@Background Pony #49C9

I'll be happy to see the statistically significant results when you publish your data.

Seriously, confirmation bias is a bitch.

@skybrook
Hasbro has a profitable thing going. They sell plastic toys made by political prisoner slave labor in China and spend a small fraction of the money on TV shows to advertise them to small children.

As for the rest, I only know what I saw with my own eyes when I go to a con. Stereotypes exist for a reason. Don't even call them "stereotypes." They're the aggregate of many observations over time.

@Background Pony #49C9

Huh, and they also make shitty games. I just realized the only things Hasbro are good at is comics, cartoons, and uh… 3D animation. All that ancillary satellite stuff, while their main products are trash. I guess maybe they're a marketing company, because they don't have to make good toys, only good adverts. But is any company not a marketing company?

Also uh, cheetoh dust, trilbies, yeah, yeah, whatever you say boss.

@skybrook
This is the way the world perceives the brony fandom, and it's not entirely unjustified. I've seen too much bizarre and creepy behavior at sci-fi and anime cons by obese cheeto-dust-encrusted neckbeards wearing trilbies and Rainbow Dash t-shirts, and they weren't even pony cons. I am not sure I want to know how they behave at cons where there are a lot more of them. I love poni fan work but am afraid even to interact with poni fans other than online.

And yes, Hassenfeld Brothers has always been in the toys and games business.

@Background Pony #49C9

For a toy company, they sure make shitty toys. You sure they aren't about something else?

Anyway, I think you might be making a few rounding errors, because I don't know any little girls who have an entire room full of pony merchandise on display. Certainly haven't seen a little girl's convention where the DHX crew came to speak before a live audience of little girls. I'm not going to just assume the company sells more to little girls. I'm especially not going to assume that adult male fans of MLP are creepy autistic "neckbeards." That's just marketing manipulating us by focusing on the rare, bad examples to trick us into thinking it's the status quo. Your attitude might be shared by certain wealthy people, who are just as vulnerable to the manipulation, but it's not reality.

@skybrook

But I mean, it's kind of insulting to think that kids will like any crap you vomit at them.

That's what Lauren Faust said, and she even got to run a show for a couple of years. But it's all ogre now.

Remember that in the boardroom, perception is reality. This is what Hasbro thinks eight-year-old girls want to watch, and this is what they think will sell more toys. Hasbro thinks little girls like zany madcap goofy faces and hijinks and sight gags that were old when Bonnie Zacherle pitched the first MLP forty years ago. Hasbro does not think little girls like worldbuilding, lore, continuity, coherent story arcs, or humor more sophisticated than goofy faces. And yes, this is pitched to prepubescent girls. Look at the protagonist of a TV show, especially an animated TV show, and you get a pretty good idea of the intended viewer. This isn't always the case—in Japan there are lots of "seinen" animated shows that "deconstruct" the conventions of other genres, but this ain't Japan.

Anyway, what I'm trying to get at here is that Hasbro is a toy company. Their TV shows cost money to make and are a resource sink, but they advertise the toys that make them money. It's always been like this. Good content, like what you get when you put someone like Lauren Faust in charge of a property she'd loved since childhood, is an anomaly. It is not the norm.

Also, it saddens me to be the one who has to inform you that all the MLP:FiM merch the bronies bought over a decade are a rounding error in one month's sales in 2011. Hasbro and the people who usually work for them as show-runners, like Brrg Jrrm, despise us, consider us bad publicity, and want us to go away. Given the behavior of some very visible members of the fandom at some of the cons—I specifically mean the neckbeard immortalized on cell phone video and Youtube, terrifying Nicole Oliver at a panel by asking her creepy question after creepy question about Jon Joseco's "Molestia" character—it is not difficult to understand why. Lauren Faust and, to a lesser extent, Tara Strong, were willing to come to 4chan and engage with the brony fandom. That's another anomaly.

It's not even the first time a studio has seen adult males on the Internet latch onto something they created for a kid audience and reacted with horror. Maybe you've heard of a 1990s animated cartoon from Steven Spielberg called "Animaniacs." It had certain things in common with MLP:FiM. It was quirky and well written with engaging characters and had humor that adults in the room could appreciate while they watched with their kids. It had really good ratings, for animation. So, of course, in the dialup era of the Internet, creepy autistic guys started drawing, writing, and posting porn of the characters. They also organized online to stalk the female voice acting cast. Steven Spielberg, understandably, stepped in personally to pull the plug. And not many studios since then have been willing to create anything that wasn't phoned in, the bare minimum to sell toys for a year or two. The fact that good writers, good artists, good animation, and a stable of good voice actors cost money is only part of their reasoning. We are why we can't have nice things. Press F to pay respects.

@Background Pony #49C9

I do not want little girls to expect to be rewarded for being obnoxious and quirky!

But I mean, it's kind of insulting to think that kids will like any crap you vomit at them. They're not baby birds! And they're not stupid. You want something "for little girls" try Turning Red. That's something I can see a thirteen year old girl going apeshit over.

And the Primary Demographic is a lie. Any corporation will sell to anyone that it can. The assumption that shows about cute young females only appeal to cute young females goes against everything I know of humanity, and the guys marketing this stuff are well aware of it too. Some might try to force it to be for little girls, because they're sexist authoritarian patriarchs like Brrg Jrrm, but the brand will only succeed when they pander to the people who actually like what they make.

I agree the fandom's been dying since around 2012 when they introduced Cadance, but "for little girls" is something only claimed by people who want little girls to be something they're not.

@skybrook
Well, yes, that's absolutely true, but remember the Primary Demographic.

Poni, if I may use that word for the whole shambling popculture frankenstein monster Hasbro unleashed upon an unsuspecting world twelve years ago, is mainly for prepubescent girls, and prepubescent girls' sense of humor ain't exactly Dorothy Parker grade wit. Little kids like zany antics and goofy faces. Sad but true.

Original Flavor poni had Lauren Faust's vision to guide it and ride herd on the writing staff to make sure enough of the material was good enough, and there were enough gags and clever references that would appeal to adults, that parents could watch with their little girls and not be bored out of their minds. Original Flavor poni had a really, really good voice acting cast, too. For about two seasons it was pretty good, before the departure of Lauren Faust and the advent of Brrg Jrrm and the revolving-door stable of writers who'd never watched a single episode before scripting one.

I don't want to knock the current voice acting cast, and I really don't even know much about them or their work… but it is already painfully obvious that G5 is the New Coke of poni. Lauren Faust has no connection to the show, nor anyone else who had any influence over the parts of G4 that we remember fondly. Poni is circling the drain. Really it's been dying since around 2012—just look at the page traffic at 4chan's /mlp/ between 2011 and see how it fell off a cliff in 2012-13 and has reached a point where I suspect the only reason Hiroshimoot keeps the board around is because there's so little traffic that it costs him less to keep it up than it would cost him to hire somebody to change the config files and BALEET it.

Poni is over. Don't cry because it's over. Smile because it happened.

@Background Pony #49C9

Really it's the enshrining of obnoxious behavior that gets to me with regard to this uh… style. Exaggerated follies, making everyone a douchebag and they fight over stupid things and screw up good things, which is supposed to be funny.

Like I can imagine the pitch for this. "Pipp's the annoyingly cheerful one who annoys everyone with her kooky wacky antics. Izzy's the annoyingly cheerful one who annoys everyone with her kooky wacky antics. Hitch is the annoyingly smug one who's so silly he annoys everyone showing off and making wacky pratfalls. Sunny is the wacky and annoying etc… and they all annoy each other and everyone else, with wacky antics and that's the entire show! Sound good?"

"…wacky wacky antic antic. Antic wacky wacky."

"He says you start at 70 million dollars."

@skybrook
Well… it's certainly a lot better than anything I could draw. At the same time, I see some very lazy, very same-y, CalArts facial expressions here, and that makes a bad impression with me.

Oh, that wasn't a mistake. They actually are this bad at drawing.