DT: In Steve Gerber's story "There's No Place Like Springfield - Part 2," a scene with a little synthoid girl holding a gun was included in the original airing of the episode, however, the scene never appeared again in repeat airings. Do you know if the scene was cut due angry letters and phone calls from parents or did Hasbro freak out?
BD: I don’t know. There were various anti-violence groups at that time who complained about the silliest things (one guy considered Donald Duck shaking his fist at his nephews to be as violent as us sinking a battleship!), so Hasbro may have trimmed it based on either real or imagined complaints.
Ohhh I guess I can see where you're coming from on the Megan/Molly thing. Yeah, that does seem like the sort of non-issue people would freak out about, esp. given the Jetta thing you mentioned - I think especially at the time, cartoon-makers were very conscious of anything that could be construed as racist, etc - trying not to get themselves into hot water.
I honestly don't see anything imitable in "Hurry" either, but thing is that standards and practices can make some weird calls. Some of the edits + S&P notes I've seen are just bonkers - like - this is more modern, but there's an ep of Regular Show where the guys are throwing pizza pouches at each other (long story - but nothing offensive - just silly cartoon humour)... but international airings edited it so one of them was holding a plate. ?????? And that's just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to bizarre edits on THAT show.
Point is, censors can see issues where literally no one else would. And if it was censored due to a complaint, then that's a whole other thing... it could be that someone whinged about this, but not the Jem stuff you mentioned. idk. I do know that censors are ridiculously inconsistent. I feel like it HAS to be a case of someone, somewhere, taking offense to something totally mundane in the scene, cause nothing else really makes sense :/
edit: LaW ninja'd me - the Jem drug ep I don't think they'd hold to the same standards, there was a lot of anti-drug stuff in the 80s. since it's a "moral" sort of ep they might have viewed it differently.
OMG, it's crazy that we're still finding lost media for MLP after all these years!! :heart:did we ever find the missing rainbow ponies special? i remember seeing a clip where megan rides in on skydancer that was on a recorded escape from katrina vid i no longer have. editted to fix the right name in
Honestly, I don't believe the Rainbow Ponies special ever existed. Most of the "footage" from it was recolored from RaMC and were more likely to me just used in commercials, similar to the TaF one, that have been lost to time.OMG, it's crazy that we're still finding lost media for MLP after all these years!! :heart:did we ever find the missing rainbow ponies special? i remember seeing a clip where megan rides in on sundance that was on a recorded escape from katrina vid i no longer have.
Honestly, I don't believe the Rainbow Ponies special ever existed. Most of the "footage" from it was recolored from RaMC and were more likely to me just used in commercials, similar to the TaF one, that have been lost to time.OMG, it's crazy that we're still finding lost media for MLP after all these years!! :heart:did we ever find the missing rainbow ponies special? i remember seeing a clip where megan rides in on skydancer that was on a recorded escape from katrina vid i no longer have.
EDIT: The RP footage is indeed from a Spanish commercial (https://youtu.be/XKMoqx0Wds8).
(incidentally, that's my main theory on the mystery rainbow pony in RaMC too - they wanted some rep for that set but hadn't finalized any designs at that point)I believe that may have actually been First Born, the porcelain pony. They have the same blunt hairstyle, and the mystery pony has a symbol similar to the logo on FB's back. I think they also have the same eye and bow colors.
But I think it could have been seen as culturally insensitive. I did a bit more digging around this as it was kind of a vague recollection on my part from teaching etc...but there exist 19th century accounts of weaving at the loom in the US being done in good part by slaves, in not so great conditions. Megan and Molly are white, and they're overseers who don't participate. I could see a civil rights group complaining about the symbolism of the scene if that were to be a cultural hotspot.
But I think it could have been seen as culturally insensitive. I did a bit more digging around this as it was kind of a vague recollection on my part from teaching etc...but there exist 19th century accounts of weaving at the loom in the US being done in good part by slaves, in not so great conditions. Megan and Molly are white, and they're overseers who don't participate. I could see a civil rights group complaining about the symbolism of the scene if that were to be a cultural hotspot.
And now I wondered if Celestial ponies were never made due to there name.
There are much worse things in Jem animation than are in that clip in terms of imitable behaviours. I know the Misfits were ultimately pulled because of their being a bit too violent for some wimpy parents to stomach, and replaced with much worse psychological villains in the Stingers. But there's quite a lot in Jem that would have been cut from the show if that was the mindset. MLP is perhaps aimed a little younger, so I guess it could be a factor. I'm just not seeing it.
If Jetta can swing her saxophone and basically attack people with it in a nightclub (and I have the script for Talent Search and that's an add/change, not a removal, thanks to Hasbro changing Jetta's instrument) then I can't see any imitable behaviour in that which might have caused a problem.
If you guys don't see the Megan and Molly problem I might be overthinking it. But I think it could have been seen as culturally insensitive. I did a bit more digging around this as it was kind of a vague recollection on my part from teaching etc...but there exist 19th century accounts of weaving at the loom in the US being done in good part by slaves, in not so great conditions. Megan and Molly are white, and they're overseers who don't participate. I could see a civil rights group complaining about the symbolism of the scene if that were to be a cultural hotspot. Megan and Molly not joining in and leaving all the labour to the ponies and the bushwoolies could have rubbed nerves.
If so, I can see why they would pull the whole sequence and never air it again.
I do remember Christy Marx discussing how she wanted Jetta to be black, and there being a massive pushback on making any of the Misfits from ethnic minority groups because of the issue of portraying them as villains. So it didn't happen and she was made white British instead. If they were apprehensive about something like that around the same time, I could see that something like this might trigger people's sensitivities.
I am not sure what might have offended about that. Although if you mean Celestial, that only refers to the stars and sky; it's an astronomical descriptor.
@Kestrel-Kitsune, that sounds like a brony conspiracy to me
I'm not sure about the sewing machine as a risk factor. We're dealing with a show that had some pretty intense stuff, like mentioned before. Would they stop and remove that but not remove the baby newborns on leash imagery, or the song where the first tooth babies are ranting about them from the same episode...?
I am not sure what might have offended about that. Although if you mean Celestial, that only refers to the stars and sky; it's an astronomical descriptor.
It was a, not-slur but later slur?, for Chinese people (we got trouble of this in Dr.Who with Celestial Toymaker, who got renamed).
I can't remember which release of the Jem DVDs I have, but as I said before, there are also a lot of changes even from script to episode, and with the multipart MLP eps, there are sometimes cut or changed scenes to make that division make sense. It strikes me there might have been multiple versions of many sunbow episodes and it could just be a case of which versions survive to now.
I'd never thought about it much until the whole debacle with 'saban moon' (US Live action remake of sailor moon that was thought completely lost) was found in their archives.
I'd never thought about it much until the whole debacle with 'saban moon' (US Live action remake of sailor moon that was thought completely lost) was found in their archives.
THEY FOUND THAT?!!
If the reason for cutting it wasn't "let's try to fit in another few commercials", I do wonder if the safety reason for cutting it might have been the sewing machine. As a child I got the terrifying 'your grandma sewed straight through her thumb' lecture about the sewing machine, so I always regarded it with a great deal of trepidation, and even today I'm a nervous sewer. In contrast, we have the Bushwoolies all but throwing the fabric through the machine, singing about how quickly (and carelessly) they are sewing... I could see that as being a cause for concern in terms of imitable play. I would wager that more households in the 80s had sewing machines than today, and it could be a very real concern that a kid could hurt themselves trying to mimic the scene. That would be my best guess anyway!
Gonna be honest, I really do think it's a time cut just because the shout factory set has issues for so many episodes on fewer discs.
Personally I wonder which version the library of congress has. 🤔 I'd never thought about it much until the whole debacle with 'saban moon' (US Live action remake of sailor moon that was thought completely lost) was found in their archives.
I know they have a copy: https://lccn.loc.gov/91791965 and they seem to have copies of other episodes as well but whether those copies are copies of the masters....
Edit to correct: https://catalog.loc.gov/vwebv/search?searchArg1=My+little+pony+&argType1=all&searchCode1=GKEY&searchType=2&combine2=and&searchArg2=&argType2=all&searchCode2=GKEY&combine3=and&searchArg3=&argType3=all&searchCode3=GKEY&year=1522-2022&fromYear=&toYear=&location=all&place=all&type=g%3F&language=all&recCount=25
If the link works. Ironically Glass Princess is the only story from the series but they have both specials and the film.
It strikes me there might have been multiple versions of many sunbow episodes and it could just be a case of which versions survive to now.
This is what I was getting at. You said it much better than I did. Sunbow might not have kept every version of every episode and only have one type remaining.
(incidentally, that's my main theory on the mystery rainbow pony in RaMC too - they wanted some rep for that set but hadn't finalized any designs at that point)I believe that may have actually been First Born, the porcelain pony. They have the same blunt hairstyle, and the mystery pony has a symbol similar to the logo on FB's back. I think they also have the same eye and bow colors.
On First Born, I can't remember why but I remember a whole discussion about this where people mostly decided that the animated pony probably wasn't linked to the ceramic? Maybe timing? I wish I recall why, but it's been a while.
"Rainbow pony special was cancelled being 'too gay'" - first time I've ever heard THAT one. Doesn't make much sense to me; if it's the rainbow thing.... G1 has rainbows all over the place (a lot of 80s toys do!).... if it's because of two of the ponies nuzzling in that clip... that's nothing they'd cancel a whole special over.I know the scene where Glory licks Applejack's cheek was censored in some releases of RaMC, so maybe that's where that rumor came from? Either way, it's ridiculous. They're animals.
Even when the official names WERE discovered, they're still obscure because that info just hasn't been widely spread yet. (It doesn't look like their prototype backcard story is on the wiki, for example - I know I saw it recently - might've been on Tumblr? I know it's out there)Eeee, sorry if this is off-topic but I really love the FS ponies' backcard. I heard it in a video of a panel at one of the Pony Fairs (I think, anyway) where it was being read aloud. I loved it so much I wrote it down and saved it on my computer lol. This is it:
Wildshadow's copy of the series bible actually DOES include Peachy (and Majesty!) in a list of ponies - no details, just the names - so we know for sure those characters were considered for the cartoon. It'd be weird to include those two in the series, they'd be off the shelves by that point, right? Which makes me suspect they're leftover from an earlier character list.Would you happen to have a link to the series bible on hand? :0 I'd love to see it.
Re: songs. Apart from the whole "Hurry" debacle, "The Return of Tambelon (Part 3)" and "Flight to Cloud Castle (Part 2)" are the only episodes that don't have a song. To my knowledge, they've ALWAYS been like this, they were never broadcast with a song like "The Glass Princess (Part 4)" was.
What muddies the waters is that they do appear to have intended there to be a song in "Tambelon". If you watch it, there's a bit where - it's been a while since I've seen it, so forgive me if I get any of the details wrong - but, basically, everyone's losing hope and are being all emo, and it REALLY feels like it's leading up to a rousing song, it's basically a classic "setting up for a song" G1 scene... and then there's an abrupt cut and the ponies are all "Yeah you're right Megan! Yay! Let's go save our friends!" etc.
Personally I think they did write a song for that scene, but cut it during the production stage because the episode ran overlong. That episode serial runs HOT, there's a LOT going on in it - snipping out a song that was probably pretty superfluous was likely an obvious choice. (It probably would've just been "Always Another Rainbow" 2.0 anyway :P) But I don't think there'd be footage for that song or anything - IF such a thing ever existed - it's not something that ever aired on TV. As far as I know. I've never seen any sort of proof that that one was edited for reruns, anyway.
(People sometimes bring up "the lost Cloud Castle song" but I think it's just wishful thinking, to be frank. People want there to be a song, and I can see the logic... all other eps have songs, so this one MUST have had one cut, right?? But when you look at it, there's no obvious place for a song in the ep - not like there is with "Tambelon", where it's pretty obvious where a song would've gone. I suspect CCpt2 never even had a song written for it, or if it did, it was discarded very early on.)
I know the scene where Glory licks Applejack's cheek was censored in some releases of RaMC, so maybe that's where that rumor came from? Either way, it's ridiculous. They're animals.
Erm, the Jem episodes. I'm never sure whether colour variation is to do with the formatting (PAL/NTSC/editing to DVD), though. But there are definitely different versions of the eps - or something happened in producing some of them to vhs. There are two or three episodes with very messed up soundtracks. I'll save the words and just link the page I have some of the files as soundbytes...
http://etherella.com/britrock/surprise.htm (http://etherella.com/britrock/surprise.htm)
"Rainbow pony special was cancelled being 'too gay'" - first time I've ever heard THAT one. Doesn't make much sense to me; if it's the rainbow thing.... G1 has rainbows all over the place (a lot of 80s toys do!).... if it's because of two of the ponies nuzzling in that clip... that's nothing they'd cancel a whole special over.I know the scene where Glory licks Applejack's cheek was censored in some releases of RaMC, so maybe that's where that rumor came from? Either way, it's ridiculous. They're animals.
The Cloud Castle might have had the song near the end where the ponies might have convinced Ariel to give Garth a chance? Because that decision was way to quick to not have something happen.
Carrehz, that was an epic post. I read it :D I'm gonna comment on a couple of things.