CNN: ‘My Little Pony’ Goes Geek

The good news is that MightyFine is having another My Little Pony T-shirt contest and the prizes are huge! Lots of money to be won and the pot gets bigger the more people enter so start designing!

Now for the bad news… it seems like this contest is for Bronies and Friendship is Magic fans only. Both of the judges are from Brony and Friendship is Magic fan sites. Couple this with the fact that they still haven’t added adult sizes for their Retro My Little Pony shirt and this doesn’t mean great things for vintage MLP fans. While they don’t specifically prohibit submitting vintage MLP designs, how can they possibly win if the judges are only fans of the new stuff?

I love the new show as much as anypony but I’m a little mystified why they’re excluding the original fandom in such a big way like this. As someone who loves ponies new and old, I want to celebrate all of ponydom, not just the new stuff. I know this is a case of the squeaky wheel getting the grease because Friendship is Magic is getting a ton of press but I’m starting to get a little annoyed that it’s become an either/or thing. If MightyFine isn’t willing to make retro merchandise, can’t they at least sell that license to a company that is? It feels like squatting.

You can be a fan of both Friendship is Magic and the original MLP content. Or you can just be a fan of Friendship is Magic or just a fan of the vintage stuff. There is no “right” or “wrong” way to be an MLP fan. One isn’t better than the other, it’s just different. The fans “taking sides” is annoying enough but to have the companies holding the license to make merchandise taking sides seems like a new level of slight.

I don’t want this to deter anyone from submitting designs to the contest because I still want there to be awesome FiM designs out there and I want one of you to win that nice big prize. I just wish people weren’t trying to make this a fandom Civil War.

What do you guys think?

But I really wanted to call your attention to it because of this awesome Where’s Waldo of hard to find MLP toys from throughout the generations they used.

(Click it to make it bigger to study in greater detail.) There’s even a fairy tale bird and some pony friends in there! Not to mention ponies from all three generations.

What other cool pony finds can you spot in this crazy collage?

• Could My Little Pony Be Raising the Next Generation of Geeks? Feature from GeekDad in Wired
• Welcome to Pony Brook University: Article about bronies gathering together to watch the premiere of FiM and doing super cool chalk drawings of the characters around campus
• To Love and Tolerate From a high school paper
• Meet ‘bronies’ — grown men who are fans of My Little Pony Feature in The Oregonian on the increasing interest in the show

The Invasion of the Lesbian My Little Ponies

This article is very “I don’t like your tone buddy!” but it’s worth a read anyway. You can read the original article here and then there is a follow up with a few corrections here.

The coverage of all this FiM/Brony movement is bothering me in was I can’t explain and this article is a part of it. I can’t quite put my finger on what about it is rubbing me the wrong way. Is it me or are you also feeling a weird vibe from the media on this?

The Hub has embraced Bronies in it’s marketing, and hopefully other executives are taking note. They key to a successful children’s program isn’t churning out increasingly stereotyped shows in which girls pretend to be princesses and frolic with woodland creatures while boys fight and play with cars (or fight with robots that turn into cars). Men aren’t allergic to everything aimed at women, and with interesting characters and plots (and a dose of ’80s nostalgia) people of all ages, and genders, are likely to become fans.

If you weren’t at the convention, I compiled all the info from that presentation (plus some more) into an eBook called Beyond Amazon, eBay, and Etsy: free and low cost alternative marketplaces, shopping cart solutions and e-commerce storefronts. It is only 99 cents so if you missed the talk or just didn’t feel like taking notes while you were there, it’s an inexpensive way to catch up.

Happy pony selling!

Check out their overview here and thank you to EcommerceBytes for the shout out!

However, a recent niche pop-cultural fascination represents a potential evolution in this schism: the unexpected unisex popularity of the children’s television show My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, specifically the cult of “bronies,” or adult male Pony fanboys. It’s hard to think of something that screams “for young girls” more than the big-eyed, Lisa Frank-colored ponies that fascinated young girls in the ’80s, yet adult male fans are embracing this revival as a paragon of the “neo-sincerity” movement. Friendship Is Magic and bronies certainly inspire confusion and even mockery from the general population, but their genesis in and acceptance by stereotypically judgmental online forums like 4Chan suggests a potential for “girly” entertainment to be folded into the same warm embrace “nerd culture” has enjoyed in recent years.

Or maybe it’s just an unrelated anomaly, the ouroborus of online irony circling back on itself. Frankly, I’m not sure what it means yet, especially since My Little Pony has its own nostalgic baggage for women today. But I hope it points toward an increasingly tolerant view of sincere, enthusiastic, irony-free enjoyment of youth culture and nostalgia, and that the teenage Justin Bieber fans of today will be able to squeal along to his 2025 comeback concert, free of shame or scorn.

Please give your answer in the high brow style of the article Really? “the ouroborus of online irony circling back on itself”? Sheesh!

If the offer button is there, go ahead and offer the price you are willing to pay for the item. If the seller likes it, boom!, the item is yours and you just named your price. If the seller doesn’t like the price you offer they will either reject or counter-offer. You, then, have the option to either counter-offer to their counter-offer or just make another offer. You only get a total of three offers on any single item so just make sure you remember how many you’ve done. Once you run out of offers, your only option is to buy the item at full price.

It’s remarkably like haggling at a flea market or garage sale.

Some quick tips for Best Offer success:

• The closer the offer you make is to the listed price, the better your chances are of it being accepted. You’ll have a better chance with an offer of $7 on a $10 item then if you make an offer of $0.01.
• If you are making offers on multiple items from the same seller, mention that in your offer note. Sellers will often take a slightly lower offer if they know they’ll be saving on shipping and fees with a multi-purchase sale.
• Don’t be a jerk. This is a big one. Speaking as someone who sells, if I get a snippy note that says something like, “WTF is wrong with you, this item isn’t worth that. You should take my $1 and be happy with it!” I’m not going to look very favoriably on their offer, even if it’s one I would have normally accepted. You’d turn on the charm when haggling in person, the same applies online.

Want to test out your new eBay negotitating skills? Priced Nostalgia *just* happens to have over 115 Best Offer enabled My Little Pony items up on eBay right now with more coming through out the summer. Check them out here to start making offers.

*= or, like me, they are just tremendously lazy and just price everything at the same price because it’s faster

The Official My Little Pony Convention is this July 8th and 9th in Pawtucket, Rhode Island at the Hasbro Headquarters.

First let me tackle a few misconceptions

• There will be men there. There have always been men at the MLP convention (I’ve been to several of them over the years). Some are MLP fans (yes, they existed well before FiM, they’ve just been quiet) and some are our husbands, boyfriends, etc. But, in the past, it was always about 30 to 40% men. I’m sure it will be more this year. Traditionally there are men only contests (with sweet prizes) so I imagine that will be the case this year as well.
• There will be love for Friendship is Magic AND the older stuff. I don’t know a single MLP collector that isn’t also a fan of the new show. Just keep in mind that there are many more years of older stuff so it’s inevitable that there will be more of that stuff around for sale. (Just FYI, to collectors Friendship is Magic toys are still part of the third generation (G3) so don’t panic if you don’t see the words G4 bandied about outside of brony circles. There will still be the current toys there.)
• The collectors and the Bronies don’t hate each other! This is not a thing. Most of us consider ourselves Bronies/Fillies. Just because we started earlier doesn’t mean we’re all in a blood feud. We’re grown people who love magic ponies. We’re not exactly violent. But seriously, everyone is welcome. Love and rainbows, y’all.

I’m not part of the organization of the fair so I can’t speak to how geared towards FiM the majority of the events are but, this year, the fair is two days. If you’re a fan of MLP I highly recommend checking out the first day (ie, the day of the Hasbro tour) even if you don’t think the second day (which is more of the collecting related events) is for you. Speaking as a fan of toys in general, getting to see how they make the toys (and last time they let us see how they make other things such as Transformers and a few other brands) and the headquarters (which is something to see) is really a once in a lifetime chance. When the convention was last in RI a few years ago, we also got to see some prototype toys that were coming to market soon and the process behind how they created them, previews of the new animated specials that were coming out (keep in mind that this was pre-FiM so I wouldn’t be surprised if they had clips of next season to show this time), and they unveiled some new stuff coming to market.

Let me put it this way: My husband doesn’t care one bit about MLP and even he thought the Hasbro tour was one of the coolest things he’s ever seen. So, in short, if you are into toys at all but especially if you are into My Little Pony I don’t think you can go wrong with trying to get into that.

There will probably not really be a chance to suggest new products. You can try, I suppose, but that’s not really the vibe.

As for the second day, it’s is going to mostly be like this: People will be chilling at their booths and chatting ponies. Almost everyone will have stuff for sale. Yes, much of it will be old but some will be new. Events will be going on and, at least based on prior years, some people will pay attention to them and others will ignore them completely and keep on doing their thing. Think of it like a brony meet-up where money occasionally changes hands or random things happen in the background. It will be very chill and laid back. If you wanted to just sit in a corner and ignore us all I suppose you could do that though it would be kind of sad.

Don’t make me remind you that friendship is, after all, magic!

If this doesn’t sound like your scene, well then it’s probably not for you. However, I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out that one of the big things going on will be trading which can sometimes be a great way to snag something you really want (say a hard to find blind bag item) by trading another item for it instead of paying cash. It’s a magical world where ponies are currency so if your little sister has some older G3s she doesn’t want anymore and you could, say, trade them for the Friendship is Magic McDonalds ponies without spending a dime, wouldn’t that be sweet?

Anyway, in short, I hope this gives you some idea of what to expect and lets you make an educated decision about whether its for you. I for one am totally behind on FiM and am cram watching them all so I can be caught up by the convention and chat with you all. Stupid day jobs!

If anyone reading this has been to an MLP convention in the past and wants to chime in, please do. Or if you have questions post them below and I’ll see if I can get the Fair organizer (who is named Summer Hayes and is a lovely lady) to answer them.

My Little Masculine Pony – Opinion by Kara Tsukashima

The plot reminds me of a My Little Pony movie I saw as a kid. No, seriously — there’s this stuff called the sleg (not sure on spelling) that people drink to gain power and instead become evil. In the My Little Pony movie, it was called the Smoo and it did pretty much the same thing only power is pretty and evil is more like selfish.

Smoo? When did anyone at any point drink anything and become evil? For that matter, when did anyone become powerful when they got pretty? I mean, a little splash of the Smooze fell on Gusty and Bright Eyes but that just really made them a little grumpy (and made Gusty sound even more like Bart Simpson than usual ) but it certainly didn’t give them a look upgrade. It was more like pessimism than anything approaching evil.

I’d actually kinda like to see the version of this movie that exists in his imagination, it sounds a bit more hardcore than the real thing. Instead of droplets of the stuff making you slightly grumpy, we would have had ponies chugging the stuff frat boy style and becoming evil and (still not clear on this part) more beautiful…? I don’t know.

But I kinda want to play that video game he was reviewing because I love Lucy Lawless. And I suppose the fact that he remembers even a distorted version of the movie is to be commended.

I don’t know, guys, should we give him partial credit?

It is a problem that Hasbro, which makes My Little Pony is acutely aware of. Spokesman Donna Tobin explained that the company had given the toy a child-friendly makeover.

‘We want our girls to stay little longer!” she said. ‘Look at My Little Pony. She’s cute. She’s pretty. She’s pink. She may have a different look, but she has always stood for friendship. We’re not about lipstick or shaving.’

OK, we need to talk about this. First of all, obviously, My Little Pony used to be about make-up like lipstick, there was official MLP make-up in G1 as well as the Sweet Kisses ponies with color change lipstick. G2 was so about dress-up it was the entire theme of their PC game. So, yes, MLP was given a child friendly make-over with G3 which a lot of collectors who grew up with the original MLP took issue with.

Except what photo did they use for this article?

Child-friendly makeover: My Little Pony is aimed
at children aged three to six

But anyway, how do you feel about MLP going for a younger audience? Do you think the MLP’s of the first two generations scared you for life because they had make-up?

Generations of any toy refer to the years of production, not the design. Yes, FiM ponies look different but that is actually completely irrelevant to what generation they are in. A new generation starts when the toy company ceases production for a significant amount of time and then relaunches the brand. This applies to all collectibles, it’s not something specific to MLP. The fact that most G3 ponies are still in production (such as So-Soft, Newborn Cuties, Ponyville, etc) should have been the big hint that we didn’t switch generations. Until Hasbro completely ceases production on all MLP items for a few years and then completely reboots the entire line, we are still on the third generation, especially since most G3 items are still in production. G3 and G4 can’t overlap, that’s impossible. A logo change and molded hair does not a new generation make.

Let me put it this way. Let’s say, like whoever wrote that note on Wikipedia thinks, the generation changed every time the style of the ponies changed. Well, then wouldn’t a new generation have started with each new set with a new look, such as Flutter Ponies or Sea Ponies? By that logic, wouldn’t Petite Ponies, Dream Beauties, So Soft Newborns and Ponyville each been their own private generation? We’d be on generation 25 or something if we just allocated generations with that loose logic. Hasbro has only rebooted the brand twice which means we are still on the third generation.

I’m not a Wikipedia editor so I can’t fix the note that causing all this confusion but I’m hoping this post will make the people who are spreading this incorrect info take pause and realize that what they are saying doesn’t make sense. I’m also hoping that informed collectors will start speaking up and clearing up this confusion before it gets out of hand.

Let’s spread sense.

In this post about iTunes apps, Vern Seward makes a case for one side:

Last week I wrote about three free first episodes of animated shows available on iTunes. I mentioned that My Little Pony seemed to be patterned after Japanese anime, and that the show wasn’t my cup of tea. Some of you suggested that I missed the mark on that show, that it contained wit that adult males would appreciate, and that the animation was top notch.

Well, I watched it again. My opinion hasn’t changed. My Little Pony is not for me.

The problem is that while My Little Pony is not anime, it’s close enough in style that it turns me off. In general, I’m not a fan of Asian anime. I can’t take the big shimmery eyes, the cutesy sidekicks, the exaggerated expressions, the randomly place poignant pauses, or the odd fascination with large breasted schoolgirls dressed in extremely short plaid skirts. I just can’t get into it, and I’ve tried.

If it isn’t anime, would you at least say it is anime-like in style? If you’re a fan of anime, would you say that you are more or less likely to like MLP: FiM?

Anyway, where were we?

• A tribute to My Little Pony will be unlockable in upcoming iPhone game Minotron: 2112  http://j.mp/h3Cb2e
• Article on how vintage toys (like My Little Pony) are a good investment http://j.mp/ib2RPc
• Time names My Little Pony one of the top 100 greatest toys of all time (as they should!) http://j.mp/fSg8di
• Print your own MLP Valentine’s Day Cards from the official My Little Pony website http://j.mp/4HIxc5
• “Brony”: (noun) A bro, who watches My Little Pony
• Pressing Question: Which DC characters would best wield the Elements of Harmony from My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic?http://j.mp/ekJhc0
• See the My Little Pony McDonalds commercial in high qualityhttp://is.gd/ZmsTDg
• Have you found MLP toys in your area? Is your local McDonalds already sold out? Post here so others know where to look! http://is.gd/n1ufyD
• My Little Pony comes in #8 on @screenjunkies list of the 10 Best 80s Cartoons http://is.gd/TawJOR
• Have ponies to sell? Looking to buy? Feel free to post sales or want ads on our Facebook page!

Incidentally, if you see (or write) a good MLP related post, let me know either on Facebook or Twitter so I can share it!

This is one of those things that causes some confusion amongst pony fans. Sparkle Ponies, Baby Sparkle Ponies, Glow ‘n Show Ponies and Divine Shine Ponies are sometimes referred to as being one of a kind (that’s OOAK for the cool kids). While obviously these were factory made like all My Little Pony items, what collectors really mean by this is that no two are exactly alike.

See, all four of the types of ponies listed above are filled with something (glow in the dark chips in the case of Glow ‘n Show, sparkles in the other three cases). Literally, this means the ponies were lined with a sticky substance and the “filling” was tossed inside.

But gravity added the element of surprise and randomness and no two ponies could possible be filled in the exact same pattern as it all depended on how the filling fell. Meaning, the one you have in your hands, while technically the same as the one I have in mine, will have a totally unique pattern of sparkles (or glow in the dark chips).

To illustrate this further, you sometimes find ponies like this:

This is Baby North Star of the Baby Sparkle Ponies. She’s cute and she knows it. But what isn’t immediately clear from this picture is that her sparkles are really uneven.

See? There are hardly any sparkles on her from this angle. But when we go back to the top of her head…

There is a massive clump of sparkles in her one ear and a disproportionate number of sparkles on her face in general. (Her forelock is also trimmed but that’s besides the point.)

Does this make her more or less collectible? Well, that depends on how unusual the spread is. A pony like this still looks mostly like herself. However, if, say, she had almost no sparkles on her body and they were all clumped into one foot, I could see that decreasing her value. Even though that’s how the factory made her, just the fact that a pony looks off can decrease its value.

However, that said, there are always those collectors that specialize in the unusual and a one of a kind pony like that may be just what they are after! There is, very literally, no other pony just like this.

Have you ever gotten a particularly unusual spread of sparkles or glow chips in a pony? We’d love to see the photo!

How do you feel about uneven fillings? Would it be enough to make you not want the pony?

• What would the cast of My Little Pony Friendship is
  Magic look like as humans? http://is.gd/kuIJK
• Hasbro Recognized as One of FORTUNE’s 2011 ‘Best Companies to Work For’ http://is.gd/YtlWOu
• This is the first negative review I’ve seen about My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. Do you agree? http://is.gd/3roCuu
• That’s a thing, right? Calling Friendship is Magic FiM for short?
• Husband: “There’s no such thing as a My Little Bunny.” Me: “Oh hell yeah there is!” Got out Summer’s book to show himhttp://is.gd/YSjTi7
• rt Steves_Minty Remember Pony peeps: The MLP Fair HAS BEEN MOVED to July 8th and 9th! Hasbro LITERALLY FORGOT the original dates were also the SDCC!
• Exciting “only sorta related to My Little Pony” news from Summer Hayes http://bit.ly/emloQF
• Any pony fans that are also knitters? How awesome is this vintage My Little Pony sweater pattern from Wendy? http://bit.ly/haBgMm
• Despite what every entertainment site is saying, this isn’t the My Little Pony theme song that Ryan Gosling is singing http://is.gd/k9SiW
• RT @pricednostalgia: The 1985 classic, Rainbow Brite and the Star Stealer, is on Netflix instant watch! http://is.gd/jURwW

The database itself was the hard work of Summer Hayes and was originally going to be part of her G2 guide. While it is extensive, it isn’t 100% complete which is where you come in.

We need your help to get this database completed and to fill in the blanks. If you have mint in box or mint on card G2 ponies, please take a minute to look at the packaging to see if it gives the pony’s name in any other languages. If you have some of the ones we are missing, please email either Summer or myself so that we can add it to the database.

Thank you kindly for your help in advance!