Fhaolan

My point of 'their roots' being in textile remnants is that the focus of the company has changed considerably. They went from remnants to making pencil cases out of those remnants, to plastic pencil cases and school supplies, to plastic toys, to 'collectible' plastic toys, and now they've bought out a variety of game companies plus divesting themselves of nearly all their actual manufacturing facilities. Like any reasonable company, they followed the money and changed what they sold depending on what the markets bore. With the media and tie-ins making supposedly making so much money relative to the toy lines with G4, I wouldn't fault Hasbro for following the money again and changing the MLP focus, having the toys be just one product in the entire MLP IP 'franchise'.

They should go all the way to their roots! I mean, who doesn't want leftover upholstery fabric? Yeah, that's how the company started; 'textile remnants'. They'd take the leftover ends of bolts of fabric and resell them. Not exactly a big business model now-a-days. Honestly though, it's a toss-up. If they go 'collect them all' then they would have a serious temptation to having the media releases also being disjointed and far more toyetic than we've gotten used to. Like @Denim&Venom says the G3 'series' was like that. It's a matter of where the focus is to be: the toys or the media, and to be fair to Hasbro the toys are their core business. Though there are rumors that the media income has significantly overtaken the toy sales at this point. Whether that's because the toy quality has declined, or the toy market itself is shrinking, that's up for debate. (Mainly because I don't have a source of numbers right now for facts.)

With regards to the animation quality, the first couple of films (Midnight Castle, Catrina, and then the 'Movie' [with the Smooze]) were above average for the time, as the first two were TV movies rather than TV series, so they cost considerably more to make. That first MLP Movie was actually a proper theatre movie. That plus the Transformers Movie (and a GI Joe Movie that got diverted into a direct-to-video release) almost broke Hasbro as a company due to cost overruns and poor returns. The first series proper (My Little Pony 'n Friends) was about normal for TV animation quality. All of which was done by the same animation studios as the original Transformers and GI Joe cartoons, which started as an animation studio for commercials and the like. So yeah, they're a bit stuttery as if they're on 15-20 frames per second rather than the standard 24, but that's not unusual for TV cartoons at the time. The next series (My Little Pony Tales) was a bit cheaper as Hasbro skipped the middleman (Marvel) and went directly to the animation studio to cut costs. It was a bit more in line with the lower-end Hanna Barbera stuff, which could get *really* cheap. The g3 animations (it wasn't really a series) was weird, animation-quality-wise. They spent time making sure every lock of mane wibbled around independently at first, and yet in the third... episode? kinda... random characters had dark black outlines that made them seem like they were drawn in a different art-style. I'm not sure what was going on there. It seemed to settle down in their fourth outing (A Very Minty Christmas), but the copy I have (VCR recorded from TV at the time) still had that low framerate issue. I don't know if the commercial copies are like that. g3.5 the animation quality control shot up. The character designs were consistent, the animation quality was better, etc. I'm just not fond of the bobble-head artstyle personally. I honestly think the G4 character designs are still too head-heavy myself, but they're not quite as blatant as the g3.5 models. The g3.75 or whatever that spawned the Newborn Cuties was a disaster, animation and art-wise, and that's all I need to say about that.

So, Fleur popped in and insisted on a dancing dress, as she's fed up with being saddled (ha!) with some stately gown for the Gala. Which to me means something like a 1920's flapper outfit, with lots of light flowing layers and trim while still technically being minimalist in cut as they really are just a series of shorter tapered tube dresses stitched together with no belting. If they bother to have any actual tailoring it will be around the bust, which is kinda irrelevant on a pony. The colors here are just to differentiate it from the ponequinn are not meant to be taken seriously as they should vary depending on who exactly the dress is made for. Mainly silk, with either silver slivers or crystal shards for trim, just for the glitter. I decided to pin up one side for an asymmetric look as well as using the trim for a peek-a-boo with the cutie-mark. Again, depending on the exact subject for the dress, that pin-up might be higher or lower, just so the trim covers the cutie-mark, revealing only when dancing. The silk *could* be embroidered to add a bit of texture, as that is something of a standard for the flapper style, but that will likely cut down on the shine, which I think would be a bit of a loss. Yes, I put too much thought into this. Fleur insisted.

Fluer! Fleur! Fleur!

If it's black ink from something like a sharpie pen... believe it or not benzoyl peroxide (the usual active ingredient in acne cream) should clear that up. If it's more stubborn than that, then goo-gone. However, always test any chemical cleaner on the bottom of the figure's foot first, to make sure it doesn't take the colour right out. Some cleaners have a touch of bleach or other nastiness in it that will leach the color right off a figure.

That's actually a common problem in 'real' mythology. These magic artifacts running around with mysterious origins... that you would have known about if you just happened to know this *other* story that is much, much older and where the artifact had a different name, or description, or something. (For example: Perseus' Helm of Invisibility, which he got from Athena, who got it from Hermes, who stole it from Hades... and probably made by Hephaestus? since *everything* was made by Hephaestus supposedly... and could be a military helm, or a hat, or even just a headcloth, depending on the particular story.) Given the naming convention 'Rainbow of Darkness'/'Rainbow of Light'... I always assumed it was a two-sided coin issue. If something created the Rainbow of Light, the Rainbow of Darkness was either a byproduct or spontaneously manifested due to balance. It ending up in Tirek's hands because evil tends to clump together or something. Like cat litter.

Most of my worldbuilding blogs revolve around me filling in details, pointing out things I find interesting, and so forth. This one's a bit different as I don't have an answer for it. It's a question that I would be curious to see the writers answer, but I doubt they'll address it (accidentally or otherwise). We'll start off with what we know: Pegasi can walk on clouds, and manipulate them like they are solid objects. Other pony tribes cannot, and it has been demonstrated that non-pegasi ponies just fall through clouds except in extreme cases when the cloud is 'compressed' deliberately (Rainbow Dash doing a special maneuver to save the rest of the Mane 6 when they fall during one of the Wonderbolt Cadet episodes, etc.), or the pony (and dragon which will become important later) are enchanted by a special spell by Twilight (or any other accomplished magic-user with a similar spell, I assume.) It is implied that this is part of the pegasi 'magic' that also allows them to fly despite their wings not actually being big enough to support themselves in flight. This is the magic that Tirek drained from them during that particular episode, rendering pegasi grounded. Scootaloo, despite being a pegasus who cannot fly *is* able to cloudwalk. She has difficulty reaching Cloudsdale, but once there has no issues walking around. So however this magic is expressed, it's not fully linked with the ability to fly. A bit of a contradiction of the previous implication, but okay, it was just an implication after all, not a stated fact. Luna showed that alicorns, being creatures that have the potential abilities of Unicorns, Pegasi, and Earth Ponies, also have the ability to cloudwalk as she laid upon a stormcloud and startled Rainbow Dash with it at one point as a prank. Gryphons can also do this, as demonstrated by Gilda in her first episode lounging around on a cloud while interacting with Rainbow Dash. This is where things start to go off the rails a bit. It makes sense for her to be able to do so for plot reasons, as it allows her and RD to go somewhere and 'chillaxe' that takes considerable effort for Pinkie Pie to deal with. However, for worldbuilding purposes, it throws a wrench into things. This is now not an ability unique to pegasi, but other winged creatures seem to have this ability as well. It's not tied to pony-kind's innate magic. Just as a side-note, Gryphon wings are also drawn considerably bigger in ratio to their bodies than pegasi wings, so likely they don't need as much magic to bypass the laws for aerodynamics. But, okay, Pegasi and Gryphons can cloud walk. Fine, no problem. Here's where it breaks down for me: Spike can't cloudwalk. He falls through clouds, just like any non-pegasi/gryphon. At least, that's what happened before he got wings... So these are the questions that bother me: Can winged dragons manipulate clouds the same way pegasi and gryphons can? Is this ability connected to the physical presence of wings, but not necessarily functional ones? When Tirek drained the pegasi ability to fly, did they also lose the ability to cloudwalk? Could Tirek have drained this ability from gryphons? The wings on Spike (and other teenage-type dragons) are even smaller in ratio to their bodies than pegasi, so their flight ability is definitely magical. Would that have been drainable as well? My opinion, with no basis in any evidence whatsoever, is that Spike should have had the ability to cloudwalk from the beginning. It should have been a very brief moment of confusion when he did it for the first time, with a comment of 'How does that work?' followed by 'It must be a dragon thing. We'll get back to it, we've got bigger things to deal with right now.' and then just leave it at that, open ended. However, this is all in retrospect, and there's no way the writers at the time were even vaguely concerned with this kind of worldbuilding. That's what we're here for, afterall. As another side-note: It would have amused me to see the Cutie-Mark Crusaders walking through deep-ish snow drifts at some point, with Applebloom breaking trail for Sweetie Bell, while Scootaloo simply walks on top of the drifts. Just to point out some differences in how the different pony tribes deal with things naturally, and as a toss-away reference to a specific scene in the Lord of the Rings novels where the humans break trail for the hobbits, and Legolas just walks on top of the snow.

There were a couple of things that really amused me (for instance, not that long ago there was a Brony meme around ponies in socks, and here was Minty singing about how great socks are back in the 90's. )

Oh, oh poor @Passion. What ever possessed you to go back into the fray? Silly Khajiit. You just like punishment, don't ya?

Only if they get the right animation studio like they did for FiM. Remember that the Newborn Cuties animations were done less than a year before FiM premiered, using the same Flash animation program, and in one of those animations the character's mouths weren't even animated. It's all down to the talent of the artists involved, and only a very little to do with the software package.

'Fhaolan' means 'little wolf' in Scottish Gaelic, so that kinda points it out.

Yes. Everything poops. Even more fun, my wife and I often go on trail-rides with our horses. You can't stop a horse from making manure. However, we do shovel it off the trail itself as a courtesy to non-horse-riders. Not everyone does, of course, but we try.