I’ve read the plot summaries for G1 and I’m not even all that convinced that in concept G1 was all that girly. Sure, ponies and rainbows, but it seemed like a fairly bog standard high fantasy story.
I have no meaningful opinions on the quality of said show, however. Though I suspect it probably wasn’t that much worse than a lot of the boys shows back then. I think the marketing for the toys has affected the view of My Little Pony far more than the show itself ever did (well… except G3 ponies, which I’ve seen a few episodes of and that was absolutely terrible).
Er… which isn’t to imply girls can’t like fantasy, or even that fantasy is a boy thing. Just that the plot itself didn’t scream “deliberately trying to make this a girls only club” like, say, anything Barbie ever does.
Despite the nostalgia with which some of them are now viewed, the boys’ shows were dire. That era was a cartoon wasteland. I think MLP mostly gets singled out because it has now has a tremendously successful and popular reboot to contrast the old dreck with, not because the old ones were really that much worse than other cartoons of the period.
Yeah, that’s what I was getting at. In my opinion, Transformers G1 and He-Man aren’t really that great of shows, in retrospect. They’re okay, I guess, if I’m generous. But they’re not something I’d go out of my way to watch. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles I’ll at least give a little credit to, though it got completely and unrepentantly silly. While there were a couple of '80s cartoons that were good, I don’t think we really got much good animation until the '90s. Even then it was generally “above average” more than “great” (and still mostly dreck). Barring a couple odd standouts like Batman TAS.
Gummi Bears was still an amazing show, though. I don’t care what anyone says. (Disclaimer: I have not seen a second of Gummi Bears for probably well over 10 years and I prefer to keep it that way)