G1 vs. G4 compare/contrast: What do you love about G1 and/or G4?

[Al-1701]

On the subject of the cookie-cutter look to FiM, blame their usage of Flash.  Flash is a puppet manipulation program.  You make an object, and then you can manipulate its different parts.  The people at DHX really only have a few designs they just recolor and add random things (like facial hair) to make different ponies.  That's why it seems like every new male pony has that lanky design.

[Sunset]

But the plus side to Flash is that it makes it easier to animate certain things.  I do love the way G4 has the walking/ running down in a way that actually looks like horses run. 

[Malicieuse]

I prefer G1. Both the show and toyline.
The toyline part isn't hard to explain. The G4 line is dull beyond belief.
As for the show...sure, G4 has a bigger budget, cleaner animation and it's more "modern".
But it lacks a few things that are important to me.

First of all, i love how wild and crazy G1 Ponyland is. It feels like a place were everything and anything can happen. Compared to Ponyland Equestria is kinda dull. After 5 seasons we have still not seen all that much of it and i'm not impressed by places like Manehattan. They feel too...human.
In fact that is the second problem with FIM. Everything is too human.
The G1 cartoon made the ponies seem more like magical creatures. They also simply felt more ponylike to me. G4 ponies on the other hand look more like humans (those faces + facial hair) and they lead humanlike lives. They get born in hospitals, they go to school, they get a job, they get sick and they die.
The life of a regular G4 pony isn't very fantastical.

[Al-1701]

"It's more 'relatable'" as a certain lupine would say.  I think someone need to sit writers and critics alike down and explain the difference between being "relatable" and being "sympathetic" to them.

[lostpony]

Sunset, Excellent point about the hoof sounds, thank you.

The show makers studied movement of real horses to produce that accuracy (according to the Art of Equestria I think) and that is one of the things that grabbed me from the very beginning....they trot, run, and walk with perfect horse quadruped gait...from the scene where Twilight gallops over the rise in the path in the first episode, to when in the Crusaders of the Lost Mark episode Diamond Tiara storms off angrily (canter?) after Silver Spoon shuts her mouth for her, to Silver Spoon's slow walk away afterwards saying "What? I don't have to follow her drama anymore".

I love the hooves sound!  It's the Best!

Malicieuse, their being quadrupeds trumps all that other human stuff.     Seriously though, excellent point: Ponyland is much more wild and unpredictable than Equestria ...most of the time, except season endings...