I vaguely remember I wanted to watch "The Movies That Made Us" series but could not suffer though ten minutes because they'd utilised some kind of low-rent Patton Oswalt* impersonator to do the wackiest, most obnoxious narrations. Okay, it's not a dry doco series, I understand that. But with this series, they go overboard making it more "funny" than "interesting".
I was bored today, so I decided to watch the My Little Pony episode of "The Toys That Made Us", since people recommended it due to 80s toy histories being more fascinating from an adult perspective - we really didn't know the cartoons were ads. We didn't.
I don't know who gave me Blossom, my first pony, who I think was a reissue from the original model that fell forward all the time. People just kept buying me ponies. I stupidly didn't get a Flutter pony when I could, because I chose a stupid doll instead and instantly regretted it. The chances of the wings surviving all this long would've been slim, and I honestly now can't remember if it was a proper Flutter or one of the redesigns that built the wings into the body, which I did manage to find. I recently ordered a second Flutter that, long story short, ended up in the trash in Amsterdam because the seller's boyfriend mistook the returned package my arse of a postal service failed to deliver as rubbish. I got over it, it was too similar to the one I had, the one I stayed up until something like 3 am so I could make sure I wasn't outbid on eBay, because that really was a thing, there was no "buy now" option.**
Anyway, I digress once again. I watched the doco with less info than I had going in. And it was just a nightmare. The narration was so bad, I honestly almost muted the entire thing and put captions on instead. But it was also edited so badly, and jumped around repeating jokes and laughing at all the talking heads' contradictions, to the point it was so insanely disrespectful and humiliating to watch. Yeah, we get it, they all thing they're the pro-creators of the toy, yeah we get it, one of the ladies got all pissed she couldn't have a realistic pony and quit. There wasn't any need to mock these people, or the collectors, one of whom is the literal saviour of the entire franchise, Lauren Faust, who turned out to be an avid collector who sent designs of what she wanted the ponies to be like, because their "rump decorations" or whatever they cynically called them, inspired her to make way more interesting stories than I ever did. Hell, I considered my Applejack a boy and the dad of my Beddy Bye Baby with Blossom being the mother as they were my first three ponies. That's how fucking progressive I was. I decided to just make Applejack a boy, I guess because Jack was still a very masculine name to me. But yeah I was also lazy and just paired my babies up with their most similar looking adults I owned. (I do have a pretty bad-ass collection, including the rarer mail order Sparkle pony set). But I don't remember the stories I made, if I did. I took my Blossom outside and played with her in the dirt, she's trashed, and pale, I knew she was way more purple when I bought her. I have photographic evidence below, you'll see ratty Blossom's legs are better distributed to hold the head up, which isn't drooping.
I'm going to keep digressing. By the end when they revealed the letter Lauren sent demanding they immediately re-release the ponies she'd missed out on in exchange for her way cooler designs, all I wanted was a fucking doco about her. Shit, just give me half an hour of her and how Hasbro refused to let her make Celestia a queen because queens are "evil" and princesses are "good" by Disney logic. Like it was a way more interesting story how she came to be the creator of FIM. Don't laugh at the Bronies and just gloss over the toxic aspects of their community, how exclusionary they were to girl fans who, GREW UP WITH THE TOYS. Bronies love Friendship is Magic. They don't love My Little Ponies. There was a legacy they just glossed over in an "all jokes aside" way by the end, it was just funnier to laugh at the poor black guy who was assigned to designing more feminine play sets (while completely ignoring they had boy ponies and prince ponies), and let's just joke about him being the "First Bronie" and not, you know, the CREATOR OF SPIKE, who has a legacy of his own. Spike's the best. We love Spike, he's a purple baby dragon who can't fly. They had ponies transformed into dragons in the original episode. There was conflict there. Spike forever.
They discussed the original animation and crapped on about how men wrote the pilot Rescue at Midnight Castle, (which I had in my head was the actual movie, not a double episode VHS I rented with the Catrina/Bushwoolies episode) and how scary and reminiscent of a GI Joe episode it was, as that was the creators' background, you hired them. But I thought (and still think) it was pretty fucking cool. Instead of having an enchanted princess and an evil witch, you've got some asshole who wants to steal rainbows and make ponies in to kickass dragons for his awesome flying chariot, and a captured prince forced to kidnap ponies so they can suck the happy out of them and make them dragons. There was something substantial even for a toy commercial show, even if you had ponies shackled by the neck. Nobody could come up with stories at Hasbro, so a couple of people (sorry, MEN) gave you something and you couldn't force them to change it because it was a rush job. The point of the show dwindled, the generations were relative failures, then Friendship as Magic completely revitalised the franchise. I got sucked in so hard, even after I was like meh about the reboot. (my husband convinced me to watch). I searched for a non-pink Celestia, I wanted a cool Luna that was modeled on her character and not just a recoloured Mane Six (she was basically a more purple Twilight Sparkle with wings), I have a talking Nightmare Moon, that if you'd given me that at five, I would have loved you forever. My friend bought me a styling Rarity. I put up with Mane Six doubles that came with sets. I bought Equestria Girls, and a Pinkie Pie car because the hot pink and black style is fucking rad.
There were more than enough interesting facts they didn't have to repeat scenes as a joke, just talk about the fucking ponies, when you're interviewing multiple people with varying recollections of the same event, they are going to naturally contradict one another, you don't need to make a joke of that, or their lack of consistency by having "rules" that weren't adhered to: (Ponies were never ridden by people but then they created Megan and her sister, they never had saddles but sets came with saddles, which the Mane Six from G4 did have with little animals). It wasn't that funny to laugh at the grey and pink pony falling over all the time. According to the creator who wanted a horse IRL (like every girl did, and she's not wrong, I started a horse club at school and didn't own one then fell off a pony and never rode again) when market testing proved her naturally coloured ponies sucked compared to the rainbow ones, she made Snuzzle grey and that's all she managed to get away with. She also wasn't listened to until one of the other designer's wives said exactly what she'd been saying, and they listened to the wife and not the creator. Of course that was going to piss her off, you just summarised 50 years of mansplaining and disrespecting women in one second. Like you might as well have just said, "Oh, don't be bitter, toots. Give us a smile". I don't think half the people cared who "created it" none of them had a patent on it. Point is, Lauren Faust was the only genuinely humble one, and she's just a legend. I didn't even pay attention to them referring to her as a collector, otherwise I'd have recognised the name.
There's a reason the reissues sell well. I wish I'd been aware of the other anniversary sets because I'm buying the ponies I really wanted 30 years ago from the Rainbow series, because mine were sorta plain. It's shitty how belittling it was to see these passionate people be ridiculed by the creators of the show. Like they wanted to make a cool show about what impact these toys had on generations of kids, but they were mocking their own premise. They were marketed to girls like "dolls" and I maintain my collection is no different to any doll collection you can look at in a museum. They were designed to be collected, toy series survived if you had integrated sets. I wanted April o'Neil to ride on my Baby Firefly. I look at them and I realise how lucky I was then and am now to be able to have ponies around. My friend made custom ponies for me, including one for my pen name. Like, everyone I know who loves me knows I fricken' love ponies. I don't know what it is about my brain being so triggered by rainbow/pastel colours, I get distracted by them. Because they're pretty, and unique, even if the bodies are identical, the colours and "rump designs" or whatever, (which were hand drawn by another woman who resented the original designer of the first six released because she had to keep drawing proto-cutiemarks by hand, which Lauren realised was a beauty mark joke, which I missed. Also I assume that woman quit when the Twice as Fancy line was released if not before). But the fact something clever was incorporated, and that it was important to younger ponies that gaining their cutie mark was a rite of passage, that you put some fucking thought behind the most unique part of a everypony. (There was one original baby in the first series without a mark, but the newborns were already marked). Lauren really did make five of the Mane Six based on the G1s she'd placed so much personality onto as a kid, I wish I'd grown up with her, that she'd been my neighbour and we'd babysat each other's ponies and took them to each other's houses. I have vivid memories of going to a friend's house, (they had horses), and the only way I knew to go there was to climb a wood and wire fence. So I'd go with my box of ponies, put it on the biggest corner post and climb over. And that's how I played ponies as a kid. My best memories of when I got my favourite ones. I think if I looked at each one long enough I could tell you how I got it at the very least, or if I bought it with pocket money. I remember getting Hula Hula my Tropical, and my Happy Tabby set, that I wanted so badly. I remember picking out my Dream Beauty and my brother telling me to get the Pegasus one but I thought it was ugly. I distinctly remember convincing my mother to buy me Baby Rain Ribbon from the supermarket when we were grocery shopping. You just don't let that shit go. (To be fair, my G3 purchases were just so unremarkable I dug them out and couldn't actually fucking remember where one of them came from). But I have a spreadsheet and I can tell you how many I have, how many are broken down into Earth, Pegasus, Unicorn, Alicorn etc. I knew the ponies that didn't have wings or horns were Earth ponies when I was 8.
Ponies are fucking interesting. Fakies are a big part of the collector info. They could've bought up the international variations instead of laughing at Bronies. Lauren was worried people were going to see her show and laugh at it but reality was, bronies watched it and kinda liked it, because it was what a good 80s cartoon should've been like. Never mind they went on to sexualise the Cutie Crusaders with body pillows etc. Or that they just didn't give a shit about any other generation. Plus this was all before the whatever the fuck they're calling G5, which is just a joke hybrid of G2s and 4s. I did see some pretty looking G2s, of which I own none, because they were in that period (1997, I was 15) I wasn't buying toys. I still got some G3s in my 20s they're not the worst. They're just kinda meh. But looking back over the sister series which was like their answer to a young adult pony, I think they'd have gotten away with G2 releases being similar to these, but they fucked up.
Jenny Nicholson's Broniecon video got nominated for a Hugo Award. Her YouTube video was better researched, presented and edited than this fucking farce of a "documentary". And she didn't reduce to fucking Aftereffects and running gags which you think YouTubers love to do. She even has fame within the community, she's younger than me but has more respect for the older toys than any Bronie. She delved into the webrings, created parodies and collected with the best of us. She's a better restorer than me, I was proud I got the mould out of my baby seapony. I'm also catching up on Britney Broski and Sarah Schauer's take on Bronies, you get more honesty from YouTubers. Also, a more baby version of FIM came out a couple years ago, like they were trying to claw back the series from Bronies to reposition them to actual babies.
I won't watch another episode of this series, and it's sat on my watchlist since I signed up to Netflix ages ago. Just give me the facts. Make it as dry as a fucking David Attenborough documentary. Pay respect to your interviewees and don't edit them to look like a bunch of petty tools who didn't have valid responses to how they were treated in a male-dominated industry, or obsessive collectors who have immense pride in their collection, or were just befuddled white guys who got too much credit they didn't earn. I mean, I have enough for a couple of walls in a room at least, the fuckin dream would be to have a pony room. The woman who wanted a real horse still had her own collection, she still had an affection for them, clearly her resentment wasn't so profound she shunned the idea of being in this documentary. They don't make toys like this now, with painstaking care and consideration. There isn't really a lot of love involved. There are cartoons, but kids like Minecraft mostly. I don't really know if they have a toy series they love and play with, they like Bluey. Bluey's cool.
I'll watch any other YouTube video explaining the history of ponies. If this was Netflix's answer to a YouTube history video, it sucks. Channels like Quentin Reviews and Defunctland run rings around this bullshit and are probably more accurate. They might not personally interview anyone involved but they'll do the legwork and not just patch together some bullshit with visual gags.
*They should've gotten Patton Oswalt because he did a whole amazing bit about how it was okay his daughter wasn't like super into Star Wars, and just casually pretended he didn't care about My Little Pony before launching into the whole premise of FIM, the Mane Six and the Cutie Crusaders which was very sincere and triumphant. No, we had to get discount Patton and his "wackiness".
** I just had a shocking realisation these ponies were released when I was between three and four, at the latest 1987, so I'm sure it was before I received Blossom at age 6 in 1988, which was a reissue of the droopy head nightmares pictured above. The Summer Wing range was out by the time I was the age I could've had one, and I distinctly remember the wing and body colour of one I saw a girl playing with at school was from a later range, not the Flutter range. So, realistically, me finding an original Flutter at that time wasn't actually possible, and I was thinking of the Windy Wings series. The eBay one was definitely from 1986, so I was four. Once a pony series was done, they didn't tend to re-release anything that didn't work unless they could improve on it. I feel like the Flutters haven't gotten a re-release because of the wing fragility, and Summer/Windy Wings was a response to wings breaking off/being lost as they were secured. Regardless, the wings were still easily scratched and damaged. They're going with the "classics" for the Anniversary releases knowing they were vastly popular and obviously the easiest to recreate without appendages. Doing research, I'm actually shocked how many ones I received in such a short time, I just feel like it took me so long to build my collection. I was super bummed the Club shut down by maybe 1991 which is a year before G1 finished. I was born in 82, MLP began 1981, so realistically I was only aware of ponies from the year I got one, which I'm almost 100% certain was 1988. I think if I'd owned one in 87, before I started school, I would've remembered and wanted to take her to pre-primary. The only other scenario I can imagine is there was a delay in release from the US and Australia, as apparently they were popping up in Europe a lot later. But I'm more sure if production had ceased by 87, they wouldn't have been exporting beyond that. My only other argument is when I saw photos of Flutters with wings, it didn’t match my memory of them, the translucent wings were unfamiliar compared the rainbow wings. I sort of just thought there was only one wing type with the flutter button. I sincerely don't think Ponies showed up in Australia at all until I was 6, but then again I don't have firm memories of store trips until I was that age. Someone saw a pony and went, girl + horse + rainbows = me. All my distinct pony memories happened after. I definitely got my Glitters in 1989. I thought time went fast back then, but it really didn't. They were running until 1995 globally, but I feel like they were definitely not in our stores that late, I was in year 8 (13) by then. The Shout Factory, who released the DVDs, claim they didn't begin until 1983, but that was around the time the cartoon started, not the toy line. I am going to tragic lengths to prove my theory that I missed out on a Summer/Windy Wings pony and not a legit Flutter Pony. (I can tell the Klonopin has worn off because I am actually getting moderately obsessive about my memory and timeline of events that would've led to my supposition being correct. I pride myself on my vivid memory but whether this is absolute confirmation bias remains to be determined. It doesn't help there's a less accurate account of when releases hit my country as opposed to the US. Hooves indicate patent dates for the poses I believe, so my 25th set was released in 2007. The 35th Anniversary set released in 2018. Plus the mail order sets had to be ordered from the US. I remember wanting the pearl babies (see below) and was going to do an order but they weren't available for some reason, I don't even know how we discovered that, I think we put in the order and it was cancelled due to unavailability. According to one site these were released in 84, I don’t know if the flyer was just out of date by the time I got it but I don’t know how I had enough proof of purchase horseshoe tokens I had after the sparkles. As most packs came with further advertising, I wish I'd held on to more of them than I did. At least most of the info online is reasonably curated to be correct. Looking at when the activity club ran, I think we found out about via the packaging but this was out of the UK so my parents were paying a subscription service outside Australia as well. I was a spoiled brat in all honesty my original addiction was easily overindulged. Now I have my own money and I'm probably still struggling with constraint. The fact I even own an Activity Club baby is special, she's one of my precious ones. Even the ones I have less affection for I still can't dare to ever part with. You really would have to offer me a fuck of a lot and I would have to be fundamentally broke to take you up on any offer, personally. I know some of it's personal rather than monetary value, but sometimes that means more.)
Okay, I have to stop extending the above paragraph. Forums on the flutter wings stated they were easily breakable, and a lot of returns obviously went back to Hasbro. I'd imagine they wouldn't have continued, since replacement equates to lost income over time, and they were part of year 4 which died in 1987. I imagine I would've broken mine just as easily as everyone else, so owning one at the time meant immediate disappointment. To be fair, I had a very flimsy Sweet Secrets toy whose leg broke off because quality control back then was pretty lax, and your only recourse in Australia was to return it to the point of sale for a refund/replacement. I'm thinking original Flutters didn't release outside the US because of this design flaw, which with rigorous playtesting, would've broken, and one site said they weren't "made outside the US". It wasn't like they didn't do demo models, they did it to prove coloured ponies were better, if handling a product normally would cause it to break, why would you ship it? Quick buck production hasn't been proven to have long term benefits, but that's a product of the 80's. G1 in terms of creativity and variation in poses and concepts was probably the broadest. G4 seaponies are absolute abominations. If I know now whatever I wanted would have broken that easily, it's pointless lamenting over my failure to choose it when I had the choice. The ad looks familiar, and the toy clearly looks like it could deal with five year olds playing with it, like were they breaking on set and the children were admonished when it wasn't their fault? Like, how is it you have a perfect product to advertise you can't be bothered actually selling? Looking at remodeled wings and ponies, it's tempting to go with that on eBay but for some reason I'm failing to get into any account that will accept I'm not in the US. Some reason me owning something close to what I thought I missed out on will appease this sense of lacking, rather than me working on dealing with the sense of lacking. I don't tend to do deep dives for these things unless my brain is looking for an exit from whatever it doesn't want to contemplate. When I went hunting in 2005, the fact I even saw the one I have, I remember just being in love, and I could've used a Sprite bottle to make a reproduction but I made a flat, elongated wing out of plastic packaging and painted it with glitter nail polish, and because I suck with scissors, it looked pretty meh. I eventually found pretty butterfly wings and bought a set that looked really good, but recently the tab seemed super weak. Looking for replacements, I went through utter bullshit, in a pandemic, no less, to receive a sheet of uncut wings (I should've read the description, the seller basically couldn't be arsed cutting these out herself, even with the intricate details) and I wound up cutting mine without the tiny details because I didn't have a crafting knife. They look okay if you don't look at them that hard. I remember thinking, I don't like the bubbly wings, it's why I keep thinking the Windy/Summer Wings version was what I really wanted, my memory keeps being jogged that I was expecting this version when I tried to get one, I asked for one for Easter (dude, my parents got us little toys for Easter FFS, and my birthday isn't even a month after) and by then, they were gone. I can't seem to get even badly made replacements, so I've gone back to the butterfly wing supplier and just ordered a new pair. They really are very pretty, and they are for display purposes, which is what I am doing. Does my brain just want pretty wings? Do I want wings? The wings are the best things in Shining Nikki, I love when I get the wings, I obsessed over the fairy wings. I'm obsessed with wings, that's the problem. Why am I obsessed with wings? Should I address this? I can't even find this as an actual thing, you can certainly have a phobia, but an obsession? And it seems to be worse when I'm undermedicated? Is that it? And I just realised, it's not birds or butterflies I'm into. It's things that aren't meant to have wings having wings, like ponies and anime girls. That's the problem. I'm not even obsessed with how wings work, the anatomy of a wing, the aerodynamic concept of a wing. It's not about planes. Or angels, really, because traditional angels are their own thing and I don't collect angels or angel related material, and I don't believe they exist as most people think. It's just unnaturally shaded and shaped wings on horses and anime girls. This isn't a thing. Or it's autism. Yeah.
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