https://variety.com/2021/tv/news/cloris-leachman-dead-1234893925/

R.I.P.

Recently I decided to revisit one of my favorite MLP blogs on Tumblr but it turned out that for some reason some of the images were flagges as mature and I couldn't see them. I registered an account just so I could access them but it turned out it didn't help in any way. The funny thing is that when I checked an archived version of the blog on Web Archive, it had some of the images that are now flagged as mature and it turned out one of them was literally a gif of Teddy and another was a gif of Patch tipping over the rest of the ponies, so I don't see what's exactly mature about them. Is there any way to bypass this censorship?

Looks like this year Christmas came early for me

As I have mentioned before, my absolute number one most desired pony ever was a NSS Wind Whistler in good condition, but the biggest obstacle to that was that most WWs available for sale always seemed to be either 1) so-softs (which I hate), 2) with faded white hair, or 3) both. Luckily, recently half of the problem got solved on its own when it turned out that whenever I searched Wind Whistler with newly listed on top, eBay would always place all non-american items separately further down the list as "International sellers", so I would always see American ponies among the newly added, which by default were all so-softs. So when one day I accidentally scrolled far enough down, it turned out there was actually a lot of European NSS Wind Whistlers available! Sadly, most of them still had white hair, and even if they did have some color left (usually not that much), they were almost always offered as auctioned items, and I would always lose (or they would have some jarring flaw, like symbol damage), or there would be one available right away when I was actually bidding on another one that would have been sold by the time I came back to it etc. (Wind Whistler seems to be pretty popular among buyers) I thought I would never find the right one, until a few weeks ago that is. I was just casually checking out the international section again, and there she was, just put up that day. Her hair still had its original color, both symbols were intact, there were no flaws, she even came with the original brush and butt ribbon! Pretty much the only downside was that her forelock was kind of messy, but that's something I could take care of. Her price was a little high, as in nearly sixty dollars plus shipping, but I was more than willing to pay that much (besides, I remember a similar condition Wind Whistler being sold to the highest bidder for more than 100 pounds some time ago). I knew I had to act fast, though, since I didn't want to let someone sweep her away from under my nose. So I checked my PayPal, it turned out I had just enough to pay the total amount with about three dollars to spare (not that being short would really stop me) and just a few minutes later she wasn't available for sale anymore She just arrived yesterday, I wasn't home at the time but today I finally had a chance to check her out up close, and there she is:

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Sorry for the bad quality, those pictures really don't do justice to her, but I completely suck at photographing, and no matter what angle I took, it would either be too dark or too bright. Anyway, I'm really satisfied with my purchase and don't regret a single cent spent, she's pretty much exactly what I wished for, perfect quality, just as I always wanted, and as an added bonus, her hair smells really lovely, you can tell that she was properly washed before sending. 2019 couldn't possibly end on a better note for me! Plus at least now Fizzy won't be alone in that dark cabinet of hers

After spending way too many months waiting to find my perfect Wind Whistler, I just decided to get down to earth and instead settle for starting my pony collection with my second most favorite pony of all time, Fizzy, who was way easier to find in a decent condition. My only requirement was for her to still have both symbols and not have any missing or cut hair in her mane or tail, since I didn't want to waste any more time looking for perfection. I found what looked like the best looking one and placed the order, and just a few hours ago she finally arrived:

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(sorry for poor quality of the picture, I have an old phone and am overall bad with taking pictures)

The first thing that surprised me was her size, as she was a little bigger than I expected. I think it's because my only point of reference in real life has been those new G4 ponies that I would sometimes see on store shelves, and they are pretty tiny, I knew that G1s were bigger but I didn't know it was this much bigger. Not that I'm complaining though, as she really lies nice in your hand.

I was also surprised how soft those ponies are! I was always sure they were made of some type of hard plastic, but instead she turned out to be nice and rubbery. I really like how you can squeeze her gently in your hand. Not too hard of course, since I wouldn't want to damage her now.

She understandably didn't come with the original comb, but she had a cute little ribbon tied around her tail. Sadly, I untied it to see if her tail didn't have any missing hair (it didn't) and I don't know if I reattached it properly.

Okay, those were the good things about her, now for the bad parts.

I noticed her hair is kind of frizzy on the ends, especially the front part of her mane. I tried to brush her a little with my spare pocket comb but I'm afraid I could damage it, since she does seem to have a few loose hairs already (although it's probably hard to see in the picture above) I checked out some pony hair styling tutorials on YouTube but I'm not yet sure which of them would be the most reliable. I'll try to figure it out later.

Another thing that bothers me slightly is that her mane seems to be a little shorter on the front, I don't know if it's supposed to be this way or if someone had cut it a little. Does anyone know if this is normal for Fizzy toys?

Overall, I'd say she's still pretty good for a 30+ year old toy, and I'm quite happy with my purchase. It's nice to know I can finally call myself a pony collector and not just a casual toyless fan. For my second pony in the collection I would ideally get a Wind Whistler, but since it's so hard to find her in a good condition it will probably be Gusty, because even though I never really liked her I have to admit that her toy is just gorgeous. For now, however, I am really happy with my Fizzy.

I couldn't find it anywhere and it doesn't say when you change the avatar. What is the maximum resolution, size etc. allowed?

We all know that before working on The Simpsons, Nancy Cartwright voiced characters in some Saturday morning cartoons in the 80s, including at least few G1 ponies, of which at least Gusty sounded just like Bart (although he could occassionally be heard through other ponies as well) But do you think it was actually Gusty who served as the original inspirtation for his voice? I remember Mrs. Cartwright mentioning somewhere in an interview that voicing Bart was no problem to her since she had already voiced characters in few cartoons before like My Little Pony, Pound Puppies or Snorkels, but I checked on YouTube and none of the characters voiced by her sounds quite like Bart, except Gusty of course. Could it be, then, that when she was originally asked back in 1987 to provide voice for a bratty ten year old boy, she thought about that tomboyish white unicorn she was voicing in that pony show and figured "Yeah, that will be the perfect voice for him"? Because that would be quite awesome if it turned out that one of the biggest icons of the 90s was at least partially inspired by a MLP character!

I've been actually planning to make an account and write this introduction for several long months now, but I could never bring myself to it. I really wanted to do this but I knew that it would mean bringing up certain memories I'd rather stay away from and that it would probably prompt someone to ask questions I'd rather not answer. Still, it was very important to me and I've already waited for way too long, so I thought to myself, what the hey. So here it goes.

My first encounter with My Little Pony was when I was only 9, way back in 1996. Every Friday after school, me and my sister, who was one year younger than me, would go to the local VHS rental place to rent something to watch over weekend. Our parents would let each of us rent exactly one tape, and as everyone knows, over two days of watching the same tape is way too long for a kid, and while my sister would always rent something for girls like Little Mermaid or the MLP cartoon, I would usually go for something gender-neutral like Duck Tales or Animaniacs (I never liked typical boys cartoons like Transformers or GI Joe) so she usually just ended up watching my tape as well. After some time I came to conclusion that it wasn't fair that she got to watch two tapes while I had only one and decided I might as well just silently join her when she's watching hers while acting completely uninterested, hehe. That Friday, she just happened to have rented one of the three pony tapes, and the first four out of eight episodes on it (I think they were some unofficial bootlegs since I couldn't find any info on them anywhere) were the Tambelon storyarc. First I wasn't very impressed when it started with hide and seek, and even when all those unicorns started disappearing, I was sure it would be something typically girly like some evil candy witch kidnapping them and putting them in candy-cane cages or something. Then came that creepy dream sequence, with one of the unicorns saying the ominous sounding word "Tambelon" and a demonic ram appearing. Boy, was I surprised! And then came the legend of a cursed city, the invasion, Troggles shooting with their laser lances... By the time part 2 started, I was genuinely interested in the story, and overall I was pretty impressed with how awesome it actually was, even though deep down I kind of felt it was unfair for a cartoon for girls to be this good, lol (yeah, I was about as bigoted as any nine year old boy) Then the next two episodes were Crunch the rock dog which wasn't on the same level as Tambelon but I still found it pretty creepy, and the last two were Baby It's Cold Outside which wasn't bad either. By the time the tape was over I hoped that next Friday sister would pick another pony tape, and what do you know, one week later my wish did come true. This time the first four episodes were Magic Coins with all the adventure and quests, and at this point I was completely hooked, and wasn't even trying to hide it. My sister was pretty amused about it, but she was also happy that I actually liked a show for girls. From then on, we would often watch ponies together on weekends, sometimes I would actually ask if we could rent the Tambelon tape, haha. To be honest, that's probably one of the fondest memories of my childhood, partially because MLP was something I discovered thanks to my sister and never would have learned how great it was without her (which was also the first time I learned not to believe in silly gender stereotypes) and partially because it was our little secret (back then you would never live it down if other kids found out you were a guy who likes ponies!) which kind of brought us a little closer together.

But of course, all good things must come to an end eventually. It went on like that for about a year, until one Friday by the end of summer 1997 we came to the video rental place only to discover to our shock that half of all the shelves, including the entire children's section, were completely empty. At first I was telling myself they were probably doing some cleaning or something, but we were told that they were actually replacing their stock. I still kept clinging to the hope that maybe somehow they would still keep ponies, but alas, when the shelves were full again, it was all entirely new tapes. At first I was distraught, but kids get over things pretty fast, and it wasn't long until I moved on to other things, and some time after that was when I initially grew out of children's cartoons.

It wouldn't be until many years later when I rediscovered ponies for the first time, already as an adult. It was spring of 2006 and I had just discovered this incredible newfangled thing called YouTube. Drunk on the excitement of suddenly being able to instantly watch countless number of music videos, old commercials, movie trailers or even full TV episodes, I suddenly remembered that old pony cartoon I used to watch, and of course it wasn't long until I searched for "My Little Pony". Most results were actually for the latest generation of ponies at the time that I wasn't familiar with but I also found what looked like an unknown episode of the old show. It was uploaded by a user named ZombieMunkey (strange how I still remember it after all these years) and the episode's name was "Ponies in Paradise". After just a moment I realized something was off, I didn't recognize any of the characters and there was even an airplane! After finding another episode with the same characters called "Slumber Party", I decided to do some research and clear my confusion. That was when I learned that the original MLP actually had another unrelated show in the early 1990s called My Little Pony Tales. I also learned there was a feature-length cinematic movie about something called Smooze, two TV specials (one of which I had already known from the tapes) and that the current different generation was called G3. That was when my great adventure with using the power of Internet to explore ponies began. I watched some of the old episodes that I didn't know about before, like Bright Lights, and I also became fan of MLPT which had its own unique charm (I remember there was a website with all episodes available for download in terrible quality). I would also browse plenty of fanart and watch tons of videos on YouTube. What was especially popular at the time was fan-made music videos with pony clips, I particularly remember one Finnish girl who would make videos using both G1 and G3 clips (like a video with "I just can't wait to be king" playing to scenes from "Friends Are Never Far Away") That was also the time when I first discovered this very forum and I was captivated by all those colorful pony avatars and all the positivity, but back then I only lurked a little and never thought about actually registering, which in retrospect probably wasn't a good choice.

This period lasted for about two or three years, which was a very fun time, but since later the same year I got into university, over time there was less and less time for ponies. And then... bad times came. I won't get into details here, but let's just say that having to mention it at some point in my story was the main reason why I kept delaying this post for so long. Anyway, I was not in a mood to think about ponies, or nearly anything for that matter, and by the time me and other people affected by this finally somewhat recovered I couldn't bring myself to go back to ponies. They reminded me too much of a more innocent time that was now lost forever and just thinking about it was painful. I was pretty sure I was done with ponies forever. Until the last year...

It was just few weeks before the Christmas of 2017, early in December (I can't believe it's been almost a year since then!) My first package from Amazon had just arrived. It was a complete series on DVD of a show I had been searching online some time before, I couldn't find it anywhere for download but it was on Amazon so I set up an account and had it ordered. Having the DVD box in my hand and realizing I can just buy things I can't find online as long as I'm willing to pay for it gave me an idea... I knew I probably shouldn't do it because of the painful memories (plus by that point the franchise had gotten rebooted again and its latest incarnation was attracting the kind of fanbase that actually made me a little embarrassed to be a guy into MLP), but it was just so tempting... So just like all those years earlier on YouTube, I searched for "My Little Pony" on Amazon and, after going through all the G4 items I didn't care about, I finally found a Shout Factory release for G1! I actually felt slight tingling in my stomach. Then I saw in the "frequently bought together" that you can actually buy the complete MLP series AND the MLP movie AND the complete MLPT series! Just thinking about having it all in one place, in good quality, and being able to watch pretty much any piece of G1 animation whenever I wanted, it immediately chased all the doubts away. Or maybe time had just healed the wounds a little by then. Either way, I ordered all three, paying extra for ultra fast delivery, and soon after I had all DVDs before me. While opening the cases, I still had my doubts, didn't know if I really wanted it. But then I thought about Tambelon, about the adventures, about anticipating Fridays and about watching pony music videos in the 2000s, and I decided to go through with it. I ended up binge watching all the discs over and over. Like I expected, it wasn't really the same and it did bring up some painful memories, but it was so worth it! Besides, isn't life about learning to deal with our pains? Anyway, my love for ponies came back with double force. I would watch every episode multiple times, analyze every detail and look for extra info online, but that wasn't all. This time I wasn't just focused on the animation, I wanted to explore MLP as whole. I started reading about all the different years and poses of G1, learned which toys and playsets inspired the show, and even discovered the UK alternate canon (which made me a huge fan of Majesty). I'm even planning to start collecting toys, mostly the ones featured as characters in the cartoon but also some of the others that are cute as well (like Parasol or the adorable Bridal Pony), in fact I tried to buy a lovely Wind Whistler recently but literally got outbid in the last second, lol. I also decided to finally make an account here, although it took me quite some time to bring myself to it, and then I spent another few days revising and rewriting this introduction to make sure it's just right, but now it's finally here!

So there you have it. Sorry it took so long but I really had to pour myself out. Thank you to everyone who read it all.