As you know, My Little Pony took the world by storm when it came out. The question is, why? What contributed to its success? I’m pretty sure nobody expected the show to become as popular as it has.
I don’t think that it has taken the world by storm. It is something meme-able that became internet-popular but has virtually no impact at all outside of select bubbles.
Like a suprising number of internet fads (and fads that spill out into the real world) non-little girl fandom started on 4chan. It started as trolling/hate-watching, but people began to realize that it is actually pretty-well written, started actually discussing it, and a community grew up around that, as communities tend to do when there are people reinforcing each other’s interest in a subject. (The thread I linked really is worth reading if you want a brief history.)
My only expertise in this is having a 6 year old daughter, and having watched the show with her a few times. It is pretty good, as far as kid’s cartoons go. It combines the cutesy pony stuff, which is probably why my 6 year old likes it, with somewhat sophisticated stories and dialogue. I mean, it’s not Breaking Bad or anything, but it is much, much more palatable to an adult than something like *Paw Patrol. *I think it does manage to hit that magic kid’s show mark of stories simple enough for young children to understand, but enough side jokes, allegory, and deep pony lore that it isn’t completely boring to older viewers.
It also manages to not come across as a 22 minute toy ad. Sure, we’ve got a box of pony shaped plastic in our house, but the show isn’t setup as “here’s a new toy to buy” (I’m looking at you, 1980s Transformers), but rather “here are some fun characters having adventures, also you can buy them.”
Also, it’s on Netflix.
As far as background on what the deal is with Bronies, I have no idea.
Myself, I had for years seen MLP characters used in avatars and memes (especially at wonkette.com) and hearing jokes about adult male fans, so I finally broke down and started looking for clips on Youtube. At first I watched clips of songs from episodes (some of which were pretty catchy) then discovered whole recent episodes that they hadn’t caught and deleted yet (the first full episode I ever saw was season 5, episode 23, a take-off on the Hatfields and McCoys.) Then I found myself watching the other 3 or 4 full episodes on Youtube, then “finding” some of the episodes some of the songs came from, then watching 10 or 20 more, then 50 or 60 more…
Some of the songs are pretty clever parodies. For instance, look at this song from The Music Man and this one from MLP. Or this and this. Probably a lot of other people got into it the same way, giving it a look because of all the hype, then being drawn in.
(More posts to come–I have had Thoughts on this.)
Also a big factor, I think, is ascended fanon. The writers/producers of the show read the fan forums and adopt ideas from there, bringing back/giving more emphasis to favored background ponies, for instance. The show often does something kinda different with ponies in crowd scenes (sort of like “easter eggs”) and viewers keep an eye out for thise moments. Fans jokingly make names and backstories for the unnamed ponies in the crowd scenes, and those become canon. For instance, there was an unnamed background pony with a lyre for a “cutie mark” that the fans named Lyra. Then a toy version came out named Heartstrings. Until Hasbro officially renamed it Lyra Heartstrings. And the second episode of the series was uploaded to Youtube, and the auto-captioning software mangled some words into “Steven Magnet”, the words displayed while an unnamed sea serpent character was on-screen. Fans of course found that hilarious and memed it extensively. A mangled software captioning from a pirated YouTube video became the official name for the character. And volumes could be written about fan/creator interactions on Derpy Hooves. So I think that the combination of memeability and a sense of interactivity with the creative team is a huge part of it–the fan influence on the characters and storylines of the shows is something that I can’t really think of happening to such a degree elsewhere.
I like it because it’s generally well written, has interesting characters and is sometimes humorous. The fact that it’s about a fantasy universe helps as well. Most importantly, to me, is that sometimes it’s ridiculously cute.
I had a kid and other family the perfect ages for it when it came out. When you have to watch stuff with your kids, stuff YOU like too makes a huge difference.
I actually have missed the last few episodes because the kids have mostly outgrown it, but it was so good the first few seasons that I would have watched it even with no kids in my life. (I felt it went down in quality when they added that stupid Starlight Glimmer or whatever her name is and I really didn’t enjoy the movie. Equestria Girls is better than it, imo.)
The music is super catchy. It coincided with tech in a way that we could watch an episode and five minutes later I could rip the song off of youtube and put it on my phone for us to listen to MLP playlists in the car or whatever. New songs every week, new characters every week. Running jokes. Sight gags. Jokes and guests stars for adults.
What’s not to like?
ps my username comes from a line in the S1 finale major musical number. I don’t know if I ever laughed so hard before or since at an animated episode of anything. It defied all my expectations and as an adult, I find that hard to come by in my grown up shows. I mean, at my age I’ve seen it all and to be surprised by a plot is one of my favorite things.
And now that the kid is old enough to get into the MCU, I like to provide much embarrassment in front of friends by referring to the Infinity Stones as the Elements of Harmony.
I clicked because it’s been a while and a tiny voice who’s supposed to be sleeping calls out “Are you watching Ponies?”
that and Lauren Faust (she wrote most of the original Powerpuff girls series) style of show-writing helped out tremendously
and yes the original 80s mlp and the first reboot was “come buy our toys” oversweetened glurge …
out of the 3 or 4 reboots the hub/discovery kids mlp was the best littlest pet shop was ok …pound puppies sucked and transformers rescue bots were aimed at kindergardeners …
As soon as I hit submit reply I was hit with a sense of “I know that’s not right and I don’t know why…” Then today I remembered South Park’s Good Times with Weapons. If I ever have to method act and my character has to laugh, I’d be watching the crap out of the eye scene with Butters to get in the right head space. So I amend this to “animated episode of anything aimed at kids.”
Maybe amend it to “animated episode of anything aimed at kids who aren’t Butters”?
Was My Little Pony FIM really that much of an instant success? I remember the buzz around it built-up slowly before it became a phenomenon. I started watching MLP (and later Steven Universe) because of the threads here.
My little sister was into it so I watched one episode a while back. Just seems like a normal kids show, for the younger demographic. Not as entertaining as earlier Spongebob Squarepants or Fairly Odd Parents, in my opinion. But I’m not a girl, and I’m not into ponies and unicorns.
Apparently some older people who happened on the show, like I did, but think it is a great show. More power to them. Some of these folks made a bunch of funny internet memes and got other people to give the show a chance. Lots of people watched an episode and found out they liked the show on the merits.
People who have a sexual fixation on the show make me sick. That’s like being fixated on little girls.
But I’m confident those people going to conventions and the huge adult following is almost entirely normal people. My only qualm are those toy unicorn poop commercials - not affiliated and I’m not sure if they air on Hasbro but, I mean… what the hell?
~Max
In addition to what has been said already about quality, which I will assume is true, not having watched any, there’s the fact that it is a reboot and benefited from a lot of parents, mainly women, who had grown up with the toys and old show now being of the age where they had kids of their own at the right age to watch.
Even with parents who were never fans that means there were fewer people to go “What is this weird toy commercial type show about talking horses” and more people to go “Oh, it’s a My Little Pony reboot, I guess that is safe for my little darling.”
My nine year old daughter discovered MLP a few months ago and went nutso for it. I actually found, to my surprise, that it was cleverer than it needed to be. It featured scarier enemies than you would expect. (Her explanation to me: “It’s scary. But I’m brave.”)
But just this week, she used her own saved up money to buy a month of Hulu so she could watch PowerPuff Girls. She watched the older ones first, which were kind of a trip because they had that classic, almost Hanna-Barbara style animation. And some of the story ideas were wild, off the wall. But then the 2016 one actually seems like it could almost fit on Adult Swim? It rises frequently to being legit good, but I find myself glancing nervously over and wondering if my daughter’s just slightly too young for it.
Yes, defeats of enemies ranges from convincing them to be friends with you to blasting them to bits to stripping all their powers and locking them in a cage in Hell. (Well, technically Tartarus, but…) And fights can be on the landscape-altering scale.
But there have been plenty of other reboots of old shows that have come and gone without the the success of My Little Pony. For example, Strawberry Shortcake had a reboot right around the time MLP starting getting big, and it didn’t catch on or last very long, even though it aired right before MLP on Discovery Family. People who were nostalgic for My Little Pony from the original incarnation seemed to be more into the toys than the cartoon, IIRC.
Of course being a reboot isn’t a guarantee for success, but it’s quite obvious that being a reboot of a popular show contributes to the speed of the success when it happens.
Out of curiosity I looked for viewing numbers to see how popular the original MLP show was, and although I didn’t find that, I did find proxies that don’t make the comparison Strawberry Shortcake a particularly strong argument:
Original My Little Pony:
Ran two seasons of 65 episodes in 1987 and 1988 after the release of a feature length movie in 1986.
7 VHS tapes were released with the episodes in 87, 88 and 89.
Strawberry Shortcake:
Six 23 minute annual TV specials 1980-1985.