Why did G1 end?

[Ackryllis]

I'm not saying it made logical sense.  Spite never makes logical sense.  I'm just saying there are very petty people out there who will harm themselves and their company to express their malcontent.  If they personally hated Hasbro, they might have figured getting fired wasn't a big deal.

Usually when people are malcontent about the situation they either leave or stay and badmouth, not sabotage things. That is more of a fiction thing and I would like to see some excamples of a minor worker wanting to sabotage a company and pulling it off.
Even if there was a person set to hurt Hasbro he should have been a leader or so as there's a group of people working on a design. There might be only one person to sculpt the product but that has to be approved by a group of people. To be able to sabotage such project it needs to have the majority of people have malicious thougts or the top branch have more than one or two maleficent persons. Neither do not happen often, and if so did happen you'd need to have the people somehow organized.
I would like to see some real proof of Kenners sabotage happening.

Post Merge: June 29, 2014, 11:13:29 AM

I'm kinda goofed on the hate g2 line is got.
I was growing up during g2 but all of our ponies were g1s bought from fleemarkets. The only one we had was my big sister's and she kept on owning it. I remember drooling at the toyline for them and allways looking  them up in the toy magazines we got every now and then.
For me our g1s were the old ones with their weard goggly eyes and the g2 were the beautifull and young ponies all should look up to.

Maybe the biggest off set is their eyes. I do love gems in their eyes but the too small amount of white in their eyes make them seem a little bit "inhuman".
I guess the g2 would have done better if Hasbro had given more care.

[Ember1]

Nah I had a whole chest load of ponies growing up. But my dad would take me to the toy store if I got good grades. I would usually run right to the mlp aisle. I was infatuated with my little ponies. For my 1 year old birthday party my mom had my little pony as the theme. My first word was pony.
They had always been there. As an 8 year old it was quite a terrible thing when they stopped making my favorite toy. I would search the aisles constantly looking for them. I am not exaggerating. lol.

[June]

The only thing I hate about G2s now is the fact that they are the line that started with the 1 side symbol trend that continued on to the G3s and G4s. One of the most horrible things that can happen to a pony started off with that line. lol

That's not quite correct. They have symbols on both sides

And as for why it happened? Just trends, like many others have already suggested. A lot of cartoons and toys nowadays look animeish or kawaii, MLP included.
I wonder if the next gen will look like G1. So far, odd generations look more chubby, while even gens are complete opposites of that style.

[lovesbabysquirmy]

The G1s ended because of the pure saturation of the toyline.   Every kid in the neighborhood had a whole box of them.  Seriously, by that point there were hundreds of individual characters and thousands of  ponies for characters that had been re-released a number of times.  There are an awful lot of say, Cotton Candy!  And how many times did they re-release Sundance -though with different gimmicks... but seriously?  That was not ever sustainable! 

[phoenixsoul85]

[/quote]  G2s were in usa only for 2 years  97-98,but in Europe they ended until 2003   ( 7  Years )
It is sad that they did not get a TV Show otherwise the story would be different.
[/quote]


So where did Pony Tales come into play?  I thought it was G2.

[shimmlight]

G2s were in usa only for 2 years  97-98,but in Europe they ended until 2003   ( 7  Years )
It is sad that they did not get a TV Show otherwise the story would be different.


So where did Pony Tales come into play?  I thought it was G2.

MLP Tales was part of G1, although many people mistake it for G2. I suppose it can be considered the G2 of the cartoons, but it's still part of G1 and had G1 toy releases of the characters.

[KarentheUnicorn]

The G1s ended because of the pure saturation of the toyline.   Every kid in the neighborhood had a whole box of them.  Seriously, by that point there were hundreds of individual characters and thousands of  ponies for characters that had been re-released a number of times.  There are an awful lot of say, Cotton Candy!  And how many times did they re-release Sundance -though with different gimmicks... but seriously?  That was not ever sustainable! 

if the re-release of the same characters was what killed G1 then G4 is in serious trouble.

[lovesbabysquirmy]

The G1s ended because of the pure saturation of the toyline.   Every kid in the neighborhood had a whole box of them.  Seriously, by that point there were hundreds of individual characters and thousands of  ponies for characters that had been re-released a number of times.  There are an awful lot of say, Cotton Candy!  And how many times did they re-release Sundance -though with different gimmicks... but seriously?  That was not ever sustainable! 

if the re-release of the same characters was what killed G1 then G4 is in serious trouble.

Well, thankfully there was a ton of selection and the re-release ponies were offered in different ways.  You could mail-order the Collectors' Pose ponies or you could buy any of the dozens of ponies available on the shelf.  And Hasbro stopped the re-releases for the most part after a few years.  There were some repeats in sets - Twinkle Eyes, Big Brothers, unicorns, etc., but there were always a multitude of options.  Re-releasing is a bad thing when you don't have much else available to purchase like we have seen with G3 Core 7 and G4 Mane 6 - sets of only 2 new characters with 2-4 re-release ponies at a time, the new gimmick always coming with a character we've seen already repeated, etc.

[Haruna]

As for why the G1s ended, they probably just had their time.  If you look at the line pretty much around the world, you see the same progression that the line has done for every generation.  During the early time of the generation the ponies are simple, a few simple playsets get made, and there is a decent choice of ponies, but it's not overwhelming.  In the middle of the line there's usually an explosion of different ponies and sometimes different kinds of ponies, some more involved playsets are made, and the pony aisle are filled with new stuff all the time.  Towards the end of the line you start getting funky gimmick ponies and weird stuff coming out(sometimes entire other lines like petites, Dream Beauties, etc), smaller, cheaper playsets, and less variety of actual ponies. 

This!

I think the line really lost its creative bearings . . . kind of like a popular sitcom that starts to recycle storylines or get a little too zany once the show starts losing steam. I would say the G1 MLP line "jumped the shark" at some point, although there were always some interesting ponies being made. For me, there are indications of Hasbro just not investing creativity in the line anymore: recycling old pony names, old playsets, relying on too many gimmicks.

In my opinion, the line got way too far removed from its original inspiration--which was that children (often little girls) dreamed of having their own real ponies. I think after a while the "ponies" really became interchangeable with lots of other doll lines.

But again, I think the sitcom parallel works well here--it's rare to keep a good thing going for years and years and years.

Yeah, I agree. The same thing happened to the original Littlest Pet Shop line, IMO (produced by Kenner back then, not Hasbro). The pets started off relatively simple, and the set themes were cute, ordinary ideas: mommies and babies, pets with doghouses and kitty carriers and hamster homes, zoo animals, etc. The very cute molds and design stayed the same for several years. Then near the end, they started to get gimmicky, just like ponies, and they introduced brightly-colored animals with crazy-long hair, like mermaids and various other creatures, and then the horrible cartoon show with cartoony animals who had nothing to do with the original concept that you had your own tiny pet shop. I'm not even sure what the cartoon show's premise was, but I just remember anthropomorphic talking animals. Anyway, although, like in MLP, the end of the line was not without its bright spots (I loved my purple and green crazy-long-haired guinea pigs), it followed basically the same path.

[Star Spark]

Yeah, I agree. The same thing happened to the original Littlest Pet Shop line, IMO (produced by Kenner back then, not Hasbro). The pets started off relatively simple, and the set themes were cute, ordinary ideas: mommies and babies, pets with doghouses and kitty carriers and hamster homes, zoo animals, etc. The very cute molds and design stayed the same for several years. Then near the end, they started to get gimmicky, just like ponies, and they introduced brightly-colored animals with crazy-long hair, like mermaids and various other creatures, and then the horrible cartoon show with cartoony animals who had nothing to do with the original concept that you had your own tiny pet shop. I'm not even sure what the cartoon show's premise was, but I just remember anthropomorphic talking animals. Anyway, although, like in MLP, the end of the line was not without its bright spots (I loved my purple and green crazy-long-haired guinea pigs), it followed basically the same path.

I actually liked that TV show.  It was kind of an odd duck- the premise was that a bunch of tiny animals that live in a pet store specializing in tiny animals (no explanation given) go on wacky adventures and spoof a lot of things that would likely go over the target audience's head. I wouldn't say it was a "good" show, but it was entertaining, had a few good one-liners and it's fun now to go back and catch some of the references. It did come off as a kind of "last gasp" for the brand, though, to try and attract a new audience, and the character designs clashed pretty badly with the established aesthetic of the toys.

As for why G1 ended, I agree with a lot of what was said- the "novelty" had worn off, and as the line ran out of ideas things got more and more gimmicky, and without a cartoon there was little to get kids interested in individual characters. In addition, toy animal figurines seem to have died out in the early '90s (The Littlest Pet Shop being the only major exception I can think of), so there just might not have been a market for them anymore.

[KarentheUnicorn]

The G1s ended because of the pure saturation of the toyline.   Every kid in the neighborhood had a whole box of them.  Seriously, by that point there were hundreds of individual characters and thousands of  ponies for characters that had been re-released a number of times.  There are an awful lot of say, Cotton Candy!  And how many times did they re-release Sundance -though with different gimmicks... but seriously?  That was not ever sustainable! 

if the re-release of the same characters was what killed G1 then G4 is in serious trouble.

Well, thankfully there was a ton of selection and the re-release ponies were offered in different ways.  You could mail-order the Collectors' Pose ponies or you could buy any of the dozens of ponies available on the shelf.  And Hasbro stopped the re-releases for the most part after a few years.  There were some repeats in sets - Twinkle Eyes, Big Brothers, unicorns, etc., but there were always a multitude of options.  Re-releasing is a bad thing when you don't have much else available to purchase like we have seen with G3 Core 7 and G4 Mane 6 - sets of only 2 new characters with 2-4 re-release ponies at a time, the new gimmick always coming with a character we've seen already repeated, etc.

Yea, I remember.

The re-releases back in the 80's did not really overshadow having a variety of new ponies each year. So I don't see it as the same thing we have going on now with g4.

You had a lot more options, and as far as mail orders go there was also the aspect of when some of those that were re-released as mail order you couldn't find those ponies in store anymore. The collector ponies were re-released later when it was next to impossible to find them in store. There were some of those that I never found so it was a welcome thing, as a young collector to be able to get those few I'd never been able to find in store.

I started collecting in 1983 - there were certain ponies that were very difficult to find. An example: I never saw Tickle in store but managed to get all the other rainbow ponies in store. She was never re-released as a mail order, almost all the other Rainbow ponies were, but she was one of the RP's that was not. I even wrote to hasbro to ask about her, and back then they actually wrote me back, still have one of the hand written letters they sent me.

Besides the aspect of re-release now, which is generally the exact same pony. In the 80's we had regular Lickety-Split or when the so-soft ponies showed up, you could get a so-soft LS, but the different characters always outweighed the aspect of having the 'same' ponies over and over and over.



Post Merge: June 30, 2014, 02:45:23 PM

G2s were in usa only for 2 years  97-98,but in Europe they ended until 2003   ( 7  Years )
It is sad that they did not get a TV Show otherwise the story would be different.


So where did Pony Tales come into play?  I thought it was G2.

MLP Tales was part of G1, although many people mistake it for G2. I suppose it can be considered the G2 of the cartoons, but it's still part of G1 and had G1 toy releases of the characters.

For those who call Tales G2, they don't know MLP history. I have a bit of a timeline on my tumblr that explains it, I think I got all my dates right Part of the issue is a lot of people new to MLP are only going by the cartoon but also there is the aspect of some people might only be going by USA production (if they are considering the toys at all), not realizing that outside the USA G1 toy production went a little longer.

http://karentheunicorn.tumblr.com/post/83853124240/my-little-pony-history-facts-about-g2