Will the franchise ever be how it was, again?

[Nemesis]

How does she get the idea that Seashell and Bubbles are disabled?

Because they were sitting down, that's all there was to her theory. The TTMU ep is not the only time she brought this up; I can't recall the exact interviews (or online posts or chats?), but she did mention it before, when asked about G1.

  pfft

Did anyone else get the sense that Lauren was just sharing what she thought as a child growing up with MLP? It seemed to me like she was laughing at her own childhood self for assuming that Seashell and Bubbles were differently-abled based on the sitting pose.

Honestly, the rapid-fire editing style of TTMU probably leaves out a lot of context. There are little snippets of larger conversations, and they play up those bits for laughs or insert them into other segments. I feel like a lot is getting lost in translation, so to speak.

[Sparkle Pony]

How does she get the idea that Seashell and Bubbles are disabled?

Because they were sitting down, that's all there was to her theory. The TTMU ep is not the only time she brought this up; I can't recall the exact interviews (or online posts or chats?), but she did mention it before, when asked about G1.

I think I recall using that kind of weird logic with some of my own non-MLP toys as a child. If they were molded in a permanent sitting position I couldn't make it look like they were walking around and that bothered me, so I would come up with an explanation that they couldn't walk. Usually also give them some super-powered vehicle to cruise around in too. It just gets weird when you start presenting your bizarre childhood ideas in documentaries like TTMU.

[ZeldaTheSwordsman]

There is not enough palm to contain all the face

[Ponyfan]

I am also not a fan of Faust’s interview on The Toys That Made Us episode.  At one point she says she something that implies G1 ponies lived “in peaceful meadows and cupcake houses.”  It’s been a long time since I’ve watched TTMU so I probably don’t have the quote exactly right.  I do think that TTMU pieced the parts they used from her interview from a longer one, but I wish her comments had only been about G4/FIM instead of including her opinions on G1 ponies.

I would like to see Hasbro return to more characters and variety in the line but I think they will be still be focused on one set of characters that they will endlessly repeat.

Ponyfan

[SpacePinto]

Why not bring this up? I have noticed this since "brony" became a term that a lot of Bronies themselves pretended that every male fan that came before them must have been either gay (and a Mr. Smithers type with a room full of Malibu Stacies) or nonexistent. That all straight male fans are Bronies by default, even little boys growing up with FiM.
No wonder this backfired on all male G1-G3.5 fans. Some adopted the term out of peer pressure and said "I was a brony before it was cool" but that is another can of worms.
There is nothing wrong about liking MLP. MLPs are cute. I think the fandom was way less divided by gender in the past. Guys were fewer but I don't recall us girls trying to put a label on them or keep away from them. Anyone remember MLP fandom being anti-men? I personally don't.

Yeah, I don't remember much about Arena of that time (although I think there was something like "All Boys Pony Club", whatever that was ) but 2000s was a much better time for guys to be into MLP.

I am also not a fan of Faust’s interview on The Toys That Made Us episode.  At one point she says she something that implies G1 ponies lived “in peaceful meadows and cupcake houses.”

I swear she's doing that on purpose at this point.

[Mrs. Prospector]

Can people please stop acting like Faust knows anything about G1? It is clear she does not. She played with them, and it is sweet that she got to reboot a show based on a childhood favorite toy, but she should not be interviewed about G1 history or facts.

Kinda unrelated, but similarly, does anyone else dislike it when people act like Firefly, Surprise, ect. were just who Pinkie and Dash were in G1, and that Twilight is the same character as Twilight Sparkle? Or act like Firefly/Surprise/Twilight/Posey/AJ/Sparkler were the main 6 characters in G1? They never appeared in a single animated work together!

[Leave a Whisper]

Can people please stop acting like Faust knows anything about G1? It is clear she does not. She played with them, and it is sweet that she got to reboot a show based on a childhood favorite toy, but she should not be interviewed about G1 history or facts.

Kinda unrelated, but similarly, does anyone else dislike it when people act like Firefly, Surprise, ect. were just who Pinkie and Dash were in G1, and that Twilight is the same character as Twilight Sparkle? Or act like Firefly/Surprise/Twilight/Posey/AJ/Sparkler were the main 6 characters in G1? They never appeared in a single animated work together!

Yes it ticks me off, and arrogant types refuse to wrap their head around the fact that these are their own characters.

I see some of them as ancestors maybe, but not prototypes.

I head canon Whizzer as both G3 and G4 RD's relative. In my collection she's their aunt.

[Taffeta]

I am with Zapper on the pony and gender thing.
Aside the fact that we live in a much more gender fluid world where people's experiences of gender are less binary and more relating to their own personal sense of identity, it's always bothered me that it's fine if girls like 'boyish' things but there's immediately so much hassle for guys who like 'girl' toys. Toys are toys and you like what you like. Sorry, but I thought that as a kid and still do as an adult.

I knew a bunch of male G1 fans back in the late 90s and early 2000s. Some have moved on (one because his mother found the pony collection he was hiding and made him get rid of it ) and some are still here. And I'm glad they are. But I've seen male G1-3 fans say before that G4 has made the whole thing more difficult for them because of the association with some of the bad things some male 'bronies' have done (which is not safe to discuss on this board, so I won't). And I hate that they have to feel that way.

@DreamValleyMLP - it's a really good point about the diversity as a sales pitch and yet we ended up smothered by M6 over and over again. They're not even learning from their own learning curve ><

I'm not really comfortable with the term 'differently abled' in general, nor with the assumption that disability has to be visible and that visible something should be a criteria to judge ability/disability. It's one of those hyper politically correct terms that pretends it's inclusive and accepting but really just comes over as patronising when it gets used in a broad context like this.

Unless differently abled in a pony sense means "not able to wear shoes properly." In which case count in Medley, Firefly and Sprinkles too...

I just find Faust annoying. I can't help it. There's nothing she says that I feel contributes. I would rather FIM had been created by someone with no connection to G1, because it's become like whatever she says or thinks about G1 = how G1 was, even if that isn't her intention. Because of who she is and what she did, they use her as the reference point.

She also comes over badly in that interview as "I know about this". But she doesn't. She knows about her childhood. And that is all. Her childhood wasn't the childhood of anyone else here.

I mean, my childhood involved ponies escaping zombie overlords. Does that make that 'how G1 was'? Nope.

[ZeldaTheSwordsman]

I'll say this: Someone on FiM's writing staff obviously had more competent knowledge of G1 story material than what Faust has demonstrated in interviews.

I mean, my childhood involved ponies escaping zombie overlords. Does that make that 'how G1 was'? Nope.

Indeed.

Although, that would not exactly have been out of place in the cartoon, and possibly not out of place in the comics either.

[Zapper]

I am with Zapper on the pony and gender thing.
It's always bothered me that it's fine if girls like 'boyish' things but there's immediately so much hassle for guys who like 'girl' toys. Toys are toys and you like what you like. Sorry, but I thought that as a kid and still do as an adult.

You called my name, so here is a rant about the purpose of toys and why they are gendered

Spoiler

We have to remember that toys exist by and large because of social conditioning. Girls were given chore toys such as cleaning and cooking tools, toys that steered them towards the only acceptable female role in society: wife and mother, such as baby dolls, and later on beauty toys such as fashion dolls and play make-up to get an early grasp on how women should always go the extra mile to look attractive for their future husbands. Of course boys would be kept away from such toys. They go opposed to their gender role. And this is true even today. Nobody buys their son a make-up kit without getting weird remarks despite some of the richest make-up artists being men. Same for cooking tools. The industry is dominated by men but the cooking toy is still seen as a chore toy for girls, not a career path toy.

It was never ok for a girl to play soldiers or cars, it was deemed as odd and opposed to being "good" and girlish, girls who would express interest in boy toys where often kept a shameful secret or placed in "domestic training", lady school and all those "fun" clubs, they were even medicated and tortured. It's just that history recording is biased and female oppression was never an issue until the late 19th century, so we always kept track of what boys couldn't do and not really of what girls couldn't do. Girls not being able to do a thing was normalized and expected.

Only due to women's lib we got to a point where girls could express their interests more freely and ask for more spaces to be created for recreation specifically. Games and toys have always been a boy-centered market because boys were the ones expected to be wild and curious, girls were expected to be quiet and doing chore play, knitting, beautifying.

And then of course due to the gay panic in the 60s/70s people were suddenly watching their boys play behaviour like hawks. For girls it was more about looks. She wanted to cut her hair and not wear dresses? Possible lesbian. And neither was accepted.

Sorry but I am tired of this cliché that girls just out of the blue were allowed to have interest in boy stuff. It's due to women's rights movements we won that privilege. And considering most people in my country still assjme each girl who likes to play soccer instead of doing ballet is a secret lesbian... yeah, gendering kids interests and activiyies is alive and well. Girls are also not given Batman toys, they are given the Mattel Batgirl with oversized head and fashions

Toys will end being gendered the moment toy companies stop market research. And that won't end any time soon. What we can hope for is that more themes and shapes and gimmicks will become "gender neutral". Such as The Joker make-up heads along with warmongering MLPs

[lovesbabysquirmy]

There is not enough palm to contain all the face

that is the best way to describe the G4 drama

[Zargata]

Looking back, at just the physical ponies, I think that not much has changed overall for me. I don't mind the modeled hair, I don't mind the increase pose-ability, and I think it is great to expand the product into a larger audience.

I feel my concerns with the current line is just the quality of the product. It has always bugged me how small the ponies were, how gross the hair got later on. Believe me, I wanted to like them, but I found myself keeping them in package more and more because I was afraid to find out how bad the product actually was underneath. Has my pony buying habits changed since the launch of the line? Yes.

I feel I am far more willing to shovel the extra cash at the Basic Fun line because I am buying a product closer to the original quality of the older lines.

My hope for the future is that they increase the quality of the product, less accessories more pony.

[Leave a Whisper]

Looking back, at just the physical ponies, I think that not much has changed overall for me. I don't mind the modeled hair, I don't mind the increase pose-ability, and I think it is great to expand the product into a larger audience.

I feel my concerns with the current line is just the quality of the product. It has always bugged me how small the ponies were, how gross the hair got later on. Believe me, I wanted to like them, but I found myself keeping them in package more and more because I was afraid to find out how bad the product actually was underneath. Has my pony buying habits changed since the launch of the line? Yes.

I feel I am far more willing to shovel the extra cash at the Basic Fun line because I am buying a product closer to the original quality of the older lines.

My hope for the future is that they increase the quality of the product, less accessories more pony.

Well said.

[brightberry]

I'm really enjoying the conversation.  There is so much to say on this topic and I think you guys have said everything I wanted to.


The best franchise as I remember it was "Rescue at Midnight Castle" and "Escape from Catrina".  Backcards and the toys themselves made up the rest of my "canon".  I liked that most of my ponies came with vague personalities.  Even when they made appearances in those shows, most of the ponies only had a few lines.

I honestly thought My Little Pony went downhill when "My Little Pony and Friends" came out and when the commercials changed to "I'm a My Little Pony Mommy."   

I did still watch the show anyway because it was about ponies and I did appreciate that they went on some pretty dark adventures.  It was the animation and voices I had a problem with.


And, I loved My Little Pony because as a girl I no longer had to choose between adventurous "boy toys" and adorable "girl toys".  The ponies were both and that was amazing.  I don't know how to explain how it felt knowing that only boys had adventures and girls were their personal silly cheerleaders needing to be saved.  I didn't mind that boys had exciting roles.  I just dreamed of having my own. 


And Zapper is right.  It wasn't always acceptable for girls to like Boy's toys.  My parents were very uncomfortable that I also liked Transformers.

[banditpony]

I stumbled across this the other day, while trying to find something else. I think it's sort of relevant?

Admittedly, I haven't had time to sit down and read it. I just know it's about girl's toy based cartoons.

http://refractory.unimelb.edu.au/2014/02/05/power-girls-katia-perea/