Should This Be The End?

[Leave a Whisper]

Tbh I think I kinda see the toyline and media as two different things. As a toy line there's always been a place for toy horses with brushable hair and as pretty much the inventor of that type of toy it would be foolish of Hasbro to cede the market to fakes and wannabes. But as a media franchise I'm not sure they can ever attain what they did in G4 and that's ok. Previous gens sold many ponies to kids which is what the goal of MLP always should be. For all the complaints about Pony Life I see, at least they are aiming it more towards their actual target audience.

There's no difference really, the media has always been the commercial to sell the toys. Much like their other famous toytoon.

And MLP has never needed the approval of toxic adult fans to be popular with kids. It has always been for kids. Anything else is just extra cash in Hasbro's bank account.

[SunPony]

I agree that the toyline and show are different...aspects.  Of course they each other, but kids (and adults) can easily enjoy one without the other.  If you don't have access to the cartoon you can still think the toys are awesome.  Or vice versa - different fandom but I loved watching transformers and ninja turtles as a kid but never had any of the toys. As an older kid we didn't even have tv but I still enjoyed the toys of Saturday morning cartoons. 

[SunbeamV]

I would hope for a few more generations, but I think at some point capitalism is going to shoot itself in the foot a bit too hard and end it for everyone. I have dozens of theories on how that might go down but they're mainly:

1. people will catch on to how poor the quality has become over the course of g4 and stop wanting to throw money away on toys purposely designed to fall apart in six months, as opposed to g1s-g3.5s which are durable and high quality enough to last a few generations of children

2. we are going to run out of plastic for this level of mass toy production and changes will HAVE to be made

3. hasbro will eventually get so up their own butts with their current mentality surrounding the toyline (core 7, mane 6, etc) that people will eventually write it off as a lost cause.

I would love to give MLP a chance to improve and go back to what it was intended to be: fun, durable plastic horses with brushable hair, for CHILDREN. but big changes are coming in the world with or without hasbro and MLP on board so it'll either have to come around, or come to an end.

I'm holding out for G5 potentially being better, but I'm not holding my breath. If this rollercoaster of late stage capitalism continues, I think I'd prefer a merciful death for MLP. Have a nice big 50th anniversary celebration line and then take it out to pasture. It's getting hard to watch everything always constantly going downhill. I grew up with G3 and it was better than this, and I know it can still go back to being that way. The kids deserve better than this. Toys that are conducive to imaginitive play are absolutely crucial for healthy psychological development in young children and they aren't getting the quality they deserve anymore. We're already seeing an epidemic of developmental issues as a result of the push towards digital everything.

tl;dr I desperately want MLP to continue but with the current circumstances, I'm not sure how long it can.

[Marshie]

  not the reaction I expected!
I thought this was talking about the show, so any sort of popularity you get with the show and it's ratings is good and keeps things going longer for that show. So I think if any more generations in the media can stand up to those ratings that G4 got, Hasbro will keep it going longer.
In terms of toyline and merch, I still stand with it's going to end soon, but would love more!!

(sidenote: please don't hate me I didn't mean to make anyone upset if I did!    )

[SunPony]

not the reaction I expected!
I thought this was talking about the show, so any sort of popularity you get with the show and it's ratings is good and keeps things going longer for that show. So I think if any more generations in the media can stand up to those ratings that G4 got, Hasbro will keep it going longer.
In terms of toyline and merch, I still stand with it's going to end soon, but would love more!!

(sidenote: please don't hate me I didn't mean to make anyone upset if I did!    )

I don't think your post was at all problematic!   It was an opinion stated without malice to anyone.   

[Taffeta]

not the reaction I expected!
I thought this was talking about the show, so any sort of popularity you get with the show and it's ratings is good and keeps things going longer for that show. So I think if any more generations in the media can stand up to those ratings that G4 got, Hasbro will keep it going longer.
In terms of toyline and merch, I still stand with it's going to end soon, but would love more!!

(sidenote: please don't hate me I didn't mean to make anyone upset if I did!    )

I think it depends on what your priorities are with pony. Most of us here will probably think toyline first, and so automatically the discussion will be about the toys first for us.

I didn't have a problem with what you said, either, but there is a tendency for people coming in from G4 to look at MLP as a show-first franchise, which it never was until 2011. (I admit as an older gen fan that is a bit annoying, but everyone has  their own perspectives).

Not all of G4's success was toxic, but it did invite toxicity because of a portion of the fanbase inspired to behave like morons because of the animated series.

If you take FIM out of G4, you're left with a very average toyline. Without FIM most of it's merch franchises wouldn't happen, and many of the 'collectables' are not aimed at the kids either. So when you strip away from FIM the stuff that was taken over by/pandering for the adult fanbase (whether in a toxic way or otherwise), it's hard to really know what kind of impact G4 had on the kids compared to previous generations.

Of course Hasbro will see success as just profit, whoever it is from. But success at any cost is not really a good thing, and if we need to go down the pandering to disturbed internet troll line for future MLP to be successful, it's maybe better to just stop.

For me the real test of MLP is whether in ten years kids who played with those ponies still remember them fondly. G1, G3 have really stood that test of time, with people coming back to their childhood favourites to collect them. G2 is more sporadic because of it's limited regional release but it still has those fans who remember growing up with it. More interestig still are the number of people who either remembered their childhood ponies by watching FIM and then gravitated back to their own childhood generation, or who were not even alive whrn those generations were out, but who came in via G4 and ended up collecting G1 or G3 as well/instead. In short, even though the lines for G1 and G3 long since ended, they still have a 'hoofprint'.

If the G4 kids do the same in ten, fifteen years time, then G4 will have been successful in the sense of 'a meaningful kid's toy'. If not, then its success will appear more like a fad driven by the internet and memes, and the popularity may have been inflated by the adult audience over the kids. I know that with G4 the turnaround for ponies being donated to charity after release date has been a matter of months. I've picked up G4 ponies that were still in the store at carboot sales and in charity shops, which makes me wonder about the disposability of the line that Hasbro aimed for by recycling the M6 over and over.

None of this changes the profit, or the success in a financial sense for Hasbro. But it all depends on what 'success is' for you. For me, if it's not a toy that a kid can remember fondly as they grow up, it's probably not worth the plastic it's made out of. It's just way too early to really know the impact of G4 yet on the real target audience.

That may be an entirely different discussion to the impact/hoofprint of FIM. FOr example, the Jem toyline has been quite obscure and ended very early, but the TV series has maintained a cult status for decades. FIM may be like that. We'll have to see.

The sad thing is that I have seen a few accounts of kids traumatised by encountering adult content online. Even as someone who's not overly interested in G4 as a franchise, I really don't want the long term memories of G4 to be tainted by the monster FIM created.

[Wardah]

Taffeta's post reminded me of something else. FIM ran for a long time. A thing that sometimes happens with long running things for kids is as they get older instead of abandoning the thing they were interested in, the bend it to "grow up" with them. I know I went through a stage where I was (badly) drawing questionable art of children's show characters (not ponies because this stage ended way before FIM). Tbh I'm positive a large number of what would be considered "bronies" in the later seasons were young people going through this stage.

[Leave a Whisper]

I would hope for a few more generations, but I think at some point capitalism is going to shoot itself in the foot a bit too hard and end it for everyone. I have dozens of theories on how that might go down but they're mainly:

1. people will catch on to how poor the quality has become over the course of g4 and stop wanting to throw money away on toys purposely designed to fall apart in six months, as opposed to g1s-g3.5s which are durable and high quality enough to last a few generations of children

2. we are going to run out of plastic for this level of mass toy production and changes will HAVE to be made

3. hasbro will eventually get so up their own butts with their current mentality surrounding the toyline (core 7, mane 6, etc) that people will eventually write it off as a lost cause.

I would love to give MLP a chance to improve and go back to what it was intended to be: fun, durable plastic horses with brushable hair, for CHILDREN. but big changes are coming in the world with or without hasbro and MLP on board so it'll either have to come around, or come to an end.

I'm holding out for G5 potentially being better, but I'm not holding my breath. If this rollercoaster of late stage capitalism continues, I think I'd prefer a merciful death for MLP. Have a nice big 50th anniversary celebration line and then take it out to pasture. It's getting hard to watch everything always constantly going downhill. I grew up with G3 and it was better than this, and I know it can still go back to being that way. The kids deserve better than this. Toys that are conducive to imaginitive play are absolutely crucial for healthy psychological development in young children and they aren't getting the quality they deserve anymore. We're already seeing an epidemic of developmental issues as a result of the push towards digital everything.

tl;dr I desperately want MLP to continue but with the current circumstances, I'm not sure how long it can.

Excellent points.

not the reaction I expected!
I thought this was talking about the show, so any sort of popularity you get with the show and it's ratings is good and keeps things going longer for that show. So I think if any more generations in the media can stand up to those ratings that G4 got, Hasbro will keep it going longer.
In terms of toyline and merch, I still stand with it's going to end soon, but would love more!!

(sidenote: please don't hate me I didn't mean to make anyone upset if I did!    )

Sorry Marshie, didn't mean to upset you. I'm just a bit fed up, with people thinking that MLP wasn't popular or good before FiM. I'm just saying that a toyline can't go on for nearly 40 years, if it wasn't making mad bank through most of its lifespan.