I’ve always thought it was interesting to see which ponies some people made male or female and others didn’t. How about you? Did you flip the genders on any of your ponies?

Related articles

• In honor of the My Little Pony wedding, which of your ponies were married to each other?

Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Your first guess was Powerpuff Girls, wasn’t it? But Lauren Faust, original executive producer of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, actually won an Emmy in 2008 for her work as head writer on Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends.

Out of Powerpuff Girls, Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends and My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, which show is your favorite?

It’s taking them a while, but it looks like Hasbro is finally getting these DVD releases right. What did you think of the wedding special? Will you be picking it up on DVD?

Have a picture of your ponies? Want to show them off? You can upload them directly in the comments below by using the attach button or just link to them if they’re already on the web somewhere.

Here me out. I’ve been a pony fan for a long time. I have never seen this absolute creative frenzy of custom figures and plush like we’re seeing now. It’s like the fact that the toys look so different from the television show kicked the art form of pony customization onto a whole new level and everyone has kicked it up a notch. The market for customs has exploded because fans want things that look like what they see on their TV (or YouTube) and they just aren’t finding that in stores. The really exciting part about this is that… while it may have started with FiM, it’s effected the custom world as a whole and given us some amazing creations that have nothing whatsoever to do with the new show. It’s like we’re in an MLP renaissance for artists whose chosen medium is pony and I would just hate to lose that.

Obviously, Hasbro can never make enough toys from the FiM show or make the characters look enough like they do on the show to kill the custom market completely (especially since it’s thrived for years before it occurred to anyone that friendship might indeed be magic) but I do wonder what effect these new toys will have on this burgeoning custom boom.

What do you think?

The following guest post is a bit longer than our usual articles but it’s well worth the read. A big thank you to Rando for this great guest column! -Hillary

Image via Wikipedia

The 1980’s – From Muscles and Missiles to Pink Ponies

I can’t be sure how many of you remember the 80’s. Some would say I have no claim to the 80’s – but I was born in 1981. That means I was alive for most of it, but those memories of mine are of childhood. Still, this means I experienced the decade much differently than any teenager or adult and this is where the story begins.

Let’s get the gender issue out of the way. I’m a male, I have always been a male, and I have never felt otherwise. Growing up, I played with Hot Wheels, G.I. Joes and He-Man. I helped my dad hammer nails and build things. I played in the mud, broke things to find out how they worked, caught bugs, and probably touched more gross things than I ever should have. Now, none of these acts should particularly be called boy/male activity, but for all intents and purposes of this article, the general public considers them so – which means, in turn, my 80’s childhood was typically ‘boy’.

Enter our neighbors: three girls around the same age as myself (3, 4, and 6). These girls had a castle with rising pink towers capped with baby blue turrets. It had pastel colored horses with colorful manes. I these ponies from television. Just like Thundercats, G.I. Joe or He-man – these little ponies had their own slice of 30 minutes on television, and yes… I watched it.

Why not? I had nothing better to do and our TV didn’t have a remote, so while getting my fix of the Joes or He-man, My Little Pony would be somewhere in the mix.

Re-watching these episodes now, they are a bit (very) crude today (G1 Pony fans are screaming at me for that one) – and well, let’s face it, the show was typically 80’s. The little ponies saved Dream Valley from an assortment of typical 80s baddies, and in the end it all worked out with some messages of friendship thrown in.

Maybe it was the fact that they had a show, or maybe it was that these bright colored ponies were more punk rock then I could ever imagine (not that I knew anything about subculture movements age of four) but whenever I went to the neighbor’s house, we played My Little Ponies in that big old dream castle of theirs.

Photo copyright Summer Hayes

No – I didn’t comb their hair, or braid their tails, and I can’t to this day tell you why they intrigued me so much back then. Perhaps it was because they smelled like fruit loops and showed me a hint into the world of girls. A strange world I never had at my house (I had a brother and my friends were boys) and a world so different than the guns, swords, muscles and missiles I’d grown so accustomed to playing with at my house, that it was mind opening, and slightly bizarre.

Granted, I also knew these were indeed ‘girl’ toys. If I had asked for them for my birthday, my progressive parents probably would have got me one (probably hoping ‘it was just a phase’), but regardless, at that age it never crossed my mind to ask.

As I grew up, mostly obsessed with video games, girls, and the outdoors – My Little Pony faded into the back of my mind for quite some time. Ten or eleven years later – they came back into my life and never went away.

Into the 90’s

Photo copyright Summer Hayes

When I was 16, I was pretty typical. At the same time, I also had become quite comfortable with who I was. Straight, white and 16 – but I wasn’t afraid to step into those styles and worlds of what might be called ‘girly’. I wore hot pink Chuck Taylor’s (back then I had to buy size 13 white Converse and dye them hot pink because the brand was neither popular or relevant to offer such a shoe), and in the fashion of what MIGHT be called improv – I started a skirt day my senior year of high school where the guys (and girls joining them) jokingly all wore skirts to school (you’d be surprised how many guys joined in for this, and surprisingly the tradition carried over to the next year after I had graduated). I even let my girlfriend at the time paint my nails hot pink. Let’s say I wasn’t afraid of messing with gender roles at an age where everyone is completely awkward and confused about them. Perhaps it was my height (I was 6’3, still am) and broad shoulders that gave me justification to wear hot pink in this sort of world (Oh, I got it plenty bad with some kids) but what it came down to was that I wasn’t afraid to like what I liked and to be who I wanted to be.

However, I had also gotten back into 80s culture. I had uncovered a heap load of my old He-Man stuff, and so I began the get back into the decade of excess. Back then, we didn’t have youtube as a source to watch our memories play across the internet – but we did have ebay.

And I bought plenty of 80s crap.

The real part of the story begins in 1997. My girlfriend at the time had a ton of My Little Ponies from her childhood. Bringing them out of the storage box brought back a lot of memories. It was part of the 1980’s I hadn’t touched since I was a kid – not because I didn’t want to, but because I didn’t think of it. Somewhere in the dark dusty recesses of my mind, ponies were prancing around – but now they finally trotted back into the light again.

As I filtered through the bin of ponies, I noticed the sheer amount of accessories. These ponies had different sets and types, they had stories and names. It was a collectors dream – and I also liked the color pink.

Then I went on ebay. Together, with my High School sweetheart we bought a small lot of G1 ponies for a fairly low price. Of course a few G2 and non-Hasbro ponies made their way into that mix, but it was still pretty neat.

We spent hours cleaning up that batch of ponies. We were in High School. We grew up in a place where winter lasted 8 months. There wasn’t a lot to do (though that would be my excuse, I would have done it anyways). And so the collecting took root.

via MyLittleWiki

G3 and the Early 2000s

As life moved on, after the eventually break-up, I did get away with some ponies for my own. As I went off to college, these ponies followed, being displayed with my other 80’s collectables. Then I noticed something. Visiting friends always mentioned the ponies.

Mind you, this was a time when the only people who remembered MLP were those children of the 80s and their parents who raised them. The My Little Pony fan base was obscure and exclusively on the internet across a few websites and a dozen message boards. It had been ages since anyone had glimpsed the television show unless they went out of their way to find it.

So for these guests, friends and family entering my apartment, seeing these old little ponies the first time since their childhood, had turned those few ponies into a major talking point.

And I won’t lie – the girls I invited over liked them the most. I’m not going to say I was sleazy about it, I mean, I didn’t walk a woman into my apartment with the intention of showing them ‘my ponies’ – but being a 6’3 guy with a huge head of hair and a loud personality, well, the brightly colored ponies probably did help break the ice a little.

Regardless of what they did for my love life, I loved those ponies for what they were.

Then I received a gift one day. A G3 pony. A friend had seen my old G1 ponies and had picked up a Kimono G3 pony as sort of a joke. I was pretty impressed – here Hasbro had forsaken that awkward G2 design and gone back to a nearly original pony design, streamlined and nicely executed all around.

I was 19 now, almost 20. The G3 ponies rolled in as gifts, I began taking trips to Target and Toys R’ Us. I can’t say why I went out to summate my collection. Perhaps that, even though I was comfortable with my gender, my sex, and all angles of male-hood, these ponies brought me somewhere safe, different, colorful, bright, and let me tap into a side of life that was just a tad girlish.

I need to emphasize this now: the My Little Pony fan base was not huge. There was no such thing as a Brony, there was no witty/cool/hip show to go along with it. There were no onslaughts of internet memes. I was the only male I ever found (in real life AND on the internet) who collected My Little Ponies. I seemed to be alone.

So did it all happen as a retreat away from the standard societal male gender roles I was forced to instill in many places in life? Maybe My Little Ponies were just cute and colorful (doesn’t our life need cute, bright, and colorful?), but throughout my late teens and early 20s, from my first years in college to my first years in the real career world, those ponies followed, and all my friends knew about them. Over the years I would receive MLP birthday cards, toys, and everything else in the mail or on Christmas from even the most distant friends. Was it okay for a 19 year old guy to like these? I never thought otherwise.

As the G3 line grew (and so did my collection – both of G1s from ebay and G3s) friends came and went in my life. Some thought me strange, some thought me ironically hip – but everyone still enjoyed the fact that when they stepped into this guy’s apartment (now 21) he had a fairly large collection of ponies.

Image via Wikipedia

The FiM Renaissance

One day, something strange happened. I went on the internet and I saw ponies everywhere. They were different from those 80’s ponies. Digitally drawn/animated – differently designed. I had been out of the pony loop for a few years. I had begun work in the film industry and my time was fully consumed. Finally leaving the world of production to focus on my writing in 2010, I found myself looking at these new my Little Pony toy line releases.

I can say they didn’t vibe with me at first.

It seemed ponies were everywhere – and how? Where was I when this happened? What was going on? What bizarre world did I venture into? There was a new show. What was the hub? Not just that, but the male fan base was huge! These questions needed to be answered. I felt lost, and suddenly the world loved ponies – I had put my head under a rock for a while and suddenly there were male pony fans everywhere… and they have a name: Bronies. “I was a Brony first!” I cried out to my collection, my dog cocking his head curiously at me, looking at me like I was crazy.

It took a few months to accept this new world we were living in. Maybe I was bitter I hadn’t kept up on the world of ponies, or now I just sounded like a hipster: “I liked ponies before they were cool.”

I did eventually watch the show and I did realize how charming it was. Lauren Faust’s My Little Pony makes fun of itself, teases at the cheesiness of the 80’s, but at the same time, embraces it, makes it important, delivers a good story, with good morals, and at the same time, offers a level of creative humor that is rarely seen in both children or adult television shows. Now I understood – there was an excuse for a male to like MLP now. Why? Because the show is legit – but regardless, I know for many bronies there’s still the ability to escape their forced gender role for a small sliver of time and enter the world of Equestria where it’s okay to be whoever you want to be (there’s a chunk of cheese for you) but on the other hand, My Little Pony has also become a bit more diverse.

Male ponies may not be any of the major players, but they exist in large quantities unlike those old shows where there wasn’t a single male pony mentioned. Well, I mean, the G1 series did have a collection of male ponies, but they were just a tad Village People. There may also be the aspect of ‘ironically hip’ for some of these bronies and current pony fans. Plenty of males in their late 20s, early 30s remember watching Sailor Moon when it came to the states – and there was a lot of ironic, hipster love for that show too… even though it is insanely incomparable (don’t think I’m comparing shows here). I suppose what I am trying to get across is this: FiM doesn’t take itself too seriously, and perhaps the fan base realizes that, and this makes it easier for the male to play off his love for a ‘girls’ thing.

Image via Wikipedia

The Gender Identity

And I would hope our society is a bit more accepting of ‘boys who like girl stuff’ these days. Fulfilling your ‘proper’ gender role as deemed by society is ridiculous anyway. If you’re a real man, you’ll know that being a man isn’t to like beer and football (besides, just as many women like that stuff anyways) or knowing how to fix a car, or being a macho meathead. All those things are perfectly fine (like what you like) – but being a man takes so much more in terms of maturity, morality, humanity, and emotion. It’s about knowing how to stand up for your loved ones without being the typical ‘tough guy’ and its about the accountability of your actions.

But I’m not here to write about what it takes to be a man. I’m here to write about brightly colored ponies.

The first impression I give off to many is that I’m a typical male who wouldn’t have anything to with something like My Little Ponies. As I said before, I’m 6’3, have a broad frame, and now I sport a shaved head and goatee. As far as hobbies, I work on cars, I shoot guns, I love beer and hockey, hiking, camping, SCUBA diving and the outdoors, I ride horses – I like Thai kickboxing. Some of these are typically associated with males (even though hobbies and likes should NOT be associated with a certain sex) and I have a bunch of other hobbies that might make the outsider perceive me as a man’s man – and yet here I am with a collection and love for My Little Ponies. So can I say that I am proof that you don’t need to be a certain type of male to like a little pony? Maybe.

But alas, I still hear males going on about how they are nervous to venture down those bright pink aisles in the toy department (those aisles which were such a foreign and forbidden land in their childhoods). They are scared to walk past the dolls and pick up that Applejack pony they’ve been wanting. Let me tell you fellow bronies: there’s no shame in it. Embrace who you are. I have done so since 1985 and it’s brought me nothing but good things.

Feel free to tell us what “your friend” did if you don’t want to out yourself.

Image via Wikipedia

Hasbro has a bit of a dilemma on their hands. Obviously, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic on The Hub is a runaway hit and a big part of that success was the fact that episodes were so easy for anyone to watch online on sites like YouTube. Originally, Hasbro’s stance seemed to be that they didn’t care that episodes were being streamed on the web… they only cared about sales of the toys itself. But once they started selling individual episodes on iTunes the situation got a little more complicated.

Having worked with a variety of toy companies, let me just take a second to tell you that Hasbro is AMAZING to their fans. If you knew how often other toy companies were suing the heck out of their fans for the slightest things, you’d have a renewed appreciation for just how fantastic and fan friendly Hasbro is with their properties. They let us all happily run amuck with their characters when it comes to fan art, fiction, customs, websites and more.

But the streaming video issues is more complex. It’s hard to fault them for wanting to profit on their own content… they have every right to! But they don’t want to give up the ease of viewing that got them this huge fan base in the first place.

You can make the case that fans are just being lazy when they complain that they need the episodes streaming, especially when legal downloads of the show are just a quick visit to iTunes away. I can’t help but feel like a proper DVD release of each season would go a long way to help this situation and I believe that’s on the radar… eventually.

But the question a lot of people are asking, and rightly so, is why doesn’t Hasbro just stream the episodes themselves? Either directly through a partnership with YouTube or on The Hub website, they should be able to run advertising on the streaming videos and still profit off the content… without limiting its availability. Is the issue with this the advertising itself? Is it because they wouldn’t know what sort of ads to run, ie would they target parents and little girls who are the target demographic or us adult fans? It’s left a lot of people wondering why they aren’t doing this and I can only assume it’s because of a very good reason… that we just haven’t thought of yet!

What do you think is the biggest problem with Hasbro doing their own MLP: FiM ad supported streaming? How do you think Hasbro should handle this situation?

Related articles

• My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic finally coming to DVD with The Friendship Express (mylittleponycollecting.com)

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?

Yay The Site Isn’t Busted Anymore giveaway!

This contest is open to everyone internationally as well as in the USA and is super easy. To enter, just leave a comment below that answers the following question:

When did you first realize that you were a My Little Pony fan?

Easy right? Comments and replies to comments both count as entries. No matter how many time you comment, it only counts as one entry. We’ll use a random number generator to pick the winners at the end. (Also, if you see me commenting, don’t worry, I’m not eligible. )

Here’s the only tricky part: We won’t pick a winner until there are at least 15 unique user comments below so make sure to pass this link around to your fellow pony friends to make sure we get enough. If we pass 30 unique user comments, I’ll pick a second winner. (Don’t worry, everyone who’s entered before that point will still be eligible for the second drawing so the sooner you enter, the better your chances.)

The winners of this contest will receive…

• A DVD of the My Little Pony Friendship is Magic episode The Ticket Master
• A euro-style My Little Pony MLP oval sticker
• A euro-style Friendship is Magic FiM oval sticker

So… what are you waiting for? Start commenting!

Now, two articles in a row have labeled female fans as pegasisters which does make sense because of the whole bro/sis connection.

I pose this question to you, the actual female MLP fans. What do you prefer to be called? What do you think of yourself as?

The answer is… sort of. Because look what I just found:

Adorable? Yes. Officially Hasbro licensed? It’s being sold by by Disguise which sells the other licensed MLP costumes so that sign points to yes.

And, before you ask, only child and toddler sizes. Sorry, adult sized guys and gals! But think of the fun you can have dressing your little ones!

Not comfortable ordering from Disguise? Amazon has these new My Little Pony costumes as well.

What do you think of this costume? Cute? Lame? Do you think we’ll see more before trick or treat time?

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.