to speak.

Sweet Daes, I agree that it's not a good idea to start picking out individual people and claiming they aren't a fan of mlp just because they approach their expression of it differently.  Though I do acknowledge that there are those people out there who are fans of the show only and not the brand as a whole.  In fact, that's one of the ways I explain it to non-fans when I'm trying to explain why I don't like being labeled a brony. 

I disagree with the vehemence with which some of my fellow collectors express their views. But I do want to explain why you sometimes see that reaction around here, at least from my point of view as a long time collector who grew up during G1.

So My Little Pony the toyline was like our very best childhood friend.  It was the main point and the reason we all connected to the brand.  The various cartoons for MLP was like that childhood friend's kid brother.  The kind of kid brother that was quarky, often annoying, and certainly had it's faults.  We like picking on it when it's just us.

But since FiM became popular on the internet, it's like we came upon our best friend's kid brother being beat up by a mob and our best friend taking hits because she's related.  That's kind of what it's like when I'm out there on the web.  Used to be that MLP was something we enjoyed in our own little corner.  But now every time something old school is posted in a public forum  there is a whole group of people who just feel the need to groan and make not pleasant comments about the thing I cherish from childhood.  Even when it's something innocuous like MLP Facebook page just acknowledging that there was a history to MLP before FIM.

It tends to make us defensive, annoyed and angry, even those of us who like the show and g4.

[SaraMari]

Since what I posted has been quoted many times and used in several different points, I want to clarify my point for initially posting it.

I do fully intend to watch the MLP episode of TTTMU since I love MLP and that series. I don't mind they are interviewing the newer people, I don't want it to be a disproportianate amount. I just find it insulting FIM fans think My little pony owes so much to Faust. My little pony had been running for 3 decades before FIM and would've done just fine with only children as the audience.

I have watched all of FIM and the movie, but objectively as someone who watches tons of cartoons I just don't think it is as innovative as bronies say it is. Look at my join date, FIM brought me back to seriously collecting but you can't deny the quality of the writing has gone way down. I think it's rude to discredit all of the other amazing and ground breaking cartoons we had in the 2010s

I just want all the generations to get the respect they deserve

[Sweet Daes]

There are currently six people (including Summer) interviewed for the show that were heavily involved in the early generations to only the two g4 people.  I really feel like refusing to watch the show because Lauren Faust is in it is throwing the baby out with the bathwater, so to speak.

Sweet Daes, I agree that it's not a good idea to start picking out individual people and claiming they aren't a fan of mlp just because they approach their expression of it differently.  Though I do acknowledge that there are those people out there who are fans of the show only and not the brand as a whole.  In fact, that's one of the ways I explain it to non-fans when I'm trying to explain why I don't like being labeled a brony. 

I disagree with the vehemence with which some of my fellow collectors express their views. But I do want to explain why you sometimes see that reaction around here, at least from my point of view as a long time collector who grew up during G1.

So My Little Pony the toyline was like our very best childhood friend.  It was the main point and the reason we all connected to the brand.  The various cartoons for MLP was like that childhood friend's kid brother.  The kind of kid brother that was quarky, often annoying, and certainly had it's faults.  We like picking on it when it's just us.

But since FiM became popular on the internet, it's like we came upon our best friend's kid brother being beat up by a mob and our best friend taking hits because she's related.  That's kind of what it's like when I'm out there on the web.  Used to be that MLP was something we enjoyed in our own little corner.  But now every time something old school is posted in a public forum  there is a whole group of people who just feel the need to groan and make not pleasant comments about the thing I cherish from childhood.  Even when it's something innocuous like MLP Facebook page just acknowledging that there was a history to MLP before FIM.

It tends to make us defensive, annoyed and angry, even those of us who like the show and g4.

The thing there is, too; "Brony" doesn't mean what people think it means. Just like people want to think there are "myths" and "misconceptions" for G1, the fans of G4 have taken more cynical punches because there is a select subset of people with gross, disgusting habits who have demonstrated such in the public eye that wear their fandom on their sleeves.

In essence, this mish-mash of ideals is under the same umbrella of MLP:
Not all male fans of MLP are Bronies.
Not all Bronies are disgusting adults.
Bronies CAN be fans of G1.
Bronies MAY collect G1 ponies AND G4 ponies.
Bronies MAY collect G1 ponies, but not G4 ponies.
Not all fans of G1 like G4.
Not all fans of G4 like G1.
Fans of G1 may collect G4 toys.
Fans of both may not like the show of both.
Fans who like the show of both may not care for the toys of either.
AND MORE...

To be frank, to does reflect poorly when the G4 show and its fans are snubbed. For some, that is why there is an inferiority complex in more modern-day fans. This is especially so because  some of us haven't watched other cartoons of the 2010s (I barely watch TV, and haven't in over 15 years) and only have G1, G3 and G4 media to compare, of which I have expressed my viewpoint.

And, the FiM movie blows chunks, especially since the characters that Faust laid the groundwork for were written so out of their character. If anyone cared to see the opinions of self-proclaimed Bronies, there a lot of very critical reviews on YouTube. Does that make the TV show bad? Well, if the movie is your first introduction to FiM, then yes. Yes, it would be bad.

Basically, FiM exists, and owes its existence to G1 IN SPIRIT. But make no mistake- that doesn't mean G1 fans are superior by any means, and it's disappointing that these opinions are being used as weapons when there is ample information out there to say differently. People can be a fan of everything or can pick and choose the elements of the franchise that they enjoy.

In short, TTTMU is not going to be a good representation of the fandom as a whole, regardless of who they interview.

[Sunset]

In short, TTTMU is not going to be a good representation of the fandom as a whole, regardless of who they interview.

It's not going to be a representation of the fandom at all.  This show is not about fandoms.  It's about the toys and the toy industry.  I read an interview by one of the creators  and he stated that he didn't want to do a show that was about fandoms, there are already lots of those types of shows.  He wanted to concentrate on the actual toys.  I've watched all of the episodes and adult collectors/fandom are mentioned very minimally, if at all.

[Sweet Daes]

In short, TTTMU is not going to be a good representation of the fandom as a whole, regardless of who they interview.

It's not going to be a representation of the fandom at all.  This show is not about fandoms.  It's about the toys and the toy industry.  I read an interview by one of the creators  and he stated that he didn't want to do a show that was about fandoms, there are already lots of those types of shows.  He wanted to concentrate on the actual toys.  I've watched all of the episodes and adult collectors/fandom are mentioned very minimally, if at all.

Correct.

A lot of this was in response to Faust not being a "true fan" and that should restrict her from being interviewed.