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The Mysterious Mare Do Well (November 26th 2011, 22 minutes)

Summary: A Challenger Appears! And Rainbow Dash is not happy to have competition in the hero business.

Posters, T-shirts, funny hats. Somewhere in Ponyville there is a printing shop making a lot of money off of these ponies.

Also we're seeing a lot more colts and fillies than appear in the Ponyville one-room school house indoor scenes. Either there are more schools in the area, it's not an all-day affair (with morning and afternoon classes), there are actually multiple classrooms in that building, or the animators aren't showing all of the class in those scenes.

RD swimming in the clouds. Pegasi seem to be able to control how 'solid' they find clouds to be. Which makes the various buildings they have curious. If they are also made of sculpted clouds, then pegasi could technically just walk right through them at will. Which has some interesting implications as to pegasi culture and their attitude towards privacy and security. RD does seem to just walk in on other ponies without thinking about it. That may not be just her own ego-centric nature, but a pegasi trait due to the difficulty in building cloud dwellings with truly 'solid' walls.

Cameras, of the analog reflex style, with the distinctive autowinder noises from the late 70's on. definitely not modern digital cameras though, and no film or video cameras.

The balcony here is depending on a decoratively carved cantilever beam. I wouldn't trust it, myself, but I have seen similar constructions in real life. Also we're dealing with four elderly ponies, with a crowd below watching. Is this a nursing home and they just all happened to be here, or was this originally going to be some kind of announcement?

The puppet builders are starting to expand the range of facial expressions available, it seems.

That's very specifically a tour carriage, with stereotypical tourists. Given some of the mane-doos, clothing, and accents, probably from places like Fillydelphia and Manehattan. Which means Ponyville has become a tourist destination? Heh. I wonder if this is a 'Houses of the Element Bearers' tour.

And that's a pretty impressive five-story building in a blend of timber-frame and balloon construction. The construction equipment itself has a lot of wood in their make-up, and the engine driving the crane is relatively quiet. I hear gears grinding from mechanical linkages, but there's sparks when the system fails. So the engine is likely electrical/magic rather than gas or diesel.

A relatively large dam, with a hydro generation station. Given that we've noticed how hilly the terrain is near Ponyville, this isn't that surprising. We know they use an electricity-equivalent for powering lights and equipment, but I wonder if it's actual electricity or some from of artificially generated magical field.

"For the love of Pete" Interesting. Normally the phrase is referring to Saint Peter, one of the apostles of Jesus.

Reel mower. Invented in the early 19th century. You can still buy them, they haven't changed fundamentally other than being made of lighter materials now. Supposedly they cut cleaner than rotary mowers, so motorized versions tend to be used on golf courses and the like.

AJ named her hind legs. Complicated names at that. Is that a thing?