Lost MLP and Friends Song "Hurry" has been found!!!

[Carrehz]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVKgvubKLJs

As the title says!!! The animation for the song "Hurry", which was edited out of "The Glass Princess (Part 4)" at some point after its first airing, has finally been found!

There's talk in the comments about getting a proper rip (the video linked above is a camrip), hopefully that'll happen soon ^_^ But even a camera recording of it is fantastic. I honestly never thought we'd see this animation again, I thought for sure if it hadn't turned up by now then it probably never would... omg ;A; I can't believe it.

Now we have the missing footage... any new theories why it was cut? The main suggestions seem to be either because the Bushwoolies run with scissors at one point, or some idiot heard "what we need is speed" and freaked out. I'm somewhat sceptical of it being the former since that bit only lasts a very brief amount of time... I could definitely see it being a problem, sure, but I'd have thought it'd be easier to just replace that one bit of footage rather than cut the entire sequence. :s The speed thing seems a bit more plausible to me, god knows I've heard some insane complaints along those lines regarding cartoons, esp. back in the day... What do you guys think?

[tailrustedtealeaf]

Oh wow, how exciting!! The animation is so cute.

[Taffeta]

I'm not familiar enough with the Glass Princess to understand the context of the song in the wider episode.

It might just have been cut to speed up the episode. I have Jem scripts which mention song repeats that ultimately were cut out, and there are a lot of theories that happened in Island of Deception with Love's Not Easy, the only 2nd year song that appeared on a doll cassette, since Stormer actually says 'Love's not easy for me' right before what seems to be an awkward break. That was Sunbow too, so that's possible.

I'm not sure whether the speed reference would have mattered, it would depend when the meaning of that word had added connitations.

If you want to look for a reason in the song and the theme, though, Molly and Megan sitting and watching the ponies and bushwoolies doing all the spinning might have jarred some nerves.

[Carrehz]

I don't think it was cut for time, because IIRC the rest of the ep (after the cut occurs) is actually slowed down to compensate for the time they shaved off the ep by cutting the song.

(Plus if it was a time edit, I'd have expected other songs to be cut out for reruns too... and before anyone says, yes I know about the songs cut from the specials :p but they were always removed from the series' presentation of those eps, it's not quite the same thing)

Hey, for that matter, do we even know for sure when the cut occurred? I'm pretty sure I remember hearing that this song never aired on the Disney Channel when they ran the show, but I don't know if that's when it was edited or not.

[Lady Frostbite]

Maybe it's the fact they're cutting up fabric and didn't want kids copying that by cutting up clothing? I know that's done in a FiM episode and is actually treated as a OH NO NO NO!! moment by Rarity, who needed the fabric in question for something important.

Apart from the scissors that's the only thing I can think of

[Taffeta]

I went and read the wiki description of the episode so now I have a better idea of what they are making and why. The 'need for speed' song lyric might have been a reason but it seems more likely they'd just redub the word or change the lyric?

It may have been harder when the ep had already aired but not impossible. Again, thinking of Jem, there are some master tapes with occasional different lyrics from those used in the show. Same animation company, same time period, so not out of the realms of possibility.

And we saw sections of the TMNT theme redubbed for the UK market to remove 'ninja' from the titles and the song, so yeah, I don't see they'd cut a whole song because of one lyric.

The FIM aspect is probably irrelevant since people look at different things - the ep is the one with cut pony hair, and that's not an issue, so it probably isn't relating to cutting cloth or ripping up fabric. I actually remember both my mother and my gran making a quilt from patches of fabric when I was a kid - around the same time - and so I don't think that would've excited any issues. I also don't see any running with scissors.

I still come back to Molly and Megan as overseers of the weaving. But I don't know if that is just my 2022 eyes looking at it, rather than what would've been reasonable in 1987.

[starscout]

NO WAY, I was thinking about this just a couple days ago haha. I honestly didn't think it would ever be found. I'm glad the uploader's sister stumbled across it.

[Carrehz]

I don't see why the Megan and Molly thing would be a problem? :o

The scissors thing is difficult to see, it's only on screen for like two seconds. I don't think that could be it cause it's such a quick bit that they could've just edited the sequence to excise that shot (slow down the previous shot enough to cover the "offending" footage, cut it out and repeat some footage from elsewhere in the sequence, etc).

See I'd have thought they'd redub the line too if that WAS the problem... but then idk when the song was cut. If it was edited for the Disney Channel reruns, then they might not have had the means to dub over a line by that point - maybe didn't have any VAs on hand and didn't want to bother rerecording, or didn't have time to, etc... I'm not sure. I can totally see someone freaking out over that lyric (flashing back to that one country that edited Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers because "it sounds too similar to morphine!" - pretty similar to the Ninja/Hero Turtles thing, come to think of it) but the context of it is clear enough that I have a hard time imagining them bothering to edit it. The Turtles thing was being edited at the time they were making the show... If "Hurry" was cut a few years after production had wrapped up, it could be that they just didn't feel it was worth putting the effort in to do a good edit and deemed it easier to just nix the whole sequence. But then again, if it WAS edited before the Disney Channel reruns, then who knows. :/

Lady Frostbite, I could see that being a problem. But yeah like Taffeta pointed out, if that was an issue then you'd think the cut hair thing would be too... IDK. It's such a weird edit that I feel like it HAS to be the result of some random complaint about it being "imitable" or somesuch.

I remembered reading a while ago about an odd complaint the GI Joe guys got, I went to find the interview again and apparently that show had an odd cut too - The whole interview is here (it's a pretty interesting read, and I say that as someone who's never seen even one second of GI Joe ) but this is the relevant part:

DT: In Steve Gerber's story "There's No Place Like Springfield - Part 2," a scene with a little synthoid girl holding a gun was included in the original airing of the episode, however, the scene never appeared again in repeat airings. Do you know if the scene was cut due angry letters and phone calls from parents or did Hasbro freak out?

BD: I don’t know. There were various anti-violence groups at that time who complained about the silliest things (one guy considered Donald Duck shaking his fist at his nephews to be as violent as us sinking a battleship!), so Hasbro may have trimmed it based on either real or imagined complaints.

(He goes on to talk about a complaint they had from some dad who misconstrued some brotherly affection in one ep as being a homosexual scene and freaked out about it, because, you know, The 80s, but it doesn't seem like that got cut... But yeah that was the quote I was first looking for, it's a good example of the sort of stupid complaints cartoon peeps had to deal with at the time)

So it looks like MLP wasn't the only Sunbow show to be hit with random inexplicable censorship, then. :s But it's still so weird. I always assumed there was some "potentially unsafe" action shown in the animation - I remember seeing the "running with scissors" theory thrown out there years ago, just speculating off what we knew about the sequence - but having seen it... that's such a brief bit (I'd have missed it entirely if I wasn't specifically looking out for anything along those lines.. even then I had to rewatch it a few times before I spotted it) that it hardly seems worth throwing out a WHOLE SONG over.

[Snapdragon]

OMG, it's crazy that we're still finding lost media for MLP after all these years!!

[SpacePinto]

Today was a good day I was pretty sure this song was lost forever, one of those things where you can technically hope that maybe by some weird chance it will turn out one day that someone just happened to have a copy somewhere, but you shouldn't really hold your breath - and yet here it is! It's kind of weird seeing new footage from the cartoon after all these years, when you are already used to knowing every scene and don't really expect to ever feel the joy of seeing anything new with ponies. Not to mention it's a pretty good scene actually, they all look so cute working on the fabric together!

[Taffeta]

There are much worse things in Jem animation than are in that clip in terms of imitable behaviours. I know the Misfits were ultimately pulled because of their being a bit too violent for some wimpy parents to stomach, and replaced with much worse psychological villains in the Stingers. But there's quite a lot in Jem that would have been cut from the show if that was the mindset. MLP is perhaps aimed a little younger, so I guess it could be a factor. I'm just not seeing it.

If Jetta can swing her saxophone and basically attack people with it in a nightclub (and I have the script for Talent Search and that's an add/change, not a removal, thanks to Hasbro changing Jetta's instrument) then I can't see any imitable behaviour in that which might have caused a problem.

If you guys don't see the Megan and Molly problem I might be overthinking it. But I think it could have been seen as culturally insensitive. I did a bit more digging around this as it was kind of a vague recollection on my part from teaching etc...but there exist 19th century accounts of weaving at the loom in the US being done in good part by slaves, in not so great conditions. Megan and Molly are white, and they're overseers who don't participate. I could see a civil rights group complaining about the symbolism of the scene if that were to be a cultural hotspot. Megan and Molly not joining in and leaving all the labour to the ponies and the bushwoolies could have rubbed nerves.

If so, I can see why they would pull the whole sequence and never air it again.

I do remember Christy Marx discussing how she wanted Jetta to be black, and there being a massive pushback on making any of the Misfits from ethnic minority groups because of the issue of portraying them as villains. So it didn't happen and she was made white British instead. If they were apprehensive about something like that around the same time, I could see that something like this might trigger people's sensitivities.

[Leave a Whisper]

Considering that they had a drug episode in JatH, and that
TF's Galvatron got shoved in a planetary mental institution and nearly lobotomized by some brain destroying tentacle things, I sincerely doubt this was cut for running with scissors, or because Megan and Molly were watching them spin. Not everyone knows how to sew using those things. It was probably cut for time or something.

[Carrehz]

Ohhh I guess I can see where you're coming from on the Megan/Molly thing. Yeah, that does seem like the sort of non-issue people would freak out about, esp. given the Jetta thing you mentioned - I think especially at the time, cartoon-makers were very conscious of anything that could be construed as racist, etc - trying not to get themselves into hot water.

I honestly don't see anything imitable in "Hurry" either, but thing is that standards and practices can make some weird calls. Some of the edits + S&P notes I've seen are just bonkers - like - this is more modern, but there's an ep of Regular Show where the guys are throwing pizza pouches at each other (long story - but nothing offensive - just silly cartoon humour)... but international airings edited it so one of them was holding a plate. ?????? And that's just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to bizarre edits on THAT show.

Point is, censors can see issues where literally no one else would. And if it was censored due to a complaint, then that's a whole other thing... it could be that someone whinged about this, but not the Jem stuff you mentioned. idk. I do know that censors are ridiculously inconsistent. I feel like it HAS to be a case of someone, somewhere, taking offense to something totally mundane in the scene, cause nothing else really makes sense :/

edit: LaW ninja'd me - the Jem drug ep I don't think they'd hold to the same standards, there was a lot of anti-drug stuff in the 80s. since it's a "moral" sort of ep they might have viewed it differently.

[Leave a Whisper]

Ohhh I guess I can see where you're coming from on the Megan/Molly thing. Yeah, that does seem like the sort of non-issue people would freak out about, esp. given the Jetta thing you mentioned - I think especially at the time, cartoon-makers were very conscious of anything that could be construed as racist, etc - trying not to get themselves into hot water.

I honestly don't see anything imitable in "Hurry" either, but thing is that standards and practices can make some weird calls. Some of the edits + S&P notes I've seen are just bonkers - like - this is more modern, but there's an ep of Regular Show where the guys are throwing pizza pouches at each other (long story - but nothing offensive - just silly cartoon humour)... but international airings edited it so one of them was holding a plate. ?????? And that's just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to bizarre edits on THAT show.

Point is, censors can see issues where literally no one else would. And if it was censored due to a complaint, then that's a whole other thing... it could be that someone whinged about this, but not the Jem stuff you mentioned. idk. I do know that censors are ridiculously inconsistent. I feel like it HAS to be a case of someone, somewhere, taking offense to something totally mundane in the scene, cause nothing else really makes sense :/

edit: LaW ninja'd me - the Jem drug ep I don't think they'd hold to the same standards, there was a lot of anti-drug stuff in the 80s. since it's a "moral" sort of ep they might have viewed it differently.

You'll never see me coming. *Sneaks away with smoke bomb*

[Taffeta]

Alone Again is a weird episode, and people flap about it a lot. There seems to have been less flapping about the scene in one of the other later episodes where Minx pretty much threatens to jump from the top of a building...

Alone Again was a story doing its job, which was to promote drugs are bad messaging. I think there are plenty of far bigger questions the series raises. It's figuring out what might have been controversial at the time, vs what is controversial with hindsight

I just wonder what they were navigating around for MLP, and whether those same considerations only really tipped into the ponyverse when it involved the human characters.

And I'm only guessing about the symbolism in that clip, but if someone did complain about it being inappropriate, it would explain the full cut.