For the love of creativity And Video games

Mlp:fim didn’t prove the success and potential of female focused media for two reasons.

1. Most of the “extra” success FiM got is attributed to adult men. Regardless of how true that is (it’s not.)

2. Friendship is magic did not make my little pony successful. it already was. It is not my little ponies first generation. It is it’s forth. If the previous generations weren’t successful we wouldn’t have even made it that far.

It’s actually a great discussion on how we culturally only deem a brand “successful” once men get into it.

There’s this weird push in good chunks of the modern mlp fandom to disregard any generation of mlp prior to G4. To treat it as just a stepping stone to get to the “real mlp.”

Like outside of the g3 pony minty for some reason? There’s almost this… disgust. This palpable social balking. Like they want to see pre-g4 mlp as this horrible flop that g4 saved.

But that’s… simply not true. It’s kinda borderline revisionism.

So let’s set those facts straight shall we?

My little pony started of its life as a spin off! Of a preexisting brand called “my pretty pony.” The my little pony g1 mold as we know it originally being sold as a baby version of the much bigger pony toy.

However? Much to their surprise? The baby pony toys were much more popular with girls. Like significantly. Likely due to the size making them much more portable.

So they turned the baby mold into its own spin off! My little pony! Emphasising the toys miniature size as a marketing gimmick.

The first wave included six ponies. Snuzzle, Blossom, Minty, Blue Belle, Butterscotch and Cotten Candy!

Ponies would typically come with a brush and pretty bow on their tail. And just like that? They had a hit and a genius formula.

All they needed whenever they wanted a new pony to sell was a name, colour and to scribble up a pretty symbol.

And it worked. Little girls loved them! Adult toy collectors loved them! So it exploded!

We got movies, furniture, clothes, specials, comics, tv shows!

They introduced new types of pony! Like unicorns, Pegasi, sea ponies, twinkle eye ponies and flutter ponies! So much more!

It solidified itself as one of the most popular girls franchises in the west.

But eventually like all brands? Things started to slow down a bit. So they decided to try and freshen it up which leads in into G2. The only generation prior to g4 that was actually a flop. And ironically? Because of the traits it shares with g4.

The ponies were made thinner and their facial features were severely simplified. The twinkle eye gemstone pupils that originally defined a whole species became standard. Their symbols were mostly reduced to geometric shapes and the releases often had gimmicky functions.

Kids didn’t like them often skipping over them in shops assuming they were fakes. Or “phonies” as the mlp toy collecting spaces call knock offs. The collectors themselves actively hating them and calling them a severe downgrade. Some old collectors refuse to collect them to this day out of spite.

Tldr? Didn’t sell. Like really bad. To the degree that outside of Europe? They were only sold for 2 years. Not even long enough to make proper Pegasi molds despite having plans to.

So back the drawing board! Instead of completely reworking them? They’d just tweak the already successful formula! And that worked again!

We got g3! Their next success!

Back to chunky bodies, detailed symbols now renamed to cutie marks and far more horsey faces!

They went into overdrive. Another era of tons of extra media, movies, merch and branded doohickeys as far as the eye can see! And most importantly? A metric fuck ton of ponies. There were so many original pony designs being pumped out.

Too many. Too many for kids and collectors to keep up. Like to the degree they were complaining about not having enough money to buy every new pony at the rate they were coming out. Hasbro needed to pull their focus back a bit. They needed to not be constantly pumping out new characters.

They needed main characters.

So they came up with the core seven. Yes seven we’re still not at g4 yet, patience.

They picked seven popular g3 ponies to become mlps main characters. Pinkie pie, rainbow dash, starsong, toola-roola, cheerilee, scootaloo and Sweetie Belle. With them doing design retcons to have starsong and sweetiebelle be the only Pegasus and unicorn respectively.

This also happened to be the setup when they phased over to what is now recognised as g3.5. Which switched up the artstyle and molds.

No they weren’t always babies in g3.5. That was a cheap spin-off called newborn cuties.

I must stress to you? This is where they intended to stick for a while. They had picked the characters they were focused on. Everything had settled.

They had no intention to drastically reboot it for a good while. G3.5 might have became the actual g4 if Lauren Faust hadn’t suddenly been put in to make what’s now g4. G3.5 was selling fine.

She didn’t even come to hasbro pitching g4. That’s not what she originally wanted to make with them. She came to pitch her own original 12 episode short series for a personal passion project she’d at that point been spending a near decade working on by herself.

Milkyway and the galaxy girls. A lil project about personifications of our solar system as teen girls. But THAT is a completely different rabbit hole.

Looong story short? She wanted to make a show for it so she’d have an easier time getting toy deals for MWGG because companies didn’t want a showless girls toy brand.

Mlp g4 was not planned. It was a serendipitous thing that happened as she was pitching this.

Because as I’ve told you? Companies do not like making girl focused media. They don’t think it sells. And every successful one is marked off as an exception. Mlp not excluded from that.

So they did not want to greenlight milkyway and the galaxy girls. But they also didn’t want to turn Lauren Faust co-creator of the mother fucking powerpuff girls away. That’d be missing a massive opportunity to work with a cartoon network veteran creator.

So they impulsively asked her mid pitch if she wanted to work on her own version of my little pony instead. And luckily for them? She was open to it.

So she made her own version of it. Throwing out basically everything that had barely just settled. Because as she’s stated in interviews she really struggles to work on anything she’s not 100% behind. And she personally wasn’t fond of G3.5.

And the rest? I think you know.

I’m super sorry about this absolute ramble post I’ve stapled you ask to.

I’m just really passionate about this. Mlp has a rich history so many people ignore to pretend it started at g4. Even this is the cliff notes version. I didn’t even bring up the bird spin off!

Mlp was always a successful girls brand. It had to be to last as long as it has. You wanna know how long the average girls brand life cycle is?

1-3 years. That’s it. That’s so incredibly short. Liking girls media has a quiet agony to it due to how fast the average one cycles out.

That everytime you see a new one on the shelf a little part of you goes “I wonder if this is the last one they’ll ever make?”

Mlp’s success didn’t change anything. Because they did exactly what they always do.