My Little Pony / YMMV

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Entire Franchise

Accidental Innuendo:
- Online product descriptions of the toys put certain items in quotation marks to indicate that they can't actually be used as intended (e.g. plastic cake). (This probably has something to do with avoiding lawsuits.) A description with several words in quotation marks may end up sounding like a Hurricane of Euphemisms.
- Several G1 ponies have unusual names such as Morning Glory, Kiss and Tell, Swinger, and Pillow Talk.
- In G1 media (especially the cartoons), teleporting was referred to as "winking". The problem is that the term has a sexual meaning when describing horses. This might be why future generations just refer to it as teleportation.
Adaptation Displacement: While the series is Merchandise-Driven, many people believe the toys are based off the cartoons. In reality, up until My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic the toys were the source while the cartoons were adaptations.
Audience-Alienating Era:
- G2 for the toys. The characters received new horse-like designs similar to Breyers, but fans really hated this. The generation only lasted a few years and never received an animated adaptation of any sort (though it had comics and a video game).
- G3 for the cartoon, though some include G1's Tales. Both introduced fluffier, more Slice of Life works that turned off fans who prefer the action of the previous works.
Audience-Alienating Premise:
- This is why G2 sold so poorly. It retooled the characters into looking more like full-size horses than cute little ponies, and as a result, didn't last for more than a year or so in the US (though it went over somewhat better in various European nations], where it went on for a few more years). The next retool returned the ponies to something close to their original look, and was much more popular as a result.
- G3.5 fell into this, because although it retained an assortment of popular characters from G3, it switched over to a heavily stylized look which didn't even particularly resemble any kind of equine, with short muzzles and hooves nearly the size of their heads - the Unintentional Uncanny Valley "Newborn Cuties" spin-off took this even further, resembling colorful human babies with some horse traits. Not helping matters is that the tail end of G3 proper suddenly switched from the franchise's typical large cast to a Minimalist Cast, which G3.5 largely retained, disappointing those who wanted other ponies. The retool was unpopular everywhere, and it contributed to Filly Funtasia's displacement of the franchise in Germany.
Broken Base:
- Between the generations. The most common is My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic vs Any-other-gen-in-the-series; several bronies consider themselves only fans of G4, and not My Little Pony fans. Though anything post-G1 is guaranteed to get hate from even the classic fans
- Though G3 has a niche fandom with those drawn to the series since My Little Pony Tales for its Slice of Life format, who considers anything prior to Tales unwatchable and are against the direction taken by G4 Season 2.
- Even G4 has its own broken base. Again, it's a battle between those who love the show for being hip and for its pop-culture references (drew there due to Lauren Faust helming the series) versus existing viewers from G3 who love the franchise for its Slice of Life format. It gets worse than that. What about the fans who loathe the toy line and all toy ponies vs the ones who want them to appear in the cartoon?
- There is one between the fans who only pay attention to the toys and dislike (or are at least neutral on) the adaptations, fans who like the cartoons but don't care for the toys, and fans who like both.
Common Knowledge: Bronies in particular often refer to Tales as "G2". That is incorrect. Generations come from the toys, not the cartoons. Tales predates G2 by several years and is very obviously set in G1 due to the character designs. G2 was in fact the only generation not to have a cartoon, though it did get comics and a video game.
Fan Community Nickname: "Pegasis(ter)" or "Filly" for female fans and "Brony" for... well, that title actually appears to have several different meanings. Most often it means either "male FiM-fan" or just "FiM-fan" (that is, a FiM-fan of either gender), other times "male MLP-fan" (that is, any male MLP-fan, regardless of whether he is mostly into FiM or any other incarnation of the franchise), or, finally, simply "MLP-fan" (which of course means a fan of any MLP incarnation and of either gender).
Fandom Rivalry:
- With Care Bears and occasionally Transformers.
- With Breyer horses, which is another popular brand of horse toys. Breyers however strives for realism which puts fans at odds with the very fantasy-geared My Little Pony.
Fan Nickname:
- "Unipeg": A formerly popular term for Winged Unicorns until G4. When Friendship is Magic became popular, fans switched to "alicorn" (which actually refers to the material unicorn horns are made of), which ended up Ascended Fanon. "Unipeg" still sometimes pops up when referring to G1-G3. "Pegicorn" was also an accepted term.
- "Original Six": The original six G1 ponies: Butterscotch, Blue Belle, Minty, Snuzzle, Cotton Candy, and Blossom.
- Due to Values Dissonance, some people call Gypsy from the UK comics "Tarot" instead.
- "Core 7": The seven ponies that became the main characters during late G3 and G3.5: Pinkie Pie, Rainbow Dash, Scootaloo, Sweetie Belle, Cheerilee, Starsong, and Toola Roola.
- All the generation lines are technically fan nicknames. G3.5 was never officially anything but a Soft Reboot but it was noticeably different enough to be given its own moniker. Tales is not "G1.5" because only the cartoon adaptation was different, not the toys (which resembled normal G1 toys).
- Subverted with a few G3 ponies released through non-standard methods such as cons or mail order. They're referred to by simple monikers like "Egyptian Pony" or "Breast Cancer Awareness Pony".
Friendly Fandoms:
- My Little Pony fans and Transformers fans. To a lesser extent, with G.I. Joe. Crossover gags between the three are very common and given all three series originated on television at about the same time, it was natural for fans of one series to follow one of the others. Fringe extremists aside, the trio had good relations in the 1980s that persist to this day. Helps they're all owned by the same parent company.
- My Little Pony fans tend to get along with fans of other colorful 1980s kids properties such as Rainbow Brite and Care Bears (though there's also a rivalry with the latter).
Hilarious in Hindsight: The first series on TV Tropes to have its own page of it.
Mainstream Obscurity: While Friendship is Magic is a worldwide phenomenon that's actually watched, good luck finding non-MLP fans who can name any pre-FiM characters (though a good percentage of the FiM cast were named after pre-FiM characters). The characters are just known as interchangeably cutesy horses.
Misaimed Merchandising: The Merch includes a T-shirt that features G1 ponies but mentions G4's Periphery Demographic, leaving both generations' fans confused.
My Real Daddy: American illustrator and designer Bonnie Zacherle, sculptor Charles Muenchinger, and manager Steve D'Aguanno are the creators of My Little Pony. Fans of G4 will tell you the only Pony creator that matters is Lauren Faust. There have been attempts to avert this though. Fans have even ponified Bonnie as an alicorn, much like Lauren made an alicorn OC of herself, which fans embraced. It seems more G4-only fans are accepting Bonnie.
Obscure Popularity: The series is a Cash-Cow Franchise dating back over thirty years but is seldom referenced out of Shallow Parody My Little Phony parodies. It also has a large, active fandom of both toy collectors and adaptation fans but it's in the shadow of other toy collector fandoms like Barbie. The fourth generation escaped this to a degree, but the popular first and third generations are still obscure to the point where few can name a single pony.
Older Than They Think:
- My Pretty Pony was the prototype for the series and was released a full year before the introduction of its more famous version. The original model's design was used for Applejack and it came with a "baby pony" that would later become Butterscotch. The second model's design resembled Posey in terms of colors.
- The term "Cutie Mark" originated from G3 but didn't become mainstream until G4. Most fans called it by its original term, "symbol", until Friendship is Magic.
Popularity Polynomial: Was huge in The '80s, dwindled in The '90s (especially due to G2's controversial redesigns), came back with G3, died the same gen due to G3.5, and made a huge resurgence of popularity on par with the original fad due to G4. Only time will tell what happens with G5.
Sequel Displacement: In G1 most of the popular ponies are from Year Two to Year Five. The original six ponies are surprisingly not too popular and appear in almost no adaptations or merchandise (with the exception being Cotton Candy, who cameoed in Rescue From Midnight Castle, was a major character in the British comics, and appeared in several books).
Sweetness Aversion: What with the technicolour ponies in vibrant settings and motion, advocating friendship with sentiments, lessons, and songs, giving aesops in the form of a letter intended for Princess Celestia^note.
Values Dissonance:
- G1 had a pony modeled after Romani stereotypes, predictably named 'Gypsy', which nowadays is considered a slur. This character only appeared in the comics and her toy was only sold in Europe.
- Also from G1, one of the Big Brothers was named Wigwam, this time embodying Native American stereotypes. He wears a headdress, has a supposedly friendly rivalry with Tex (the cowboy pony), and his coat is orange, almost red. While FIM itself did use some ethnic stereotypes, ponies like Gypsy and Wigwam would never even think of being made today.
Viewer Gender Confusion:
- Infamously common with the original G1 version of Applejack, due to her boyish name, deep voice, and... affection towards other Ponies. Also, some of the translations change characters to male to get a more even gender balance.
- Several other ponies with Tomboyish Voices and lower voices have been mistaken for male, such as Gusty.
- The Big Brother ponies can also be mistaken for girls, as they were pastel colored and looked almost exactly like the girls at first glance.
- The G2 ponies use the exact same mould for both male and female ponies, which can be confusing for the casual observer. It would often take the backcard stories to confirm the gender of them, as the names (unless they had "Princess" or "Prince" in front of them) could go either way, and can even change gender through generations.

Fandom

Ensemble Dark Horse:
- More like an "Ensemble Leaf-green Unicorn", though. Her name is Mimic. There is no evidence to suggest that she is the rarest Pony ^note, but she is the most sought-after. Just look her up on eBay.
- Firefly is pretty much the G1 pony according to fans.
- Munchy is a G1 Twice as Fancy pony famous for her bizarre symbol, a bunch of hot dogs, burgers, and pickles, and even stranger back card story involving her transmogrifying sports equipment into food. Because of this she's popular among G1 collectors and the general fandom, usually in an ironic sense.
- Princess Silverswirl is by far the most popular G2 pony due to her mystical looking design. Even G4 fans have taken a liking to her and sometimes use her in their fanworks.
- G3's version of Minty, Pinkie Pie, Wysteria, Star Catcher, and Kimono are likely the most popular G3 ponies thanks to their portrayals in the cartoons.
Fan-Preferred Couple:
- Amongst G1 fans, there are a lot of Wind Whistler x Fizzy and Glory x Moondancer shippers.
- Amongst G3 fans, Minty x Pinkie Pie and Star Catcher x Skywishes get the most fanworks.
Older Than They Think: The custom of "ponifying" every single little thing was extremely popular in G3 and only became bigger with G4.
- The fandom in general, really. Collectors have been into the Franchise since (almost) the beginning, but Friendship Is Magic was the first time they got major attention.
Popular with Furries: Historically the franchise contains a lot of horse furries. Friendship Is Magic is when the divide began. Many of the newer fans introduced with G4 dislike furries, and in turn a lot of furries began disliking My Little Pony. There's still a lot of people who identify as both bronies and furries, though.
Sliding Scale of Social Satisfaction: Categorized as "Sweet with a Helping of Sour".
They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
- The much-maligned G2 line. Just see for yourself. (For the record, G1 is all the early ponies up to approximately the 10th anniversary or so. G2 was the revival, and G3 is when people stopped complaining.)
- The G3 line itself later received a makeover and fans were... not thrilled with it. Even later, this photograph from Toy Fair popped up, and while the Ponies are in yet another redesign, their color schemes were surprisingly similar to those of some G1 characters, and the Fandom was quiet. Then the news of Friendship is Magic^noteItself an example. arrived and the rest is history.
- The change to the "Core 7" during G3 is very much disliked^note. So is the lack of male ponies, unlike G1 and G2.
- Some post-season 2 episodes of FiM are pretty much this to some Slice-of-Life fans.
- Many long-time fans dislike the way ponies look in Friendship Is Magic. They barely resemble ponies due to the stylized designs, It's not uncommon to hear people describe the ponies as looking more like ugly-looking Chihuahuas than horses.

YMMV / My Little Pony

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