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

[Carrehz]

My experience has been that censors tend to be pickier about stuff involving humans - I guess cause it feels more "real" or something. So I could definitely see the presence of the girls being what raised eyebrows.

[Taffeta]

Right. I also just remembered that Jetta's release was for some reason delayed. She doesn't appear on the y2 Misfit boxes, only Clash does. She has a box design of her own. I don't know if it might be just to do with the change of instrument that's indicated between the Talent Search script and the real doll, or whether it was on account of changes made because of concerns about representation and such.

It's probably unconnected but it is all 1987 and may indicate a bigger atmosphere of concern about community sensitivities/complaints.

[kestral_kitsune]

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

did we ever find the missing rainbow ponies special? i remember seeing a clip where megan rides in on skydancer that was on a recorded escape from katrina vid i no longer have. editted to fix the right name in

[starscout]

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

did we ever find the missing rainbow ponies special? i remember seeing a clip where megan rides in on sundance that was on a recorded escape from katrina vid i no longer have.

Honestly, I don't believe the Rainbow Ponies special ever existed. Most of the "footage" from it was recolored from RaMC and were more likely to me just used in commercials, similar to the TaF one, that have been lost to time.
EDIT: The RP footage is indeed from a Spanish commercial.

[Carrehz]

I'm 100% sure the "Rainbow pony special" never existed. Here's the English version of the animation (I never noticed the first bit is recycled animation from RaMC!).

(Gah, I could've SWORN someone had uploaded the "Rainbow pony special" ad to YouTube too, but I can't find it now. :/)

I believe what happened is that they had plans to make a second special, but hadn't actually gotten any work done on it - just the vague idea of "we'll make a second one, assuming the first one does well enough to justify it, and we're confident enough it'll be a hit that we're going to put an ad for it at the end" - and the Rainbow Pony animation was handy and looked good, so why not get some more use out of that. Slap a generic narration over it and bam, you've got an ad that makes sure kids know to keep an eye out for the next pony adventure. Catrina does feature some of the Rainbow ponies (Skydancer, Starflower) so it seems likely they knew they wanted the second special to feature the Rainbows. (incidentally, that's my main theory on the mystery rainbow pony in RaMC too - they wanted some rep for that set but hadn't finalized any designs at that point)

Then years passed and the internet happened, and people had VHS copies of RaMC with this ad, but no copies of the Rainbow pony ad (or none that were easily accessible, I suppose), and I can see how the rumour that "it's from a lost special!!" got started. But I really don't believe there is such a special.

(I think that weird Katrina poster with Danny and winged Spike didn't help, either - but I think that's just early concept art that, for w/e reason, they decided to use instead of anything more... related to the special. I mean it IS cool art, I can see why they wouldn't want it to go to waste! The "lost media wiki" does have some guff about "oh look the UK video box has a RAINBOW pony on it, CLEARLY this means---" but that's ignoring the fact that.... a lot of the VHS boxes had random art on them. there's one that has the Big Brothers hanging out with the TAF ponies. they didn't really care what they put on the VHS boxes as long as it was a pony )

[Taffeta]

Oh boy. If you pay attention to anything on the UK vhs boxes you're going to be finding a lot of 'never released' material. xD.

I agree that the Rainbow Ponies animation was never actually a special. Even if there was a half thought to do it, by the time they made Catrina, time had moved on and they needed to advertise the ponies on shelves. They went with a different concept and that was that.

[Carrehz]

Heck, not even just VHS boxes. Half the DVDs feature G2 art Even Shout Factory's release uses art of ponies that were never in the cartoons (Starshine, Peachy, June Rose). Accuracy has never been a huge concern for anyone when releasing the show on home video

I think it was less that they'd toyed with the idea of special focusing on the rainbow ponies, specifically, and more that they wanted to push the rainbow ponies at that particular moment.

Then again, it could've just been that that animation was the most polished advert animation they had available to use (the earlier ads' animation was in a noticeably different style, it makes sense they'd want to use something more recent/in-line with RaMC) and there's no real meaning behind its usage. Either way, I don't think they put that much thought into that ad.

edit: Incidentally, this convo made me realize that I'd forgotten to transfer my copy of the RaMC rainbow pony ad to DVD. :p So, thanks for the inadvertant reminder guys! Hehe.

[kestral_kitsune]

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

did we ever find the missing rainbow ponies special? i remember seeing a clip where megan rides in on skydancer that was on a recorded escape from katrina vid i no longer have.

Honestly, I don't believe the Rainbow Ponies special ever existed. Most of the "footage" from it was recolored from RaMC and were more likely to me just used in commercials, similar to the TaF one, that have been lost to time.
EDIT: The RP footage is indeed from a Spanish commercial.

aahhh been so long ago i could've sworn there was a special or episode but it was canceled for 'being too gay' if memory serves me right



editting to add: ... thats not the footage i'm talking about?  my memory is worse than i thought DX

[Ponyfan]

I thought the animation for "Hurry" was lost forever.     I'm so surprised that someone had a copy of it all this time and we finally see the missing segment.

I didn't see anything offensive with the clip, but I know that some people will complain about anything.  When the computer animated Barbie movies came out, there were complaints about a couple of scenes where Barbie had to dig through rocks or snow and Ken just stands there letting her do it instead of offering to help her.


I know the first 5 episodes of Jem had a lot of versions.  The story is the same but some of the episodes had added scenes based on if you saw the Super Saturday/Sunday version the 5 part 20 minute episodes version or the Truly Outrageous (all 5 episodes together as a movie) version.  I remember when Rhino released the DVD sets of Jem everyone got used to those and then complained when Shout Factory released the entire series on DVD (Rhino stopped their releases before the finished the series) because Shout Factory's set didn't completely match up with Rhino's release.  The first episode "The Beginning" was different in the two versions.  Shout Factory responded that they used the master's Hasbro gave them and that at the time they said there were no other masters other than the super short Saturday/Sunday versions.


I suspect that a lot of the Sunbow animation wasn't taken care of after the shows ended and that's why "Hurry" was lost for so long and why we've never seen the full versions of RAMC and Catrina again since the VHS releases.


Ponyfan

[starscout]

(incidentally, that's my main theory on the mystery rainbow pony in RaMC too - they wanted some rep for that set but hadn't finalized any designs at that point)

I believe that may have actually been First Born, the porcelain pony. They have the same blunt hairstyle, and the mystery pony has a symbol similar to the logo on FB's back. I think they also have the same eye and bow colors.

[Shadowperla]

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.

And now I wondered if Celestial ponies were never made due to there name.

[Taffeta]

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.

And now I wondered if Celestial ponies were never made due to there name.

Their real projected name was 'fancy swirl' ponies, iirc. I am not sure what might have offended about that. Although if you mean Celestial, that only refers to the stars and sky; it's an astronomical descriptor. I think they were just axed because it was too hard for Hasbro to get the effect they wanted, and ultimately they evolved into the Colorswirls.

We also know Hasbro are not afraid to change pony names late in production, so there's no logic in pulling a whole set over the name. They'd just rename it.

@Kestrel-Kitsune, that sounds like a brony conspiracy to me.

On First Born, I can't remember why but I remember a whole discussion about this where people mostly decided that the animated pony probably wasn't linked to the ceramic? Maybe timing? I wish I recall why, but it's been a while.

The lack of care post production might account for lost scenes - again the problem exists that we don't have a lot of witness testimony from the time relating to MLP production compared to Jem. I believe that TO was meant as a kind of a pilot special, and when it worked out, they took it and cut it into five bits and added stuff to pad it out. There are definitely some animation jumps in scenes that originally existed. The one that springs to mind is when in TO Roxy apparently sheds a tear and Pizzazz nudges her. In the episode equivalent that's recoloured to be Roxy nudging Stormer, which seems more in character. It may have been an animation error that was fixed. But they were still working out who the characters were at that time as well.

I can't remember which release of the Jem DVDs I have, but as I said before, there are also a lot of changes even from script to episode, and with the multipart MLP eps, there are sometimes cut or changed scenes to make that division make sense. It strikes me there might have been multiple versions of many sunbow episodes and it could just be a case of which versions survive to now.

[Snapdragon]

I finally got a chance to sit down and watch the clip, and OMG, nostalgia bomb! I haven't heard that song since I was a kid! (But when I read the title, I was able to hum the first few notes, so I guess I had that memory packed away somewhere!)

If the reason for cutting it wasn't "let's try to fit in another few commercials", I do wonder if the safety reason for cutting it might have been the sewing machine. As a child I got the terrifying 'your grandma sewed straight through her thumb' lecture about the sewing machine, so I always regarded it with a great deal of trepidation, and even today I'm a nervous sewer. In contrast, we have the Bushwoolies all but throwing the fabric through the machine, singing about how quickly (and carelessly) they are sewing... I could see that as being a cause for concern in terms of imitable play. I would wager that more households in the 80s had sewing machines than today, and it could be a very real concern that a kid could hurt themselves trying to mimic the scene. That would be my best guess anyway!

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.

I never knew that about the Misfits, that is such a shame! But it explains so much! I never really understood why they replaced the ICONIC Misfits, except maybe that hair bands were becoming really popular, and they wanted a male character with huge hair to capitalize on that! Or perhaps that Hasbro needed to make more dolls and freshen up Jem's storylines. But wow, that definitely makes more sense; Pizzazz is a maniac! But that's why she's so great!

[Taffeta]

Without wanting to go off on a side-tangent about Jem, I felt like the Misfits were fleshed out such that you could understand why they ended up in the position they did. I remember watching the whole series for the first time. After watching TO, I thought the Misfits (minus Stormer) were horrible. After watching the whole series, I was more of a Misfit fan than a Hologram one. Their behaviour was just easier to understand.

I could say a lot more about this, but it would really divert the thread from its topic and I don't want to do that.

I'm not sure about the sewing machine as a risk factor. We're dealing with a show that had some pretty intense stuff, like mentioned before. Would they stop and remove that but not remove the baby newborns on leash imagery, or the song where the first tooth babies are ranting about them from the same episode...? Unhealthy attitude towards younger siblings being enabled? Possibly!

[Shadowperla]

I am not sure what might have offended about that. Although if you mean Celestial, that only refers to the stars and sky; it's an astronomical descriptor.

It was a, not-slur but later slur?, for Chinese people (we got trouble of this in Dr.Who with Celestial Toymaker, who got renamed).

@Kestrel-Kitsune, that sounds like a brony conspiracy to me

More like them people who gush how baby pony nuzzles are gay

I'm not sure about the sewing machine as a risk factor. We're dealing with a show that had some pretty intense stuff, like mentioned before. Would they stop and remove that but not remove the baby newborns on leash imagery, or the song where the first tooth babies are ranting about them from the same episode...?

It is more realistic issue?