As you’ve probably noticed, I’m frantically trying to catch up on all the things that happened in the Ponyverse over the holidays. To keep it simple for myself, this post is going to be a bit of compilation of stuff I didn’t get to blog about as it happened.

Image via Wikipedia

BronyCon 2012 – Here’s some coverage of these Friendship is Magic fan conventions happening all over the country

• Brony Convention Brings Out the Twilight Sparkle In All Of Us (Video)
• Here Are Some Adult My Little Pony Fanatics We Met at BronyCon – (Lot’s of great photos of the event)
• Horsing around! The My Little Pony craze is back — but this time grown-up guys are leading the charge
• Austin Bronies and Pegasisters Unite
• The Bronies Take Manhattan

Someone compiled a census of pony fans: Brony Census Tracks ‘State of the Herd’

Whew… OK… so what other big stories did I miss?

Stott Emily2
Mariah B

Congratulations to the winners (please either email or dm me your address so I can send you your prizes) and a huge thank you to everyone who participated!

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!

Their awards are actual early G3 ponies spray painted gold! (Are they only picking ponies with pink hair to spray paint or are they re-rooting the manes and tails? These are the things I wonder when I see something like this.)

See?

Their logo, as you can see, is even old G3 artwork. You can learn more about the awards by checking out Pwnies.com/. CNN also has an overview here.

Today is the day we had previously announced that voting would commence on our My Little Pony t-shirt design contest. We had originally hoped to have all of our submissions ready for voting at this time. However, we were overwhelmed by the dedication, love, and sheer number of submissions we received for this contest. The fans REALLY outdid themselves!

Our current module was not built to handle as many entries as we received. So the short explanation for why voting isn’t ready to rock and roll yet is that we are in the process of rebuilding a new module that can handle a whole lot more choices for you to select from as we narrow down the field toward our big winners.

There is some additional GREAT news to impart, despite the voting process still being pending, however!:

• First of all, we are extending the submission period until July 18th! So you have nearly two more weeks to get your entries in, and those of you who missed the deadline last Friday can still get in on the action.
• By the end of this week, our module will be ready to go. Even if you have already emailed your designs in, you will need to upload them directly to the web module once it is live, however it is super-easy and will only take a few seconds. Also, we’re asking that everyoneplease submit no more than five designs.
• Most importantly, we have SERIOUSLY improved the prizes!: Our grand prize winner will now take home $1000 in cash! The four runner ups will receive a $50 gift coupon to welovefine.com.
• Voting will now begin on July 22nd, after the submission period ends and we review all of the entered designs; we will then tally votes for the winners until August 14th. Votes collected on the website will be calculated in tandem with our internal selection process; the combined results will determine our five winners.

We appreciate your patience as we tweak this contest to make sure it is everything it should be, to match the enormous enthusiasm you have all shown for MLP and for our site. We will post updates ASAP to let you know when the all-new web based module is ready to accept entries!

You can read and comment on this announcement here. 

This is especially good news for those of us going to the MLP Convention this weekend as we’ll actually have time to enter once we get back! Will you be entering now that the prize has increased?

This was a very popular contest and you folks kicked its butt!

We numbered the correct answers 1 through 54 in the order they came in and then let Random.org pick a random number between 1 and 54 and they picked 9. The 9th correct entry to come in was… (doo doo doo!)

Stephanie Mcphie!

Woooo!

I’ve already sent an email to Stephanie so she can claim her prize. If for any reason Stephanie cannot claim the prize, we’ll pick another winner from the pool of 100% correcters. 

This contest was a ton of fun and we definately plan to do more in the future. We had a Photoshop contest planned for this month but since there’s the T-shirt contest going on at WeLoveFine right now, we figured we’d hold that until later. 

So, what were the answers?

Valenshy

Sunshimmer

June Blossom

Windy Wisp* wearing Rarity’s star wand

*= If you wrote Windy Whisp, I also counted it because I’m nice.

How’d you do? 

Want to make sure that you don’t miss our next contest? You can subscribe to our site updates via email, RSS, or Twitter and you’ll never miss a thing. 

Two big peices of news for you in this post. The first is that Mighty Fine just signed a licensing deal with Hasbro for My Little Pony and have debuted three new T-shirt designs starring Rarity, Applejack and Twilight Sparkle. We’ve got a look at these three designs below and you can order your own here.

The second exciting news is that they are also hosting a T-shirt contest. Submit your designs and you could win all sorts of cool prizes. In their words:

To celebrate the launch of our new My Little Pony line, we are offering our design-savvy customers as well as MLP fans across the web the chance to submit a design, and you could win up to $200 in FREE TEES!

Artists are welcome to submit as many designs as they like. Prizes will be as follows:

• 1 Grand Prize Winner: $200 coupon for welovefine.com store credit
• 4 Runners-Up: $25 coupon for welovefine.com store credit
• In addition, all prize winners will have a chance of Mighty Fine purchasing your style outright for sale in our shop, on top of your prize credit. Artwork is due by Friday, July 1. Our customers will vote on the submissions on our website from Tuesday, July 5 through Friday, July 8.

Send your designs to: contest@mightyfineinc.com
Submission emails require: Your image, a title for your design, your full name and your preferred email address.

Good luck!
- Team Mighty Fine

What a great opportunity to get your dream MLP shirt made for real! Visit the contest page here to submit any questions.

But huge, massive thanks to Hasbro for the shoutout! 

Below, you’ll find a page from last year’s Cute Overload calendar that I’ve been saving for this very purpose. Though it’s a bit of a challenge, you can actually identify at least four* of the ponies in the photo and one accessory. In fact, that’s what I’m going to ask you to do.

Take a careful look at the photo below (click to make it larger).

Then answer the following questions in the form below:

Hint: This is much, much easier to do if you have Summer Hayes’ G3 books.

>>>>> Sorry, this contest is over. <<<<<

The winner will be getting this:

A mint in box 2010 San Diego Comic Con (SDCC) exclusive pony. Even if you already have one, a handy and desirable pony for trade or resale.

Rules

• Contest entries must be received via the form above before June 21st, 2011.
• Contest is open to anyone with a valid shipping address in the USA. International readers can enter only if they have access to a US address that the prize can be shipped to. Sorry but we cannot ship this item internationally!
• Winner must have the correct answer to all questions above.
• In the event of a tie, winner will be selected from 100% correct entries via random drawing.
• Winner must provide a valid email address so that we can notify them that they have won. Once notified, winner will need to provide a valid US address so that we can ship their prize.

*Don’t post your answers in the comments!* Resist the urge! It will only make it harder for you to win. I’ll post the answers once the contest is over and you can be as smug and as “I totally knew that” as you want then. Only submissions sent via the form will be accepted. (I’ve disabled normal comments but I can’t disable Facebook comments.)

*=If you’re really good, you can also ID the red pony in the dark behind the kitty’s ear. I didn’t think it was fair to include her in the contest because she’s really hard to see. As for the white pony, there are several ponies she *could* be but the color is too hard to make-out to be able to be sure. So neither of them are included in this contest.

Any questions? Let us know. In the meantime, I wish you luck! I’ll give a shout out to everyone who gets all five correct so you’ll get bragging rights either way!

Simply enter to win a copy on Goodreads before October 1st and one lucky winner will get a free copy. This contest is eligible to anyone in the USA, Canada, UK or Australia so don’t delay, enter now.

There is no purchase or other fancy requirement to join, simply click below to enter:

Goodreads Book Giveaway

The My Little Pony G2 Collector’s Inventory

by Summer Hayes

Giveaway ends October 01, 2010.

See the giveaway details
at Goodreads.

Enter to win

Now the original press release was talking about combining all their properties into a movie called Hasbro Factory. The movie is real and is set to be released by Paramount in the near future.

Hasbro already sold the movie rights to many of their board game properties so this could be the glorious Monopoly/Connect Four big screen cross-over we’ve all longed for. (Note: I own a knock-off version of Connect Four called Four-in-a-Row which I find refreshingly direct. I also own a knock-off of Battleship called Sea Battle. You know that you are jealous.)

But there is a lot of speculation that this could be a movie involving their toy properties. My Little Pony, Littlest Pet Shop, G. I. Joe, Transformers, Mr. Potato Head, Baby Alive, Gloworm, Easy-Bake Ovens, Tonka trucks, FurReal Friends and more could all be together in one glorious movie.

Let’s put our heads together and think about what that movie could conceivably be like. Which characters would they be most likely to use? Is Mr. Potato head locked into something with Pixar so he’s unavailable? Does Micheal Bay have a total lock on Transformers?

Who knows? Instead, let’s wildly speculate on what this movie could be about. You don’t have to use every property, but try to use as many as you can as you share your “In world…” style movie tagline below.

And you know what site you are on so, please, shoehorn the ladies of MLP in there somewhere, hmm?

Here are a list of Hasbro’s most popular properties to give you inspiration (links lead to Wikipedia to jog your memory):

Toys

• Army Ants
• Battle Beasts
• Cabbage Patch Kids (1989-1994)
• Easy-Bake Oven
• G.I. Joe
• Jem
• Lincoln Logs
• Lite-Brite
• M.A.S.K.
• Mr. Potato Head
• My Little Pony
• NERF
• Play-Doh
• Pokémon
• Spirograph
• Star Wars
• Tinkertoys
• Transformers
• Zoids
• S.P.A.C.E.S

Games

• Axis and Allies
• Battleship
• Candy Land
• Cranium
• Clue (Cluedo)
• Diplomacy
• Dungeons & Dragons (role-playing game)
• The Game of Life
• Magic: The Gathering (Hasbro’s top-selling brand)
• Duel Masters Trading Card Game
• Monopoly (best selling board game ever according to the Guinness Book of World Records)
• Ouija
• Pictionary
• Risk
• Scrabble
• Trivial Pursuit
• Mirror-Mirror (Winner of ITV1′s ‘Design a Board Game Competition’)
• Bop It
• Bull’s Eye Ball
• Jenga

I have nothing against Kentucky but I for one am really confused. At the 2008 convention, the fair staff said they had a contract to hold the convention in Las Vegas for the next 5 years. Unless I am having a math fail moment, they only held it there once so far.

I didn’t go to the convention in LV last year because I figured I had 4 more years to catch it there. Now, I don’t particularly care about going to Vegas and I think it’s more interesting to have it somewhere different each year than the same place for 5 years straight. My husband is kinda bummed, though, since I told him he could play Blackjack as long as I could buy ponies with all his winnings which was a plan he was oddly psyched about.

So I have to ask you, what do you think? Are you bummed that they changed the location? Were you psyched about a return to Vegas?

Do you know why the heck they changed their minds?

ONE FOR THE GIRLS: Bonnie Zacherle, one of the original ‘My Little Pony’ designers, signs an autograph and draws a pony for a youngster during an appearance at Hasbro’s booth. [SOURCE]

One audience member asked [Todd] McFarlane if he could draw a “My Little Pony” sketch for his wife, as several other Image creators – including Kirkman – have already contributed. “I might be able to do it, but you must realize that Todd’s ‘My Little Pony’ is slightly different than everybody else’s,” he joked. “Dark form with the big thorns coming in, then you take that big stretchy tail and strangle people… ‘My Little Pony,’ this!” [SOURCE]

Meanwhile, over in Villainville, Dr. Doom and the Lethal Legion are plotting to take over the world. To give you an idea of what kinds of villainy we’re dealing with, they did a special cast reading at the convention. It’s plot: Dr. Doom’s quest to acquire an exclusive My Little Pony collectible. The series kicks off with a four-episode marathon on Cartoon Network September 19, and I’m strangely very excited about it. [SOURCE] and [SOURCE]

Were you at the event this weekend? Share with us your MLP memories!

Surely there is at least one opportunistic convention goer with one that is interested is letting unsuspecting people on eBay pay out the nose for one.

You people disappoint me. I would have bought whatever the limit was and then bought that same number again under my husband’s name and been wildly selling and trading those puppies like a madwoman right now.

So did you get one this weekend? Is she as pretty as she looks in the photo? Why aren’t you trying to sell her to me on eBay right now, hmmm? Do tell!

Have you seen me?

The only article covering this event is this Examiner post which was written before the event began.

So those of us that could not attend in person will have to rely on those of you that did attend to clue us in on all the good stuff we missed. If you are going to post a recap in your blog, please share the link with us below or just give us your thoughts or pictures in the comments section.

This is one case where what happens in Vegas really shouldn’t stay in Vegas so share, people!

For all the details, including how to listen, visit the podcast’s homepage at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/My-Little-Pony-Talk

All you need to do to enter is to post a comment on this blog post voting for either Ponyville, Care-a-Lot or Strawberry Land. While you can vote on any of them for a chance to win, I think we should show them that My Little Pony is the greatest toy of all!

I am so excited that I can actually enter this one since I am disallowed from all of Priced Nostalgia’s contests.

Best of luck to everyone and I hope you win. Or if you don’t win, I hope I win.

But, like vampire slayers and Highlander-esqu immortals, there can only be one. . . winner that is!

So give a big congrats to snpypez! Our random winner selector (Excel running a random command if you are curious) pulled her name out of the proverbial hat so she gets a free copy of The My Little Pony 2007-2008 Collector’s Inventory for her very own.

If you didn’t win this time around, don’t worry! This contest was just a little taste of what is to come so please subscribe to MyLittlePonyCollecting.com via email or RSS and stay tuned for more contests both on Twitter and off.

Special thanks to all the great pony people listed below who entered our contest!