Everyone knows about My Little Pony, whether we're talking about the insanely popular show Friendship Is Magic or the equally popular toy line. But there are probably a few things about the ponies you don't know! Not Bronies.
There have been plenty of documentaries on them. But just in case, Bronies are male fans of My Little Pony. Mainly Friendship Is Magic but occasionally the universe as a whole. There are plenty of facts to shock and even mystify about this runaway hit, so let's take a look at 10 of them now.
The Cutie Mark Precedes The Show
Originally, when the first toy came out, there was just one big pony. Normal looking, almost just a slight variation on an actual horse. It wasn't anything close to the caricature it is now. Aside from this toy, after the success of the original, they released 2 new colored versions of the toy, one pink and one yellow. Although the original didn't have it, these two had small symbols on the horses' flanks, known in the newest incarnation as a Cutie Mark, which represents the character's personality.
It Was Originally A Toy Released By Hasbro
Before it was a TV show you vaguely remember in the haziest, most dream-like parts of your brain, My Little Pony was a toy called My Pretty Pony. My Pretty Pony debuted in 1981. It couldn't have had the "Little" name, because the thing was huge compared to the later toy lines. It was nearly a foot tall.
Sales Lulled During The Initial Incarnation
Despite being contemporary with tons of toy lines from the 80s, My Pretty Pony failed to take off. Perhaps girls didn't buy as many toys as boys did. Perhaps girls watched less TV. Whatever the cause was, sales were nowhere near where execs at Hasbro wanted them to be. When the second series launched, however, they became a modest success. This series, officially My Little Pony now, was comprised of 6 new ponies, a little less realistic and in more colors.
The First Animation Is A Short Special Made With Toei
The first My Little Pony animated work ever was a short TV special called Rescue At Midnight Castle and it was released in 1984. The weird thing about this animation is that Toei Animation was brought on to help with the creation, with the help of a few other animation houses popular at the time.
If you're not familiar with Toei, you should be. Toei helped with Dragon Ball, Dr. Slump (both based on popular manga by Akira Toriyama) Sailor Moon, Slam Dunk, Digimon, and One Piece. That gives jokes about My Little Pony being someone's favorite anime a little more credence.
The Show Is Part Of A Wave Of Toy Commercials
Back in the 80s there was a large wave of TV shows that were marketed towards children. This is a fairly innocuous practice, and it happens all the time. Ever since the time of The Jetsons and The Flintstones (which was, strangely, a show for adults), there have been cartoons marketed towards children on television. The only issue with the rash of ads during the 80s is that most of them were made to get kids to ask their parents for toys and playsets based on their favorite shows. These shows included G.I. Joe, He-Man, Transformers, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. If you don't love at least one thing in that list, you're lacking a certain nostalgia for bygone days. This was such a prominent trend that the creators of TMNT, lovingly referred to as Eastman and Laird, ran directly to Mattel for a toy deal once they had finished their first comic.
A Few Ponies In MLP: FIM Date Back To The First Animation
Strangely enough that first animation, Rescue At Midnight Castle, included a cast of characters that fans of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic should be familiar with. There are a couple of ponies, namely Apple Jack and Twilight Sparkle. There's also a non-pony member of the main cast, Spike the dragon.
It Was Thought Weird That Adult Women Liked The Toys Before Bronies Were A Thing
Once the collecting boom happened, spurred on mostly by the rising price of Beanie Babies and comic book collections, there were plenty of people who started buying up the dolls in the hope of cashing in on this fad. Most of the people collecting were adult women, which only makes sense when you consider that little girls don't have exorbitant amounts of cash to be shelling out for expensive toys. At the My Little Collector's Convention in the early 2000s, there was only one man present. Oh, how the tables have turned ever since the Brony craze took off!
It's Often Unfairly Singled Out Among 80s Cartoons
A lot of the time when there's a discourse about the problem of 80's commercial type cartoons for kids, My Little Pony is unfairly taken to task for being one of the worst of them.
There were absolutely no animations done for Gen 2, so it was really only a problem for most of the 80s. My Little Pony also got attacked frequently while it wasn't on TV.
There's An Early CD-ROM Game
It might have been fun when it came out in 1998, but looking back at the game My Little Pony: Friendship Gardens, there's nothing fun about this game. Obviously, as a kid who's obsessed with My Little Pony, anything that has to do with that universe is going to be incredibly fun but this is essentially a broken Nintendogs type pet-owning simulator.
There Were No Animations For Gen 2
During Gen 2, which mostly existed outside of the U.S., there were no animations. No TV shows, no specials, nothing. Just toys. This was mostly due to how much better Gen 2 sold in Europe, and had been all but abandoned in the States. The only piece of media that did anything to explain the personalities of the ponies was the badly made CD-ROM game. My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic is truly one of the best things that ever happened to the ponies.