My Little Pony Generation Explanation

[ManaMinori 4,146]

With much talk of “g5”’s looming arrival, it’s extremely grating for me to hear and see talk of it from the fanbase of FiM. Now, unlike others who express a desire to cease discussion of these "rumors" and leaks because g4 is still ongoing, my irritation stems from the fact that that this terminology that's being used by fans- for the time being- is flat out wrong (for the time being).

Those who speak of "g5" see the upcoming rebooted television show and praise its animation as “the supreme canon”. Now, I get it- the cartoon is great, but as a collector of these pastel, pint-sized, plastic ponies, and someone who grew up with older gens- it’s like nails on a chalkboard to see the term “generation” misused by many within the g4 fandom, when most have no idea as to what it really means and what truly dictates a new gen. Hence the reason why so many wrongly label "My Little Pony Tales" as "g2" or "Gen2" with the change in animation, design, setting, and storyline from the original MLP G1 cartoon series, when the toys from G1 continued to stay the same design in spite of the drastic differences in the original cartoon from the Tales reboot. In actuality, G2, which is named “Friendship Gardens” didn’t even have a tv series of its own, but only a toyline (which failed in the U.S. and was discontinued, only to be more widely distributed in Europe for many years, where it was more popular) and a computer game.

Put simply- The different incarnations of MLP are commonly separated into “G” or “generations”, as classified by collectors, based on the toy line. Fans who more closely follow the show conveniently forget, vehemently dismiss, (or simply aren't in the know) Hasbro is a toyline first, and that the animated series has never been a proper metric to judge when a Generation ends and another begins. The show, comic staff, or even Hasbro executives can also say or claim that an ongoing or upcoming generation is a certain g number, but that's not how it works. 
Generations"/ "Gens" is a fan-made term by the collectors of MLP's toys. The alteration in toy design is what dictates a new "gen". We could get a rebooted tv series that's drastically different from the FiM tv show, but if the toys themselves still look like they’re from g4, then they would still be g4, not g5.

 

[Hierok 11,832]

Good to know. I thought gens werd just divided by the time differences.  The toys don't interest me very much, so that's probably the reason I didn't know this. 

[Steve Piranha 29,451]

2 hours ago, Hierok said:

Good to know. I thought gens werd just divided by the time differences.  The toys don't interest me very much, so that's probably the reason I didn't know this. 

Most don't, that's why MLP Tales is still commonly mistaken as G2 to this day. However, they are brainstorming designs for the upcoming show, so chances are, the toys will follow, so G5 most likely 

[Fhaolan 4,485]

G3.5 is also a bit of a weirdness that throws people for a loop, as there was a toy line change, a toy redesign, and two animation changes; but they didn't all happen at the same time. First, the G3 toy range got sliced down to what collectors call the 'Core 7'. Basically they stopped making the rest of G3 and only continued on with seven specific characters. Then they redesigned those seven characters to make 'G3.5' proper, and four animations were released with *almost* those character redesigns. There was a fundamental difference between the G3.5 toys and the G3.5 animations, however: All the toys that were modelled as pegasi where drawn as flutterponies in the animation for unknown reasons. And finally there's the Newborn flash animations right before G4 spun up, which had a completely different art style yet again.

 

If this rumored 'G5' is the same characters redesigned in both toy and animation, it would be more consistent to call it 'G4.5' in my opinion.

[Hierok 11,832]

39 minutes ago, Fhaolan said:

If this rumored 'G5' is the same characters redesigned in both toy and animation, it would be more consistent to call it 'G4.5' in my opinion.

Hopefully not. If there is gonna be a whole new series, please change everything. I think that makes it more stand out and better looking.

Edited March 21, 2018 by Hierok

[ManaMinori 4,146]

21 hours ago, Hierok said:

Hopefully not. If there is gonna be a whole new series, please change everything. I think that makes it more stand out and better looking.

the only instance where the show was changed in style and animation, but the toys were not, is- again, g1 (MLP Tales). However, one could argue that even though the Tales ponies were bipedal, they had the same design and proportions as the original g1 ponies, if they were to become quadrupeds, hence why the toys remain unchanged.

[EpicEnergy 23,239]

I'll still use generation in the sense that it refers to the show, but that's a good explanation of what generation really means.