Which reminds me I was a little girl when the first version of the cartoon was showing on TV. Back then ponies were girly. And sweet. Disgustingly, artificially sweet. Stupidly, disgustingly, artificially sweet, with a touch of staleness.
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| Each frame was legally required to have at least 3% of pink, because it is girly. |
The few things I remember about the cartoon were that they were all friends, everything was solved by the power of friendship (not teamwork, mind you, but the sheer fact that they were friends) and the stupidest part of it all: that they all called each other by their full names EVERY TIME. Ever. If one of them had just won an eating contest, and waited until a friend was done calling her name, she'd die of starvation and thirst. Oh and the names were unnecessarily sugarcoated, as well. Things like "Sugary stars of cuteness and happy togetherness!" or something. Each one had a monicker and the name was a description of the monicker and nothing else. All their names sounded like a list of perfume scent descriptions translated from English to Finnish to German to Latin to Chinese and back to English. Except Moondancer. You shush. That's a badass name and she was an awesome pony.
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| She kicks more ass than you will ever dream of. Shut up. |
I had ponies, don't think I didn't. I had a thing for ponies, since before I can remember. Apparently one day I saw Blue Belle's star spangled ass and had to have it. Now it might sound bizarre to make such a remark about a mare's buttocks but bear in mind, 80s toys had a severe hard-on for rear ends. Ponies had their special talent represented on their butts, Cabbage Patch Kids had their creator's signature across one of their butt cheeks (and despite the fact that they were rag dolls, actually had two distinguishable butt cheeks), Care bears had a heart shaped birth mark on their asses and He-Man ran around showing off his muscular gluteus maximus every chance he got. And he made sure he had plenty of chances. It was so common that I expected every toy to had something marked, embedded or tattooed on their butts. No joke, every time I got a doll, I would get her naked and check for butt marks. Then she'd be put to float and dismembered, to be re-assembled, but that's another story for another day. Except I told all the story right now. Moving on.
But going back to the point (yes, I had a point) before I was fully conscious and capable of successful memory storing, I had already a blue and a pink ponies. Later, I had a baby unicorn pony, the aforementioned Moondancer, then a nursery and some more baby ponies, and a lot of playtime with them. I finally had contact with the cartoon, and oh boy was it awful. The TV started oozing ant repellent half an hour before to protect itself for the impending invasion it was that sweet. It was not the kind of sweetness one can stand, though, it was just aimlessly happy, stupid, and optimistic. I remember not caring about Rainbow Brite, for example, until I saw an episode where she got kidnapped. Finally some real conflict, not only "boo hoo a speck of gray on my bright colors". He-Man was jammed pack full of action, fights, muscles, cheesy one liners! So was She-Ra, plus she had some furry alien thing hiding randomly across the episode, inviting viewers to find it, a la find Waldo. But not My Little Pony, no. That cartoon dared do something different by being a torrent of niceness devoid of thrill. It had a blond girl and some whiny princess and it was the biggest waste of creative resources I had contact with in my childhood.
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| Durr. |
They lived in a matriarchal tribal style, they were few or none males around, they didn't seem to have school, babies were kept in the nursery and the rest could venture ANYWHERE. Their land was green and fertile. There was food as far as the eye could see all around. They had unlimited freedom to explore, travel, experiment all around. On top of that, some were maremaids, some had wings, some had special magical horns and a few lucky ones had all of the above. All of it. Even the least adapted of those animals had no school, no parents, no predators, no schedules, no obligations to stay tied to a single place. They could run around naked, roll around in their own food and not only would nobody oppose that, it would be the most natural thing for them, it was within their nature. Sentient, intelligent, reasoning beings with virtually unlimited freedom. And all they did was run around their pastel stables and talk about friendship and be friends and be ever so pleasant. Later the toys started to pile up embedded gems (how painful would that be for a pony, damn you, Hasbro) protruding "cutie marks" (that can't be explained by anything other than tumors), shoes, hair clips and accessories, ridiculously feeble butterfly wings and finally metric tons of fabric, smothering the little bit of symbolic freedom the things had left.
So now that I see that being a bronie is a fun thing, it's like a bunch of 40 year olds would have found my pony nursery when I was 13 and did lines of coke off the furniture. I won't stop you, but I don't see you finding the awesomeness inherent to ponies either. Knock yourself out, though, you seem to be having fun.
