My Little Pony Tales

In 1992, several years after the prior series ended in 1987, a new My Little Pony series started up. Still produced by the same animation studio, but this time Hasbro went directly to the studio rather than going through Marvel like they had before.

Originally, Hasbro's deal with Marvel covered all of Hasbro's properties, Transformers, G.I. Joe, and My Little Pony, amongst others. But while Marvel put out comics and cartoons for the other franchises, they only produced a cartoon for My Little Pony, no comic book. Given that Marvel was primarily a publisher of comic books at the time, and not a true multi-media company like they are now, Hasbro seems to have decided to skip the middleman if they weren't going to do a comic, and deal directly with the animation studio who was doing all their other IPs.

I'm afraid, to be honest. My one memory of this show is horrible. However, I said I was going to do this, so I will.

This is still technically Generation 1, as the generations are supposed to be based on the toys and Hasbro hadn't switched to Gen 2 yet. However, this series is sufficiently different in setting that I am going to call it Generation 1.5 to keep it separate from the previous series.

Slumber Party (G1.5 TV episode, July 3^rd 1992, 11 minutes)

Summary: The girls are enjoying a Slumber Party when Patch's ghost story takes a strange turn.

Animation style has improved in a way. Movement is a lot more fluid, but the characters are also far more cartoony. And also a lot more anthro,

Using their hooves as hands when the prior series avoided that mostly.

The world is a lot more settled, dealing with a school, a ice cream parlour, vehicles, telephones. What little costuming in the intro is early 90's as expected.

We also seem to be focused on seven specific ponies. If I remember correctly this pattern continues right up to the end of G3, when it switches to six in G4. I think who the seven are changes though.

Hey Bon Bon.

Okay, these are very specifically teenage ponies. There are parent ponies but they're almost immediately side-lined.

Wait, all of these ponies are earth ponies. Where are the unicorns and pegasi?

Yeah, I remember kids doing this kind of thing.

Very anthro, they're rarely if ever going down onto four legs.

Ha! The puppet is representing a Ms. Hackney, who we saw in G4 as the Equestrian Olympics inspector.

I'm not going to list all the 90's equipment, as they don't appear to be anachronistic in this setting.

Story time. Cool, it's a parody of Prince Valiant, a comic first published in 1937 and still running today in a limited number of Sunday supplements. It's the haircut that gives it away.

Okay, when 'walking' or 'running' they use all four legs, but any time they're doing anything else they go back to bipedal poses.

This isn't as bad as I remember, possibly the bit that ticked me off is a later episode.

Okay, suddenly ghost... Squire is looking for his dragon, Basil. If this isn't a dream, then this opens up the possibility of a connection to the slightly older series, with its pseudo-medieval cultures.