🤔 Who exactly was working on the storyboard? Very interesting. There is always still a chance that this scene from the movie was scrapped but this gives more weight to it than the storyboard itself.

Her name is Marylene Sun, and she worked at Boulder for 2 years. This storyboard was uploaded to the internet in April of 2020, and she left around 2019, so it’s possible this scene could have been cut from the film, but since Hasbro mentioned the “old cast” being in the film my money is still on the Mane 6 being in the movie in a scene like this.


Post Merge: January 13, 2021, 07:03:20 AM

...We'll see. Reserving judgement till I see the toyline. Not overly interested in the propaganda spiel. I've never been a big fan of the animated series or specials for any MLP generation, and G4 especially so, so for me it will be about what the toyline puts out.

Variety and brushables, with any luck. And absolutely no M6.

Agreed. Even as a big G4 animation fan, over the years I’ve become more of a fan of the toys than anything. What make it breaks G5 for me will be the brushables and if they’re cute or not. Of course, I’ll still consume the animated media but if the brushables have poor hair quality/look gross I’ll steer clear of them.

My memory could be fuzzy, but I already thought it was confirmed they would be in it. I thought the movie would act as a bridge (this part is my own thought).

It could be possible I was just be remembering peoples assumptions too...

Hasbro noted in October that the “old cast” would be in the movie but they didn’t exactly specify which gen or which characters, and Tara Strong went on Instagram live last year and said Twilight won’t be in G5, so some people took it as the Mane 6 as we knew them wouldn’t be there. This storyboard could mean they don’t have speaking roles but appear, or Tara could have been talking about the G5 show and not the movie. In any case, this is pretty damning evidence that they’ll be there in some way, shape or form.

I started off as a G4 fan. At some point in like 2013, I had just...stopped using a certain label for myself. But I will say that at first, it started out pretty good! Growing up, my first fandom was The Powerpuff Girls, so I was no stranger to being into stuff with female protagonists. I was 8 years old when FiM first came out, and I became an avid viewer about 3 months after it premiered. A few friends at school were talking about how the lady who's married to the guy who made Powerpuff Girls made a new show about My Little Pony and it was really good! As soon as I heard that I binged the show up to that point (on Comcast On Demand, anyone remember that?  ) and I was hooked. Everything about the show was my vibe! The characters, the world, the voice acting, I loved it! A week after I became a fan I begged my mom to drive me to Toys R Us so I could spend my gift card I got for my birthday and I walked out of the store with all 6 of the first wave of Mane 6 releases. I still have them to this day, displayed on my nightstand and I'm very proud of them. This was the beginning of my journey as a collector, and I still have really fond memories of acquiring ponies. 

Eventually I discovered the you know who's and I'm not going to lie, I have a lot of fond memories of being apart of that community. I met my closest online friends through that fandom and some of the best years of my life were spent apart of that world. And I will admit, there are some things that came from them that I still really dig (I think the concept of the whole background pony craze back in the day was neat) and for the first 2 or 3 years it was nice! But at some point, things had changed.

I don't know when it happened, but it happened. All kids shows have weird violent fanfiction and inappropriate fanart, we know that. If something is innocent and wholesome people are gonna corrupt it. Personally, I thought that Cupcakes fanfiction was hilarious. But it was a rule in most kids show fandoms to keep that stuff away from the general public and have it be posted to communities of adults who are seeking that kind of thing. This fandom however? If you even so much as Google certain characters you are going to run into extremely inappropriate fan content. And that's not okay in the slightest, but it seems to that subset of fans that it doesn't matter because they genuinely believe MLP was made for them and them only. The show, as it went on, pretty much justified these kinds of fans by shoving in references to these communities! I cannot believe they put a body pillow in an episode!!! And no one did anything, so clearly there were children who saw this stuff! Myself included!!! I'll see memes come up on Instagram like "I was traumatized in the MLP fandom" and TikToks that are like "Does anyone remember Rainbow Factory?" and even though I'm supposed to laugh, I can't help but feel sympathy for myself and the thousands of kids who had to see these things, all because the bronies wanted the show to themselves.

The amount of gatekeeping that I've seen from them that made children, female fans, established female fans of the brand before FiM, fans of color and LGBTQ+ fans like myself feel unsafe really hurts my heart. I'll admit, the G1 and G3 animated content isn't really my thing as much as I love their toylines but I still appreciated the amount of fans they introduced into the franchise. But the way the bronies (and at some points FiM) made it out to be so low quality and awful and how you were bad if you as so much liked them just brings out their true colors. I will never wrap my head around how this group straight white cis men turned a little girl escapism haven into...that. It's something that I will forever be somewhat salty about. This is getting waaaay too long so I'm gonna wrap it up here but My Little Pony deserved much better. I weep for those with negative experiences such as myself. This really hurts man.

As tired as I am of the Mane 6 (I never want to see a Pinkie Pie brushable again) I do somewhat understand them continuing to use G4 Equestria as a stepping stone for the new stuff. Like it or not, Hasbro has seen how much adaptations of toy brands have changed over the years and it seems like going forward MLP will be seen as animation first and toys second. I'm really glad that it seems like they're not going with the leaked G5 concept of Mane 6 again but slight personality changes. "This Twilight doesn't have a horn or wings! Oh and Rarity has green eyes and Applejack likes oranges!" sounds absolutely terrible and I want no part in that. As long as the Mane 6 are supporting characters and we get new ponies with every wave (and they look cute obviously) I'm a-okay with this being another entry in the G4 universe. Like I said in my earlier post, there's still some neat new things that can still be explored (Flurry Heart, beyond Equestria) and we know they're willing to shake things up to make it stand out from G4 with the new film being CGI so hopefully they understand what worked and what didn't for G4, especially from a toy standpoint.

More news has been revealed https://news.hisstank.com/2020/10/06/tfw2005-coverage-of-hasbro-brand-panel-at-festival-of-licensing-71091 right here. Seems like the new movie will take place in the G4 universe and feature the Mane 6 in some capacity, albeit reduced to give way to the new characters. Wonder if they'll do anything with Flurry Heart, I'd love to see her cutie mark!

Oh boy did Hasbro DELIVER this year!

I really hate going onto that "certain website" and giving them even more page views but I just had to! Hasbro really is going all out with this movie, they had to dedicate 2 articles to licensed merchandise! One with regular MLP and one with movie MLP! IdleHands also did a walkthrough video seen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7RKFskrFt8I and we got to know two of plot points:

*The mane 6 will be celebrated at a "Friendship Festival" in the beginning of the movie taking place in Canterlot, which is where the conflict starts

*Twilight and Spike get a song called "We Got This"

The Twilight doll sounds nothing like her  but strangely it sounds like...Jenny from Friendship is Witchcraft doing the voice? Hmm.

That Twilight robot doll better have Tara Strong coming out of that mouth. For 130 bucks a pop they BETTER have gotten her.

I just realized something about the 2017 MLP merch: none of the toys have Zapcodes. Since we now know the Minis are an Equestria Girls reboot none of them have Zapcodes and the 2017 brushables have no Zapcodes on them either. I guess this is the end for the MLP apps. Oh well, they weren't really that engaging anyways. The pony one was too boring and the Equestria Girl one was just a money sucking scheme.