Why didn't Generation 2 have an animated series?

[brmylittleponycollector]

I always wondered why generation 2 only had that video game called friendship garden and never had an animated series! These days on Twitter someone whose username I don't remember but I remember was using a photo of Draculaura from Monster High said that there were 3 reasons why G2 didn't have an animation 1 because Hasbro was in a financial crisis and the video game it was the most they could do 2 because G2 wasn't as successful with the North American public but in Europe and then as G2 wasn't successful they didn't want to do a series the last reason was that Hasbro had temporarily lost the rights of my little pony in terms of animation something like that I don't remember very well but I know that Lauren Faust said something like that!! Well, I really like generation 2, I love the aesthetics of the ponies, the art is so beautiful and sweet and the video game and magazines are so cute and cool and the dolls are very beautiful, it's a shame it wasn't a success! I really wanted a G2 animation, they already had their own stories in the magazines!! Well, I wanted to know if these reasons are real or just rumors or if there is something more hidden! I love Generation 2!! (There is no bad generation in my little pony, they are all perfect!) Justice for G2! Please comment here what really prevented this series from going off the air. There are people in this online community who had access to various things about the animations, from images, information and lost media, I would love to find a lost media from G2!! (Usually it's G1 and G4 fans who can find these things!) Well see you later and bye!!
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[Leave a Whisper]

Not sure?

[Carrehz]

Lol, Hasbro never lost the rights to anything. That's a common excuse in fandom (all fandoms, not just MLP) for literally anything and everything :p Any time you hear that, 9/10 it's bogus.

I don't know that there's any "lost media" for G2, or any particular reason why it didn't get a cartoon. I think probably the fact that it barely lasted a year in the US wouldn't have helped! But then there wasn't a G3 series either, just various direct-to-video specials and such. Not every toyline gets a cartoon, you know? It may never have been considered. Especially since it wasn't too long since Tales had ended and both that and Friends would've been around on videos (I think some countries were still rerunning it into the late 90s too??), they might not have felt a need to make a third pony cartoon at that point.

[Taffeta]

I think that the lack of the US market was a big one.

What's interesting is that the MLP Tales eps were made at the end of G1 despite MLP ending in the US right around that same time. Those ponies were marketed in the UK and Europe, also Australasia I think...but not in the US. Whether the series was made for a US market with the intention of selling ponies that ultimately didn't happen, or for Hasbro Europe, is an eternal debate.

...If the latter, the argument that G2 was mostly in Europe and not in the US probably doesn't fly.

They also could animate G2. They animated most if not all of the G2 product ads in small amounts (Iirc the early ones were 2D, some of the later ones had 3D introductions...I have some on VHS somewhere, or I did, but the tape may not have survived my vhs purge).
(Edit: I checked up on YT and my memory is correct...the early ones have a 2D intro and the later 3D. We had both ad types here but most of the later ones on YT are in French).

I suspect it was partly that the franchise didn't garner the wider attention needed to put the money into it. G1 was successful for a long time but animation only happened in the early part (sort of 1983-7ish) and at the end (1991-2ish), not all through the run. G3 had animated specials, mostly released with ponies, but never a series. G4 is actually the only MLP series to have consistent animation throughout.

I think before G4, most people wouldn't have asked why G2 didn't have animation because it wasn't such a franchise priority until FIM. And so at the time maybe it just wasn't considered the best use of resources.

(@Carrehz, all of the G1 eps were release to Video in the UK except maybe the movie...not sure about if RaMC originally had a TV release as I was too young, LOL, but the others didn't. One ep didn't make it here either. Forget which one. But all of the episodes were played on Sky 1 in 1994-5ish here, because my sister's friend taped them all and we borrowed them. They would play them through in a sequence in slots on each day starting with RaMC, and ending in MLP Tales. The TV channel saw no distinction between the original series and Tales, they were all just billed as "My Little Pony." It was the first time I saw a lot of the episodes xD)

[goddessofpeep]

I think there were probably several factors, but a big one was likely that it wasn’t popular, and the line got killed off in the USA very quickly.  It wasn’t just unpopular, it was violently hated by a very vocal group of people.   There was a nasty backlash with the design of the ponies, and about half the pony collecting community was directly harassing Hasbro about them. Like, they were actually *flooding* the Hasbro customer service line with complaints about G2s. There was A LOT of hatred towards G2s for a long time. There was an actual nasty war between the two factions of the pony community (the ones who liked G2s and the ones who hated them). People were driven out of the community due to harassment, major collector websites were closed down due to anti G2 faction harassing the owners, it was a mess. And the anti G2 faction went after Hasbro *hard* as well.  They may have not been the only factor in the early death of the G2 line, but lackluster sales + constant virulent harassment of any Hasbro employee that had a public facing email or phone number they could find didn’t help. 

Also, the golden age of toy animated shows had ended in the USA.  In the 80s, there were no rules, so almost every decent sized toy line ended up with some form of cartoon. In the 90s, several laws came into effect that limited what you could show to children. Shows that were just glorified toy commercials became actually illegal to make, and there were a lot more rules about what you could and could not do with commercials aimed for children, so even the ad breaks during children’s programing were less profitable.  A toy company had to put a lot more effort into any potential show for it to be shown on tv. It had to meet a new standard, and the ad breaks couldn’t be blatant attempts to manipulate kids into begging their parents for the toys. I think this is why all the G3 animated stuff was only on home media, usually as a pack-in with a pony.  I don’t think any of the G3 stuff was shown on tv.  I think I remember one thing was shown as a special one showing release for kids in movie theaters once, but nothing approaching a regular tv show.

It is possible that Hasbro lost some rights around this time as well, but I’m not sure on that.  I’m not as up on he animation history of MLP as I am the toys, but I so remember some grumblings of Hasbro no longer having the rights to some MLP stuff(G1 molds in particular I think), and part of the G2 line in Europe was made by another company(still officially part of the line though, so at least partially licensed).

[KarentheUnicorn]

I would imagine it was cheaper to do direct to video for g3 than to invest in getting a tv channel back then to air your cartoon. I don’t know if it had as much to do with tv standards as it would have had to do with the investment to get a cartoon on a network or cable channel. If you could throw together your own product and sell it on video, it was probably a way more economic choice IMO.

I never saw where hasbro lost the copyright for mlp…I don’t know if that’s accurate. Heck we are just seeing now a lot of online discussion about Disney losing copywriter to the original Mickey Mouse…and that’s been decades…

As far as g2 goes it has already been stated, it didn’t last long enough to gain the popularity of g1 to create a cartoon.

[Carrehz]

I'm 100% sure any and all rumours involving Hasbro losing the rights to anything MLP are just horsefeathers :p Well except the names, I know there's been issues with keeping up the trademarks on those, but that's not really that big a deal (at worst it means they'll have to just tack on a "Dazzle" or "the Unicorn" or whatever ).

goddessofpeep, you raise an excellent point regarding toytoons no longer being as much of a thing by the time G2 rolled around

(@Carrehz, all of the G1 eps were release to Video in the UK except maybe the movie...not sure about if RaMC originally had a TV release as I was too young, LOL, but the others didn't. One ep didn't make it here either. Forget which one. But all of the episodes were played on Sky 1 in 1994-5ish here, because my sister's friend taped them all and we borrowed them. They would play them through in a sequence in slots on each day starting with RaMC, and ending in MLP Tales. The TV channel saw no distinction between the original series and Tales, they were all just billed as "My Little Pony." It was the first time I saw a lot of the episodes xD)

Oh interesting! I remembered hearing that Friends and Tales were rerun side by side but couldn't remember if it happened in just the US, or worldwide, or what Thanks.
I'm trying to think if I've seen any VHS releases of the movie over here... I know we got End of Flutter Valley on home video but I'm not sure if I've seen the original movie ever.

I think before G4, most people wouldn't have asked why G2 didn't have animation because it wasn't such a franchise priority until FIM. And so at the time maybe it just wasn't considered the best use of resources.

I agree completely.

[brightberry]

I think goddessofpeep is right that US FCC new regulations pretty much shut down cartoons made to advertise toys in the early nineties as it was sometimes the only programs kids saw and parents wanted it to be more educational. 


But later, as the internet expanded programming of all kinds, the regulations became too dated.

And who knows if they even planned a new cartoon.  I don’t think people really expected there to be one even if G1 had them.  Video games were the newest and greatest advertising tool of the time.

[Taffeta]

@Carrehz, no problem. I also have at least one VHS copy of MLP the Movie. It was released here on VHS, although it was also in cinemas (apparently, according to the comics I have. I was cinema phobic as a child so would not have gone xD)

Also on the Hasbro lost the rights thing. I don't know the details BUT I do know there was a discussion about this going wayy back into before the G3 time. There's been a lot of speculation about things since but I just remember that discussion has vintage from before the more recent assumptions. And it was around G1 poses and such. I'm not sure it had anything to do with Kenner since iirc some of the Spanish G1 were Kenner-associated. I think it was to do with Hasbro disposing of pony moulds...or something. I have no idea if it was ever verified either way, but does go way back.

The US tv show shift is probably the main reason, it's a good shout. The US is still the biggest market most likely to produce animation in that context, so if that became more difficult to do/less profitable, it made sense to step back.

Maybe the game was also meant to be the 'cutting edge' of tech in the late 1990s, when it was all about the internet.

Although an overprotective butterfly chirping "you have to move your pony out of the way" on loop while a digital clone object crunches apples may not have been the most elaborate game concept ever...

All the stuff goddessofpeep said about the hostility around G2 is also true. I am not sure it would rate in contrast to modern online nasties, although I remember some unpleasant stuff from both sides in the discussion...some very unpleasant stuff...mostly (in the community) it was a lot of angry ranting.

But yes, people were driven out (both people who hated G2 and who loved G2, to be fair, as they all got swept up into being targeted by the opposite 'faction') and there were campaigns to get G2 cancelled/'bring back the old ponies!' as it used to go. And I do remember someone drawing a picture of Gusty killing a G2 pony and posting it around online, which...triggered some people, to put it mildly.

And there were people who didn't really care about G2 either way but who used the nasty as an excuse to target individuals they disliked to push them out of the community. I witnessed this on a couple of occasions - I was also targeted by it even though the underlying issue had nothing to do with G2.

 It's sad because while they are totally different, I feel like G2 deserved more time to really develop outside of Europe. It's when I wrote the poem that's still on my site.
https://www.etherella.com/scrapbook2/ponydream.htm
Originally I wrote it from the perspective of a G2 pony witnessing all the chaos, in large part because of that Gusty image, but as time has gone on I've realised it's probably more reflective of the community when it goes to war unnecessarily over something trivial. I kept it on my site because G4 and the brony stuff proved people can unfortunately still be disgusting over ponies :/

I also remember some of the people who had been anti-G2 complaining then when the US cancelled them and Europe started getting unicorns and princesses and other things...but that's another matter.

[Moonbreeze]

Lack of US market I think. Even now Hasbro is pretending G2 doesn't exist  The G2 hate was fairly upsetting for me back in the day So I'm already happy they are getting more love now

But we got a PC-game with some cute animation (Sun Sparkle's dance studio in particular) and we got a bunch of comics in the EU.

Lost media wise. We'd have to have something pop-up on an auction site in terms of concept art or something like that, who knows.

[Taffeta]

We also have the CDs with the songs and (I think a drama of some kind?) in Dutch

At least Europe gave G2 love.

The UK was inbetween. We had them up to a point - I've actually found some here that are later than I remember seeing, though they may have travelled in. But we have Europe to thank for the fact we have so many pretty G2s to admire.

I am also glad they now have their niche, though it annoys me so. much when people try and eradicate their existence by calling tales G2. I was 10 when the Tales ponies hit stores and 15 when G2 came out (16 by the time they reached the UK proper), which is quite a big gap. It always seems ridiculous to me when kids who were mostly not even born in 1992 or 1997 try to rewrite the history based on the animation releases.

[Leave a Whisper]

There is no G2 in Ba Sing Se

A Hasbro employee. Probably.

[DreamvalleyMLP]

Maybe there was no need for it ?

The toys didn't sell at all in the US because the design style wasn't liked, so a tv series wouldn't have changed that. It would have been a futile investment. Europe embraced the new look and made the toyline successful enough to continue for years, all without having a show to promote the toys. If it stands well enough on its own then there's no need to sink money into an expensive promotional tv series I guess?

[Leave a Whisper]

Maybe there was no need for it ?

The toys didn't sell at all in the US because the design style wasn't liked, so a tv series wouldn't have changed that. It would have been a futile investment. Europe embraced the new look and made the toyline successful enough to continue for years, all without having a show to promote the toys. If it stands well enough on its own then there's no need to sink money into an expensive promotional tv series I guess?

That's a good answer.   

[Ponybookworm]

I think it's because Europe has mostly been very comic-centric. The G1 comics we in the UK love dearly were translated into most of the other European languages (I see a load of German language G1 comics on eBay for example). G3 had a load of comics, G4 has Egmont, which has continued into G5. And G2 also had its own comics (I have 2 of those so far but there were several more of them, & in France there were some G2 Ponies you could only get by buying the G2 comics).
The cartoons (with the possible exception of Tales) were all North America-centric, using US-based names, tying into North American culture (cider, for example, is only the alcoholic drink here), & featuring US & Canada voice actors. Also, it's likely North America, & the US in particular, were more cartoon-centric. As many have said, G2 wasn't big in the States, & I doubt it was in Canada either, so nobody thought to make a cartoon of it.
The thing is, I've yet to see a G1 comic from North America at all. If there was one, I'd love to know, but I don't think there was...