Shortening the gender gap? More male ponies?

[Mana Minori]

Does anyone think that we need more male ponies. Sure there were some sprinkled sparingly through the previous generations- The Big Brother ponies, like Tex, Steamer, And g2 had Prince Firefly. G4 had Big Mac and Shining Armor single handedly holding up the male side of the toyline (Not counting Discord or Spike because they are not a pony). But do we need more male saturation in the toyline? (To be fair, we did get a lot of males in the blind bag g4 series. Never any brushables though) Does Hasbro think girls just want to play with girl toys? Why have we never gotten Starswirl the Bearded, Tirek, the Smooze, Thunderlane, Sunburst, King Sombra, the Moochik, Scorpan, etc.

How do you guys feel about the lack of male toys in the MLP toyline? What male would you have liked to see get their own toy?

[Leave a Whisper]

They already did. G1 and G4 has plenty of boys in toys and tv. Tales was the first to have a balanced cast. I'm unsure of the amount of males in G2, I'm sure they'll chime in.

[tailrustedtealeaf]

I like that in G2, Clever Clover was a boy but was the same pose as the rest of the other ponies. I think that was neater than making seperate poses. The Clydesdale angle works for G1, but I still prefer the other poses and would have rather seen boys integrated in.
The boys in G4 do not translate that well, and I think the coloration for them was largely boring. I think the large physical differences is not my thing.
I'd love to see a return to the toy-focused sort of franchise where kids can pick personalities and traits for the ponies, so not so much making more boys, but just providing interesting designs as a jumping off point for personalities to be made up.

[Mana Minori]

They already did. G1 and G4 has plenty of boys in toys and tv. Tales was the first to have a balanced cast. I'm unsure of the amount of males in G2, I'm sure they'll chime in.

i know Tales had many males, and there were Daddy ponies too. Wigwam, Steamer. I know I’m forgetting a lot, but it always feels like there are far more female ponies than males in pretty much every gen. Might be my perception, or it might be true. I have no idea.

[Pokeyonekenobie]

I really like the boys we've gotten.  I have to admit that the G1 boys are my favorites, but I really liked that G4 gave us both a unicorn (Shining Armor) and a pegasus (Soarin) male brushable toy molds along with Big Mac's earth pony mold. I stocked up on these when they were available so I could do some customs. I would have liked to see Shining Armor released on his own instead of in sets, though. Then I could have gotten more than one or two extras for the customs I wanted to do. G4 also had Sandbar, which was kind of a teenage mold, though he was very similar to the female molds, but I suppose that was their solution to having zero male "baby" ponies.  G1 had the baby brothers line as well as the Little Brothers/Lucky mold.  I would have liked to see brushables of Snips and Snails molds.  Those could have been really fun to customize.  The Cute Mark Crew has had Big Mac, Shining Armor, Sandbar, and a Pegasus Guard pony. Even though those molds are basically identical to the girl molds, I still like them and would love to see more characters incorporated into that line in general. I never got into G2 but I know that G3 didn't have any assigned male ponies, though I know several people that assigned certain ponies to be male to go along with all the girls.   As far as the Tales ponies go, they never did make toys of Ace, Teddy, or Lancer, just the girls.

I think Hasbro, like many toy companies, forgets that girls don't necessarily only play with "girl" toys.  I have seen more boys reject female characters as toys than girls who reject male characters.  For example, when I worked at McDonald's, we had a set of toys where the girl toy was Barbie and the boy toy was Transformers Beast Wars.  One week the boy toy was a female transformer that turned into a spider creature and the girl toy was Ken.  There were a lot of boys that brought back their "girl toy" to trade for a Ken doll because they didn't want the "girl."  They would rather play with a boy barbie than a girl transformer.  I don't recall any girls bringing back Ken to get a spider creature, even though it was pink.

Growing up, I used to play Ninja Turtles and GI Joe with my brothers.  There was many a time that they would ride my Ponies into battle against the likes of the Shredder and He-Man's Skeletor.  Yes, we had mashups back then.  I think that the stigma of "boys can't play with girls toys" is changing, which is why there are so many male fans of MLP now, where there really weren't any that you heard about before G4.  I'm not saying they didn't exist, I'm just saying it wasn't out in the open.  Part of me wonders if the toy companies haven't quite grasped that and are hesitant to merge the separate toy groups into one for fear of backlash or the line failing because of too broad of a target group.

[Carrehz]

Well, there's quite a lot of boy ponies already (even more if you count Nirvanas), but I want more too! I dunno why Hasbro made so many pretty blind bag boys in G4 and never turned any of them into brushables, there were some really nice designs there...

And I want more fembot Transformers, too. :U

[LadyMoondancer]

IMO a MLP show or toyline aimed should have primarily girl characters--not because boys are bad or whatever, but because there's SO MUCH social pressure for a woman's life to revolve around men and/or child-rearing.

MLP skews VERY young, a lot of the girls into it are four years old to six years old.  Let them, at least for a few years, have media that shows girls doing things that don't involve romance.  The easiest way to avoid it is to make sure most of the male characters are way older than the main cast, a different species (like April and the TMNT--although there was STILL some flirting in the original gen, not sure about other gens), or a "little brother" type who's way younger.  Otherwise you are going to have writers going straight for the low-hanging hetero romance tropes.

Also some little girls really DO only want to play with girl-identifying(?) toys and strongly reject toys of boys.  I saw this in action when I sold MLPs at toys shows (before Covid, ha ha.)  I would point out Soarin' or Big Mac (because I thought the little girls would want a non-Mane-Six) and just . . . nope.  "She doesn't want anything related to boys right now," one of the moms told me apologetically.

I don't think the Big Brothers sold that great or they would have used the molds more.  Even the HQG1C creators have said their Clydesdale ponies (which have gorgeous designs) don't sell as well as the other HQG1Cs.

[banditpony]

I think there were a bunch of boys in the G1 era. And yes, it still heavily was girls.

big brothers, the daddys and baby brothers from the family sets, mountain boys, baby brothers, some of the peak-a-boos.. some of the newborn twins, and a couple of the pony friends (Oakley, Edgar...)

So.. If I were a kid, I'd just use my imagination if I wanted "more boys". Which is what I did.. so I had to double check the wiki before I said anything.

Ok, side note. Do all ponies have a gender that hasbro determined? I mean in general I feel like it was if it didn't say boy, it was a girl...

My childhood headcanon was that Sky Rocket was a boy. The backcard doesn't have a pronoun, but I know that there could be other literature (maybe a backcard) that makes Sky Rocket a girl.
http://mylittlewiki.org/w/images/a/a2/Sparkle-sky-rocket-backcard.jpg

[Taffeta]

G1-wise the UK I think had the most male adult ponies available. I raise this because not all boys were sold in all areas in G1, which probably changes the story depending where you are. We had fewer baby boys but more adult boys overall I think than for example the US.

So let's see, G1 boys:
Mountain Boys (6)
Adventure Boy/Big Brother (9)
Loving Family (3 adult, 3 baby)
Family Friends (3 adult)
Playtime Baby Brothers (6)
Peekaboo Baby (2)
Mail Order: 1 (Tux & Tails)
Other: Sportstime (adult) Baby Schoolbag (baby) (Also in the UK Sniffles of Sniffles & Snookums). We can probably assume Edgar, Oakly like Banditpony said as well xD.

Did I forget anyone?

But that's just in English speaking locales. Italy gendered a lot more G1 ponies as male, for example.

Because G1 has no overriding canon, either, there's nothing to stop kids designating the gender of ponies in G1. Ergo I don't think it's too much o an issue overall bearing in mind what LM etc said about gender.

@TRTL - Sportstime, the Family Friends fathers and Baby Schoolbag (plus Sniffles) all used "female" poses. So Clever Clover was by no means unique to do so, it happened in G1.

From G2 there's maybe more of an argument for too few boys though.

G3 just had none. Though again with G2 and G3 there isn't that overriding canon to gender the ponies beyond the packaging. And I'm not sure all packaging offers a gender for G3, I think some just list details. But I do remember hasbro basically nixing the idea of boys or something in G3...I know there were a lot of people then and probably still who wanted them for G3.

I have quite a few G4 blind bag males, I think it's a shame more blind bag ponies, period, didn't get a proper brushable. I have Soarin and Shining Armour as brushables, if you can call SA a 'brushable'. More like a troll hair thing? But this is just a symptom of the repetition of G4 overall. A lot of characters, period, didn't get past blind bag or the background animation into stores as toys. I personally would have enjoyed G4 more if it had done that, regardless of whether they were girls or guys. Or even ungendered and left to kids to choose.

So in summary:
G1 - probably right amount, if you go globally
G2 - Probably could do with a bit more variety since they're mostly variations on one theme
G3 - more boys please.
G4 - more non m6 ponies generally needed, lack of boys part of a bigger problem of restricted brushable character pool.

[banditpony]

We can probably assume Edgar, Oakly like Banditpony said as well xD.

Why probably?
http://mylittlewiki.org/wiki/File:EdgarBackcard.jpg
http://mylittlewiki.org/wiki/File:OaklyBackcard.jpg

Did I forget anyone?

Noodles
http://mylittlewiki.org/wiki/File:DoodlesNoodlesBackcard.jpg

Out of curiousity, what is baby blue ribbon?

[Leave a Whisper]

I really like the boys we've gotten.  I have to admit that the G1 boys are my favorites, but I really liked that G4 gave us both a unicorn (Shining Armor) and a pegasus (Soarin) male brushable toy molds along with Big Mac's earth pony mold. I stocked up on these when they were available so I could do some customs. I would have liked to see Shining Armor released on his own instead of in sets, though. Then I could have gotten more than one or two extras for the customs I wanted to do. G4 also had Sandbar, which was kind of a teenage mold, though he was very similar to the female molds, but I suppose that was their solution to having zero male "baby" ponies.  G1 had the baby brothers line as well as the Little Brothers/Lucky mold.  I would have liked to see brushables of Snips and Snails molds.  Those could have been really fun to customize.  The Cute Mark Crew has had Big Mac, Shining Armor, Sandbar, and a Pegasus Guard pony. Even though those molds are basically identical to the girl molds, I still like them and would love to see more characters incorporated into that line in general. I never got into G2 but I know that G3 didn't have any assigned male ponies, though I know several people that assigned certain ponies to be male to go along with all the girls.   As far as the Tales ponies go, they never did make toys of Ace, Teddy, or Lancer, just the girls.

I think Hasbro, like many toy companies, forgets that girls don't necessarily only play with "girl" toys.  I have seen more boys reject female characters as toys than girls who reject male characters.  For example, when I worked at McDonald's, we had a set of toys where the girl toy was Barbie and the boy toy was Transformers Beast Wars.  One week the boy toy was a female transformer that turned into a spider creature and the girl toy was Ken.  There were a lot of boys that brought back their "girl toy" to trade for a Ken doll because they didn't want the "girl."  They would rather play with a boy barbie than a girl transformer.  I don't recall any girls bringing back Ken to get a spider creature, even though it was pink.

Growing up, I used to play Ninja Turtles and GI Joe with my brothers.  There was many a time that they would ride my Ponies into battle against the likes of the Shredder and He-Man's Skeletor.  Yes, we had mashups back then.  I think that the stigma of "boys can't play with girls toys" is changing, which is why there are so many male fans of MLP now, where there really weren't any that you heard about before G4.  I'm not saying they didn't exist, I'm just saying it wasn't out in the open.  Part of me wonders if the toy companies haven't quite grasped that and are hesitant to merge the separate toy groups into one for fear of backlash or the line failing because of too broad of a target group.

Hence why I said in Toys and TV. Plus the UK/Euro Family Ponies did feature in the Tales cartoon.

[tailrustedtealeaf]

@TRTL - Sportstime, the Family Friends fathers and Baby Schoolbag (plus Sniffles) all used "female" poses. So Clever Clover was by no means unique to do so, it happened in G1.

Oh, I completely forgot, thank you for the reminder! The Gingerbread pose always reads as masculine to me, so it makes sense to see boys made in that pose. I think it's the face for me.

[Taffeta]

We can probably assume Edgar, Oakly like Banditpony said as well xD.

Why probably?
http://mylittlewiki.org/wiki/File:EdgarBackcard.jpg
http://mylittlewiki.org/wiki/File:OaklyBackcard.jpg

Unconscious British understatement. Sorry. I wasn't meaning it was up for debate. More the opposite, as indicated by the emoji.

Did I forget anyone?

Noodles
http://mylittlewiki.org/wiki/File:DoodlesNoodlesBackcard.jpg

Out of curiousity, what is baby blue ribbon?

Ah yeah, I forgot Noodles.
Baby Blue Ribbon? As in the pony that came with the game? On pose alone girl, I think, but...?

And you reminded me of another I forgot. Two actually. Lucky and Clipper.

I tended to go with the comic in terms of pony gender (like Sniffles was definitely a boy in the comic. I do have their UK box but I can't remember what it says offhand).

ETA - squinting at the scan, it doesn't specify I don't think.


Sky Rocket was a girl in the comic, so she was a girl to me (a childhood pony for me too). I don't think her story differs in the UK, I think the only difference on those cards is the colours of the name clouds- pink vs yellow. But I cut up her card and lost all the pieces, so...yeah Well done me.

 But that pose was used for male characters too, like Sportstime. So it kinda underscores the possibility a kid can gender their pony however they like, at least prior to G4 (I am not sure how easy that would be to do with the show canon being so important).

There are also early stories here that gender Applejak and Bubbles as male (and maybe one other, but I can't remember). Then this got edited in later editions to she.

[SunPony]

I'd like to see more g4 boy pony toys!  For various reasons 

[banditpony]

We can probably assume Edgar, Oakly like Banditpony said as well xD.

Why probably?
http://mylittlewiki.org/wiki/File:EdgarBackcard.jpg
http://mylittlewiki.org/wiki/File:OaklyBackcard.jpg

Unconscious British understatement. Sorry. I wasn't meaning it was up for debate. More the opposite, as indicated by the emoji.

Ah yeah, I forgot Noodles.
Baby Blue Ribbon? As in the pony that came with the game? On pose alone girl, I think, but...?

And you reminded me of another I forgot. Two actually. Lucky and Clipper.

Ohh, ok

Yeah, ok funny. In my head I was thinking about Lucky, but I could only think of the blue ribbon pony. (because you know sometimes "blue = boy" ...)

I'm not too good remembering ponies anymore...