Cartoons from my childhood get shit for being half hour long commercials for toys. It's not untrue, however I don't remember watching a lot of My Little Pony. I've seen a few episodes I thought were the movie, I smashed them together in my head from having seen them a lot. What it was was the first couple of episodes. The movie was entirely different. And I didn't see them on TV, they were on VHS. I didn't actually watch a lot of cartoons as a kid. Astroboy was the one I actively watched all the time on TV, but I couldn't buy toys from the show, they were anime toys, I don't remember them being around. Pokemon came out when I was 18. Rocko's Modern Life was out when I was a teenager, again Nickelodeon shows didn't sell a heck of a lot of toys, which is why Avatar didn't do well. I saw one episode of the Dream Stone and love the theme more. I had to rent all the movies and cartoons I wanted to see. So my want for ponies was just a want I had all the time without prompting from the show. And I'm almost positive I had one toy or maybe a few before I saw the cartoon. The toy prompted me to watch the show.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was probably one I saw a lot too, but I had one April O'Neil doll (who I wanted to fly around on my baby Pegasus), my brother had the sewer and stuff. I gave my pillow case to my sister in law since I didn't want it, I think she thought it was a huge gesture when I'd rather someone who would love it to have it. I wish I could've traded my She'ra doll with someone who said they had her horse. I wanted the HORSES, including Barbie's horse. And most of my wants came from the advertising IN the toys, and joining the activity club for MLP. All toy packaging advertised the other toys in a series, MLP put in flyers for other toys you could order, I was lucky my parents did order some. People knew I liked them. I played in my room more than I watched TV since we had two channels and had to wait for school holidays for our parents to maybe rent a VCR for a week. I didn't need the TV to tell me to buy the toy. A lot of toys I wanted later were because of an ad I saw, not a show. There was no Sweet Secrets show, or a Finders Keepers show. I don't remember asking for any of those either, I don't remember the commercials. My grandmother came home with my first Finders Keepers toy. I remember seeing the packaging through the plastic bag as she came in. And again, I WANTED THE HORSE ONE. I got the baby version of that and the swan one I really wanted the adult version of.
I wasn't a Barbie girl, so when someone said she never had a baby, I swore there was a pregnant Barbie. No, that was Midge, and she had Allan, and they had nameless kids, I guess. Mattel can respond to demand with inclusivity but if the profits don't come out of the wash, they won't push it. My Little Pony course corrected on certain toys but they weren't politically driven, you had male ponies again maybe to push the boy market (pre-Brony) but it didn't work, and I don't think the boy ponies did well, as much as Ken didn't sell well. I think some mothers may have seen their daughters doing weird thing with their two or three Barbies and they needed Ken to balance out and combat a false idea of lesbianism being pushed. They still wanted to force a husband onto Barbie. I think if you had a Ken doll it was given to you as a gift, you never asked, because I genuinely don't remember asking for any of my Barbie products, especially not sparkly suit Ken, and his hairdo was very late 70s as well. I don't. I think I got exercise Barbie because I didn't do enough exercise (I still played outside). I think I got studio Barbie because maybe they thought I'd be a news anchor, but I swear, I do not remember asking for any Barbie product. And I never asked for my Blossom MLP, my first. It was given to me and I loved it and hated riding horses. I played with my Barbies but not much. I don't remember bugging anyone for a Birthday Barbie. I didn't like her 80s hairdo but her dress was pretty. Actually looking at pictures now, she's very late 70s as she came out in 1980. Did someone think I was supposed to look like that? I don't put on much makeup, I see a hairdresser otherwise my hair just goes to shit. I didn't watch any Barbie shows. There weren't any on TV, you had Gem which was supposed to subvert Barbie and failed anyway. And I hated Gem. I hated her look and her big hair and the theme tune, it was cringe before cringe was a thing. The Barbie moves all came out on DVD, there wasn't a Barbie show on TV when I was growing up.
It's so easy to blame cartoons like GI Joe for kids wanting toys, in the US. I don't know how to explain to people we didn't get saturated with these cartoons the way US kids were, not when I was really little. If any show influenced kids getting toys, ironically it was the fucking Simpsons. We still got pushed toys for the show, the show had an episode about that, baby's first meta-commentary. I had a Lisa doll, Happy Meals and other kids meals had Simpsons tie ins. Heck, I had a couple of Roger Rabbit toys. I saw commercials on TV for toys, not a cartoon that made me want the toy. I did have a sizable collection of ponies as a kid, but it's doubled since I became an adult with a disposable income. And I didn't love any MLP generation in terms of the shows, I liked Friendship is Magic but I didn't love it. I liked the toys, I really enjoyed collecting them. And I liked they appealed to boys, I only wish they had been a chance to bridge a gap between boys and girls and not generated a version of an incel that was too cringe for incels. I wish the Bronies hadn't been so hostile to women like me who had an affection for ponies outside FIM. You have to explain to people, Bronies like FIM (Gen 4/4.5) specifically, they don't like any previous generation. And let's face it. Nobody likes Gen 5.
As an additional note, I feel like the biggest lie Saturday morning cartoons sold us in the 80s and 90s was the good guys always win and the bad guys will always face the consequences of their actions. That has never been entirely true. The bad guys run the jails, they run the governments. They have all the resources necessary to continue being evil and leave a legacy of evil in their offspring. The good guys are considered weak and ineffectual. Assholes almost always get away with the bag. The toys weren't the problem. It was the ideology that sucked.
