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I like the idea that Ember got her cutie mark rump marking/symbol by looking through a telescope and finding a star that hadn't been charted before.
How did baby Ember get her cutie mark?By sacrificing the souls of the other ponies...muwhahahah..ORMy original Ember was the blue mail order ember and was I decided a boy. He never got a symbol, he was sort of the class clown and he and baby moondancer were boyfriend and girlfriend.ORIt was left open for you do decide because at one time toys actually gave you the ability to dream up your own ideas about each pony, instead of strictly following along someone elses ideas. Even back in the day the cartoon for G1 didn't play a huge part in how I thought about my ponies. It was an accessory, take it or leave it, my ponies were nothing like the ones portrayed on the cartoon.Which was technically what MLP was created to do. It was the idea of a child being able to have their own ponies. Even the backstories invented didn't fully flesh out the personality of ponies. Although since the UK sort of had the comics it might have been a tad different...but I can only speak from my own experience with MLP back in the 80's.I can still remember getting my first ponies and that it was my mom who bought me Moondancer and Firefly. Then we went to visit my cousin the same day and she had also purchased Moondancer!! It was so funny, we bought looked over the backcard and all the other ponies and were totally IN. We both wanted to collect all the ponies pictured there. I was 11-12 and that would have made my cousin probably 7-8 years old. We were sorta bff/sisters instead of cousins.We also both took super good care of our ponies, we did play with them a little but we were never really abusive. Although I do remember that one time I'd gotten to the point of having almost 50ish ponies and for some weird reason I could not leave any of them at home while we went on our week long vacation to Florida...YES, all my ponies came with me. So it was me and 50 ponies piled up in the backseat. (haha)I remember it was around my birthday the year I started collecting ponies and my dad taking me out of town and we went to a store called Woolworths where to my surprise they still had the show stable. And I really wanted it and dad got it for me for my birthday. I didn't have many ponies then, maybe a handful but I thought it was so awesome I'd have a house for my ponies. I still remember how it felt sitting in the truck on the way home with the box in my lap.It really wasn't about a particular 'character' in G1. I felt like the ponies were one big family and I, as the caretaker needed to collect all the ponies and bring them home. So, even at that age it was a 'collection'. But in that I was always seeing the ponies how I wanted, not how hasbro said the ponies had to be, which again, I never felt like Hasbro originally was pushing for the ponies to be set in stone as far as their personality goes, it was supposed to be about play and imagination and your own ideas.Back to the symbols on each ponies. Clearly back at the origins, Hasbro wasn't going for some kind of coming of age, your life MISSION if you choose to accept it and too bad if you don't as you'r stuck with a purple cupcake on your flaks. It was more a way to identify the pony and make it 'different' from the other ponies. Which to a certain extend does give the ponies a vague personality. But was Moondancer a space pony, was she a magical wizard unicorn? Or was it just a way to reflect the name and color sceme back then?I mean ya know, newborns already had their symbols/name in package. (haha) Maybe G1 ponies were just so far advanced of their G4 decendants they knew out of the Hasbro womb who they were and what they're future would be. But I have a difficult time imagining the newborn twins as adults. What exactly is a job profile for Bunkie?or Tattles...maybe she's a FBI or CIA informant...
And Shaz, that's a super cool idea! I love the thought of ponies having cultural traditions surrounding tattoos. G2, with its tendency to have ponies switch names, symbols, hair colors or even species (as in the case of Silver Swirl/Star Swirl), is especially fascinating to think about. What are the rites behind ponies changing symbols or names, or dyeing their hair, or somehow changing species? Is it natural or deliberate? Are they like frogs and have dramatically different appearances based on what stage of their life they're in? This has turned into a speculative thread for pre-G4 symbols and I love it.
Also, what exactly fosters imaginative play varies by child. As a kid, I preferred universes with pre-existing rules and lore (if a toylike didn't have any I'd incorporate some from some kind of media) so I could focus on imagining how different characters would fit in the established world. I've always been more interested in characterization than worldbuilding, haha. I still got in endless trouble at school for my "overactive imagination" AKA undiagnosed ADHD, but my imagination ran more towards characters and still does.
this thread is like reading a book that is falling apart
All the lands and different characters in the G1 cartoon and you call it "lackluster"? Geez...
Bunkie builds bunkers, of course. And Tattles the spy is incredible.Meanwhile, what do Sticky and Sniffles do?
It's my personal opinion, but yes I think the world in the G1 MLP cartoon is very boring and doesn't inspire much imagination. For most of the part you just have a bunch of ponies (all of which can be switched out to advertise new toys) living in a big pink building, which of course is a toy you can buy. Their closest community is super small and basically 100% dictated by which toys Hasbro are selling. They travel to different places and meet various creatures, but everything feels invented by the writers as they went along, not like it's part of a larger, coherent world. Most of the time the creatures they meet don't have any meaningful connection to the ponies (and once the episode is over, they're instantly forgotten). It's ok to like this style of storytelling of course, but I much prefer FIM's world where you have so many ponies and creatures living in different locations. Everything feels more coherent and connected, while still always having lots of room for expansion.