Nah I don't think so, especially gen 1 which started it all. I love fizzy and firefly. There are many other cool characters. Sure they could give it more personality and it has a generic kid show with villains feeling (so I yawn a bit) but it's a decent cartoon I think. Looking back there were some good ideas. And I saw some interesting toys like rainbow ponies, sea ponies, big brother ponies (which seem to have more vibrant colours compared to a lot of male ponies in gen 4).
As a kid I loved the gen 2 pony toys, they didn't have their own show but it was fun brushing their hair, I still have them a blue one and a pink one. I also had an older pony toy i think.
The gen 3 cartoon is a bit weird by that time I was a bit older and not interested. Also a little too pink for me though I was interested at the time that there was a show based on the toys that I liked when I was younger it didn't really seem to have much substance.
I sure think they are very different to gen 4 though, so I can get why if you would want to distance from all that. Nothing like that same quality as a show. But for hasbro it was mainly about the toys so yea.