Honestly, this series wasn’t as bad as I remembered it being. While there was an episode or two that insisted on the fillies needing coltfriends, and the colts were almost universally portrayed in negative stereotypes, overall it wasn’t *that* bad. Sweetheart is best G1.5 pony.

Oh yes, as mentioned in my Episode Watching Blog, I’m treating My Little Pony Tales as Generation 1.5. Officially it’s still Generation 1, as the generations are determined by the toy line, not the shows. But this show is definitely *not* using the same setting and characters as the G1 My Little Pony ‘n Friends show, and it is not using the same character designs as Generation 2.

Anyway, on to my findings:

The My Little Pony Tales show is set in a region whose terrain, culture and slang usage resembles Arizona & New Mexico in the late 80’s, early 90’s. The primary focus is an unnamed mid-sized town in Ponyland. In fact the town may be all there is of Ponyland.

The town has elected officials, and the ponies themselves are organized into nuclear families. While there was no evidence of a broader nation as such, there are several islands that appear to be their own nations, including one ruled by a European-style monarchy, and another with Polynesian-styled ponies. There is also a region that produces ponies with French accents.

All of which are Earth Ponies. Unicorns do not exist and Pegasi are considered to be a cross of magical fairies and otherworldly aliens. The few Pegasi that appear are extensively tattooed, and appear to be led by the first Alicorn seen in My Little Pony animation. These Pegasi appear to be monitoring the Earth Ponies in that they are tracking certain individuals by name. They only appear once, and are never mentioned again. The only other intelligent species even mentioned in the series are dragons, and those being mythical. We don’t even get to see much in the way of animal life in general. There is definitely no explicit contact with the human world as such.

There is an odd thing that points towards ponies not being related to real life equines, in that they have semi-prehensile tails that they can twist and turn at will.

The ponies are again not native to this region, having travelled there as ‘settlers’ in wagon trains. There is evidence of a prior civilization, with architecture similar to the ancient Pueblo Indians (reinforcing the Arizona/New Mexico model), however unlike the real-life region they appear to have died out completely leaving no modern Pueblo-equivalents like the Hopi or Zuni. These Pueblo-equivalents appear to be called 'Pinto', which is a specific type of mottled coloring on a horses, unlike any of the ponies seen in this series who are all solid-coated.

Many of the businesses in the town seem to have put a lot of effort into being retro 50’s, with uniforms, equipment (jukeboxes, hairdryers, etc.). Special shaped architecture (storefronts made to look like the product being sold) became really popular in the 50's as well, but it continues to pop up on occasion ever since so this is not indicative of anything.

The education system of the ponies also resembles early 90’s where standardized testing was beginning to be mandated in America. This caused tests to be wildly out of sync with what the students were actually being taught in the classroom. In this case we have students in 4th or 5th grade delving into molecular chemistry while at the same time being tested on simple multiplication tables. (This is based on Sweetheart being 10 years old in the series.) This would eventually lead to the ‘teaching to the test’ concept in America, but that has not apparently occurred yet in pony culture.

So what can we salvage from this?

Not much, honestly. The removal of unicorns and pegasi from the main setting, and any other intelligent life for that matter is a big blow. The very modern technology is very difficult to work around as well. It's very rare that this series explores the broader culture of the ponies, or travel to areas outside of the town. It's very narrowly focused on slice-of-life episodes in the lives of the seven young fillies.

Forcing the issue, this would be best placed in the southern region of Equestria, near the farthest reaches of the Ghastly Gorge bordering on the San Palomino Desert and the low mountains separating that region from where the Appleloosa settlement is now. And it would need to be temporally located when the three pony tribes were functionally independent of each other, long before the Hearth’s Warming Eve story.

If this was to be a continuation of the My Little Pony ‘n Friends setting, the ‘settlers’ would be Earth Ponies leaving Ponyland, to create ‘New’ Ponyland in this region. The alien Pegasi would represent ponies from the original Ponyland keeping tabs on the new civilization, but for some reason not allowing extensive contact. The change from a gender/age segregated society to a nuclear family setup is a major shift that might have been the reason for exodus to the new land, and the desire for the two 'nations' to keep as separate as possible from each other. In much the same way as religion was the impetus for many of the American colonies. But this is a far more extreme level of isolation and I can't convince myself that there is a good reason for this.

If we're really looking as all of this as one big story, it's more likely we're seeing these series out-of-order, and My Little Pony Tales takes place *before* My Little Pony 'n Friends. We will have to see how the next Generations go to see if those will give us something to work with.

Other than that, I’m having trouble finding anything worth porting over to G4, other than some specific characters like Sweetheart and Lancer.

Oh, except for the Polynesian ponies. There were a couple of fanfics at one point that posited that Fluttershy's parents were not from Cloudsdale originally, but were from some island region. The idea being that Fluttershy's beauty as described in the 'Green isn't your Color' episode is at least partially because she is exotic in some way that isn't translating through the cartoony artstyle. That and her flying abilities are in question simply because she is built for a completely different style of flying than what Rainbow Dash and all the other Cloudsdale ponies are used to. While Dash is more raptor-like built for speed and power, Fluttershy is sea bird-like built for long-distance gliding. Follow that line of thought and you can bring in the Polynesian ponies as being distant ancestors of Fluttershy then. If they weren't all Earth Ponies in this blasted series.