Will the franchise ever be how it was, again?

[ZeldaTheSwordsman]

I won't forgive Hasbro anytime soon for that awful Retrospective. That was definitely brony pandering in the worst ways, for being disgusting, spiteful and innapropriate.

Is that the media THING on which all that garbage about G1 being all about parties and stuff was said?

Or is that some other horror?

I just hate the way prior generations get reframed to make G4 look like the final polished evolution.

G4 is fine but it's it's own generation. It's not an evolved final form. This isn't pokemon.

1. It's some other horror; that "media THING" was an early-on interview with Lauren Faust, where her conception of G1 was clearly based entirely off the backcards (And a very negative perception thereof). The Retrospective is that abomination miniseries that accompanied the release of the retraux Mane Six set, that revisited the G1 cartoon... with horrifically mocking subtitle commentary. In my opinion, the people who made it and the brand rep who approved it deserve to have Fortress Maximus dropped on their heads repeatedly.
2. Yeah, that view is disgusting.

[Taffeta]

Yeah, thanks for the clarity. I do remember the retrospective now too. Made worse by the fact Hasbro is trying now to rekindle retro with all these collabs, having apparently realised retro ponies (BF) sell and them saying they wanted nothing to do with them was a bit of a fail.

That Retrospective thing was definitely a brony pandering, agreed.

I'd dispute that Faust's view was based on the backcards either, honestly....I think it was just some kind of mangled memory in her mind about how MLP was in G1. I didn't watch the brony THING because just the clips I did see offended me, but watching her interview on TTMU told me everything I wanted to know about her concept of G1 and that it didn't really bear resemblance to G1.

Besides, G4 is all parties and fashion and all the things that apparently G1 was so bad with. So apparently they're fine if they're in G4.

The irony being that all of that 'girly' nonsense is one reason I dislike FIM xD.

[SpacePinto]

Besides, G4 is all parties and fashion and all the things that apparently G1 was so bad with. So apparently they're fine if they're in G4.

The irony being that all of that 'girly' nonsense is one reason I dislike FIM xD.

I remember someone saying here that G4 is actually very girly and how it made me realize that the few episodes of FiM that I had watched actually felt much more stereotypically girly than the G1 cartoon

[ZeldaTheSwordsman]

Yeah, thanks for the clarity. I do remember the retrospective now too. Made worse by the fact Hasbro is trying now to rekindle retro with all these collabs, having apparently realised retro ponies (BF) sell and them saying they wanted nothing to do with them was a bit of a fail.

That Retrospective thing was definitely a brony pandering, agreed.

I'd dispute that Faust's view was based on the backcards either, honestly....I think it was just some kind of mangled memory in her mind about how MLP was in G1. I didn't watch the brony THING because just the clips I did see offended me, but watching her interview on TTMU told me everything I wanted to know about her concept of G1 and that it didn't really bear resemblance to G1.

Well, the backcards and the commercials are the only pieces of G1 material that I think could even remotely begin to give the impression it was nothing but sappy parties and whatnot, considering the "End of the world? Must be Tuesday" nature of the cartoon and the stuff that happened in the comics. My thought was that she gave the commercials a handful of the backcard stories a glance and then didn't dive deeper.
I recall her saying that she played with the toys growing up but didn't know any of the story stuff until later, at which point she formed said impression.

Besides, G4 is all parties and fashion and all the things that apparently G1 was so bad with. So apparently they're fine if they're in G4.

The irony being that all of that 'girly' nonsense is one reason I dislike FIM xD.

Hey now, G4 isn't all parties and fashion and w/e. It's also cheap and sometimes cringeworthy comedy used a substitute for actual writing.

To be fair, there are still adventures with villains and monsters, although Equestria isn't as constantly on the brink of disaster as Ponyland was in the G1 cartoon. But still...

[northstar3184]

Whenever I mention I'm a fan of My Little Pony I feel like I have to add a disclaimer that I'm only into g1/the 80s and 90s ponies, just so I won't be associated with br*nies 

I feel this especially true for male fans given how we're so likely to get regarded as brownies simply for being male. I grew up with G1, and have been a fan since the mid 80s. In fact I used to watch the original cartoon series in the morning before going to preschool.

[LadyMoondancer]

Well, the backcards and the commercials are the only pieces of G1 material that I think could even remotely begin to give the impression it was nothing but sappy parties and whatnot, considering the "End of the world? Must be Tuesday" nature of the cartoon and the stuff that happened in the comics.

I think it's just that MLP & Friends was a pretty obscure cartoon, combined with the fact that people don't always remember childhood experiences accurately.  Maybe she got unlucky and caught Sweet Stuff & the Treasure Hunt and then the Gizmonk episode and thought, "Oh, it's just boring stuff" and stopped watching.   (Look, Sweet Stuff was cute, but that episode was a snoozer.)  Then you get memory bleed from the commercials, which really were just little girls extolling the prettiness of their horses, and yeah . . .

Tbh my impression of "MLP & Friends" was also "probably just 'the search for the lost hairbrush'" before I started collecting and found the summaries of it on Dream Valley.  I don't know what the viewership was on the cartoon, but I think it was really, really low.  Back in the 90s it was rare to meet a ponyperson who had watched the cartoons.  Kim Shriner had them all on tape, though, (as in taped off TV back in the day) and you could buy a set of ripped VHSes from her; that was the way most MLP collectors first saw "MLP & Friends."

[Wardah]

I don't think the retrospective was aimed at bronies. Most bronies are too young to remember the G1 cartoon and most likely would not have bought any retro merch which is why it was made. I think they were more likely aiming it at people who remember MLP but might not have thought about it much since childhood and they were going for a conspiratorial, "Haha remember how cringe the 80s were? Yet despite how cringy those days were we still miss them right? We have just the thing for you then."


I still think Faust's view of MLP media was more likely shaped by G3 than G1. The early 2000s were a dark age for girl focused cartoons. It was either all either sweetness and light or a Bratzy shopping spree.

[Taffeta]

I got Jem episodes, MLP tales eps and a tape of US pony commercials in trade for UK ponies in 1998 >.>

Have since bought official DVDs of Jem and MLP though now they exist (albeit they're still US format. Grr UK).

Sweet Stuff & the Treasure Hunt was one of my 4 childhood episodes of MLP&Friends. I liked it a lot better than the Wouldbe Dragonslayer (on the same VHS) because frankly - being a kid obsessed with the princesses and dragons, growing up less than an hour from the Welsh border - I found dragonslaying offensive xD. Even though obv. he doesn't actually want to do that at all. But that one is super annoying.

I quite liked the treasure hunt as a lot of my childhood ponies were in it. But I couldn't get over the name "Sweet Stuff". I mean what even is that? It was that episode mainly that gave me the impression the cartoons weren't proper MLP because they couldn't get the names right xD.

The other 2 I had were Ice Cream Wars and Revolt of PE (my favourite! Paradise! Yay!) That latter one is definitely not parties and flowers though...aside the health and safety implications of parts of the roof falling on a pony's head while a BABY pony is in the room...taking gifts from strangers...and then rogue talking furniture that TURNED on them. I don't think they had time to have a tea party.

ICW also almost resulted in the squashing of Baby North Star and the mangling of baby ponies in an ice cream topping machine that they really shouldn't have been in (H&S again!).

Seems like the main lesson I took from the G1 eps I had was that ponyland was quite unsafe.

I'm interested that you mention the cartoons as obscure in the 1980s, LM. They certainly were here, but over there too? Or is it a state by state thing do you think in terms of transmission?

I suspect Faust was remembering the adverts which were all girly, teapartyish and stuff.

The fact she didn't remember anything from G1 but had an opinion on what she thought it was like, which then became the core of her TV show despite the fact she apparently didn't like that...is just wrongness for me on so many levels.

[Leave a Whisper]

Its been a while since I watched my boxset, but I don't recall Baby North Star nearly getting squashed and mangled. Ah to be young and unsupervised again.

[SpacePinto]

Whenever I mention I'm a fan of My Little Pony I feel like I have to add a disclaimer that I'm only into g1/the 80s and 90s ponies, just so I won't be associated with br*nies 

I feel this especially true for male fans given how we're so likely to get regarded as brownies simply for being male. I grew up with G1, and have been a fan since the mid 80s. In fact I used to watch the original cartoon series in the morning before going to preschool.

Yeah, this too. I hate bringing gender into discussion, but it's true that bronies especially ruined it for oldschool male pony fans. When you're an adult woman into MLP people will usually just assume that you liked it as a kid and it's childhood nostalgia, but when you're an adult male into MLP then people these days will just automatically associate you with the brony fandom. That's probably one of the main reasons behind my personal grudge against them.

[otocolobus_manul]

Will the franchise ever go back to being like G1? I sincerely hope not. I like very little about the G1 toyline, and nothing about the media associated with it. The current gen has its fair share of problems, but trying to default back to an earlier iteration isn't any better.

[Shadowperla]

I hate bringing gender into discussion, but it's true that bronies especially ruined it for oldschool male pony fans. When you're an adult woman into MLP people will usually just assume that you liked it as a kid and it's childhood nostalgia, but when you're an adult male into MLP then people these days will just automatically associate you with the brony fandom. That's probably one of the main reasons behind my personal grudge against them.

I feel this especially true for male fans given how we're so likely to get regarded as brownies simply for being male. I grew up with G1, and have been a fan since the mid 80s. In fact I used to watch the original cartoon series in the morning before going to preschool.

*hugs*

[LadyMoondancer]

I'm interested that you mention the cartoons as obscure in the 1980s, LM. They certainly were here, but over there too? Or is it a state by state thing do you think in terms of transmission?

Obscure across the board in the US, IMO.  It's not like Transformers, where the cartoon was the main driver of the hype.  I think most former 80s kids only know there was a MLP cartoon because EVERYTHING had a cartoon in the 80s, ha ha.

The fact she didn't remember anything from G1 but had an opinion on what she thought it was like, which then became the core of her TV show despite the fact she apparently didn't like that...is just wrongness for me on so many levels.

But she did know what G1 was like.  She knew what the toys were like.  Which was the core of the MLP experience for little girls in the US.  This may seem odd to you since the UK had such a widespread, regular output of canon (the comics).  But most American little girls did not know or care about any of the canon, they just loved brushable horse toys. (Arguably the backcards were the most widespread type of canon but let's be real, most of them got thrown away and their stories forgotten.)

I was obsessed with MLP as a little girl, it was my absolute favorite toy.  I kept the brochures that came with the ponies and from those I could name all the ponies from Year 2 to Year 4.  But if someone asked me, "And which ponies are the main characters in MLP & Friends?  What are their personalities?", I would have been completely stumped.  To me Wind Whistler was not any more significant than Skippity Doo.

[Taffeta]

I'm interested that you mention the cartoons as obscure in the 1980s, LM. They certainly were here, but over there too? Or is it a state by state thing do you think in terms of transmission?

Obscure across the board in the US, IMO.  It's not like Transformers, where the cartoon was the main driver of the hype.  I think most former 80s kids only know there was a MLP cartoon because EVERYTHING had a cartoon in the 80s, ha ha.

The fact she didn't remember anything from G1 but had an opinion on what she thought it was like, which then became the core of her TV show despite the fact she apparently didn't like that...is just wrongness for me on so many levels.

But she did know what G1 was like.  She knew what the toys were like.  Which was the core of the MLP experience for little girls in the US.  This may seem odd to you since the UK had such a widespread, regular output of canon (the comics).  But most American little girls did not know or care about any of the canon, they just loved brushable horse toys. (Arguably the backcards were the most widespread type of canon but let's be real, most of them got thrown away and their stories forgotten.)

Yeah, I think I worded that badly (it was late). What I meant was that her opinions on what the characters etc actually were were based on her childhood imagination and not on what was actually marketed with G1. But people have still interviewed her about G1, when she clearly has nothing useful to say on the 'canon' side of things (largely because as you say there wasn't necessarily one).

But you also make a good point about the difference in how this was all handled. The TV series gets a lot of attention in discussions like it was a meaningful part of defining people's pony ideas, and maybe it was...but it's interesting to think whether that impression of it as being important is something that happened after MLP was in stores and not at the time.

I wonder this especially because (aside the movie, which came to cinemas, and maybe RaMC) the MLP Tv series only aired here in 1995, which was not especially helpful from a sales point of view. And then only on cable TV. I wasn't hugely into transformers, heman, shera etc as a kid to the point where I had any/many toys, but I was seriously into MLP from about age 5. But I remember the tv shows for those other lines very well. MLP tv to me was just four eps on 2 vhs tapes (one of which I didn't have till I was about nine I think) and because they contradicted the comics I mostly dismissed them.

As for the backcards, well, some of those US card story concepts made it into the UK comic (like Shady's psychadelia) but yeah, the same is true here. If not for the fact file (and those entries are NOT all backcard stories, though the 1987 ones all are I think) then those would've been forgotten here too.

@LAW - in Ice Cream Wars - which I watched more times as a kid than was good for me and traumatised my mother making her watch it with me - there's a moment where the two ice cream idiots are about to crash into each other and Baby NS flies into the middle of them...they seem to crash into her and there's a cloud of dust....

But she's fine.

[Zapper]

What has been on my mind again due to Pony Life starting to air is how overly aware people are now of MLP fandom and it's all negative. MLP is no longer a quirky, quiet thing you carry over from childhood and occasionally get chuckled at for -- it is now overlapping with all sorts of geekdoms and has a bad reputation.

It's annoying that wherever geeky space you go to people just hate you by association now. I have never used the term "brony" or "pegasis" on me and was even accused of faking interest in MLP to attract (these specific, messed up) guys

Now some will say "who cares what people think?" but yeah, I do care about how I am perceived. So what.

I will say, tho, that a lot of movies, series and comics are heavily driven by fan demand now thanks to social media and people going ham over their fanons and ships. I don't like it, but understand there is nothing to be done about it anymore. That's the virtual world for ya, pestering people endlessly until they do what you say they should do to make you shut up