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I don't consider non-G1 as MLP I love my 80s stuff !Yessss...come on, hate me
I've seen & heard of people referring to the Pony toys as "merch".
I've seen & heard of people referring to the Pony toys as "merch".Nope. Sorry. Not to me.MLP IS the toys. The Pony figures are the core, or heart, of the whole thing. I think here is where I disagree with the G4 fans. They talk of "time to watch Ponies" which to me sounds like going to the collection & admiring it (not that this sounds like a bad thing tbh). Then I realise they're referring to the cartoon, like it's the heart of everything.The G1 cartoons were never the heart of G1, nor were the comics. The comics were never the heart of G2, & the cartoons were never the heart of G3. In all those cases the heart of the whole thing was the Pony toys.I think that's where G4 got it wrong. It's not meant to be a show which spawns fun toys. It's meant to be toys with a fun show or shows.I know at least one Discord server where that is an unpopular opinion I don't voice on there, for fear of what others would think. I don't mean it to degrade the cartoon in any way, but it's never been as important as the Pony toys to me. That's one of a thousand reasons I'm so disappointed in the lack of variety in the G4 brushables.
That's especially true for G4. With earlier gens I think people choose different aspects of the media to focus on, but I tend to agree - it's still Hasbro's promotional train. It's true of Jem as well...the animation (up till G4) and the comics are designed to sell ponies, and thus are all one big part of the advertising package.
Quote from: Taffeta on April 28, 2021, 10:40:47 AMThat's especially true for G4. With earlier gens I think people choose different aspects of the media to focus on, but I tend to agree - it's still Hasbro's promotional train. It's true of Jem as well...the animation (up till G4) and the comics are designed to sell ponies, and thus are all one big part of the advertising package.It's really weird. I tuned into Jem frequently, but I never saw a single doll being sold. I had no idea there even were toys until I discovered the Arena.
The idea of ponies as merchandise is a bronyism. With any luck as G4 moves into G5, some of those concepts will start to fade - although admittedly it's hard to see it happening with G5 so far.Calling ponies merch is like calling Tales G2. It's advertising your ignorance to the rest of the pony community.
On which note, returning to the theme of this thread - as much as I love the G1 comics and wish everyone had access to them, I wish bronies would stop citing 'things that happened' in the comic like they know all about it. Frequently it's wrong or out of context, or an assumption that it's somehow concrete canon for everyone and can't be shifted.The examples I see most often are ones relating to Majesty (often cherry picked), and the infamous "The TE ponies were enslaved in a mine" story...probably the former to compare with Celestia and the latter because Rarity had that whole ep stuck in a mine.I also see them cite the wrong issues of comics when making these claims.It's really annoying. If you want to talk about G1 comics, at least read them first.
I just don't like the misappropriation. I saw a YT video a while back which was preaching all about the TEs down the mine as G1 canon, and it just irked me. (I also saw a YT video where they'd swiped a picture from my website as well, which I don't appreciate, but that's another matter...I try NOT to watch videos on YT now but I was trying to give the whole cross-generational thing the benefit of the doubt and not just jump to conclusions about bronies because of the bad stuff we hear about.Tales = G2 is entirely unforgivable though I would agree all versions of pony are their own canon, whatever the generation. That makes sense to me? And that also includes headcanon because in G1-3 they were just part of how MLP worked.
I think the direction MLP is going in is not going to make old school collectors or bronies happy. Tbh it almost feels like they are trying for a Paw Patrol/PJ Masks hit. Because after all those are big sellers with the target market despite the limited cast.