My Little Pony: Springier Equine-Ox Bloc

[AlucardNoir]

Hasbro IS a toy company. It's not all they are, but they are a toy company. You say Hasbro isn't the same company they were in 1986? You're right, they're worse. MLP: FIM didn't succeed because the suits at Hasbro were fans of the original toys, it succeeded because the original showrunner, Lauren Faust, was. Look at MLP cartoons like My little pony Newborn Cuties from the early 2000's or the Transformers movie franchise that's still ongoing.

Hasbro doesn't care about anything other then money and they are a toy company first and foremost. If something is making them money it gets to continue - indifferent of how bad it is. If something isn't making them enough money it gets canned indifferent of how good it is, or is perceived to be.

The show is a vehicle to advertise their newest toys. When season two was coming out I was babysitting my niece. She likes the show and I ended up watching seasons 1-5 with her - over a few years. I also got exposed to quite a few Hasbro toys. The first time I saw a Hasbro MLP toy I thought it was a Chinese knock off, that's how dissimilar the models were from the actual show. Hasbro doesn't really care how their show looks, they don't care how good or bad it is, they only care if the target audience is watching it and if they can market their toys to them.

There is no proof of executive meddling trying to have the library destroyed, but executive meddling is what got the new castle in the show and what got the main six their new forms. The library toy was discontinued at around that time. I have no problem imagining a Hasbro exec wanting the library destroyed in show since they were going to discontinue the toy in real life and replace it.

Twilight became an alicorn because of Hasbro meddling, the Crystal ponies happened because of a toy motivated executive mandate, the new castle, the new forms, all exist because Hasbro had a new MLP toy, or toy set, or toyline in mind. MLP:FIM is a toy commercial. The fact that I could watch this show when I was in college with my niece and not want to gouge my eyes out is incidental, the point of the show was to convince girls the age of my niece to ask their parents for MLP toys.

TL;DR Hasbro isn't Disney. They make toys first and cartoons to market them second.

[Rodan56]

TL;DR Hasbro isn't Disney. They make toys first and cartoons to market them second.

All very true, but I think it's important to note as well, and I believe this was your intention in any case, that even if mandated the people behind this show attempted to introduce these concepts and new elements into the story in the best possible manner. They could've just retained the status quo or transitioned into a change that felt safe and normal and unthreatening. But they opted for something different in this respect and I do applaud them for that. They built character first rather than a commercial, even if that was a primary purpose. Same as Sunbow before them. The company may have wanted one thing, but the people working on the project tried to work within that framework to create something of more value than mandated to by their bosses. It's why these shows have endured, these characters have survived, because of those effots by those creative teams.

[SuccubusYuri]

Basically without cliff note memos from internal sources we can't be sure. But on the whole, that stuff is ALL on the writers. Like, fundamentally, to the writers, what is the difference between Hasbro saying "We have a new toy, can you make an episode around that?" and Rick Berman going to the DS9 guys "Hey, Klingons are bad guys again. But we have to use your show to do it." (slash, insert any of the albatrosses Berman threw at DS9).

As far as the writers are concerned, there is no significant difference. If anything, the first is preferred, because there's no leash on the quality of the work. The problems come if the meddiling comes FAR later, like if Hasbro walks up to the team post-production and says "Oh by the way insert this", which some product shill media has done in the past and is what typically fucks them up.

[AlucardNoir]

Basically without cliff note memos from internal sources we can't be sure. But on the whole, that stuff is ALL on the writers. Like, fundamentally, to the writers, what is the difference between Hasbro saying "We have a new toy, can you make an episode around that?" and Rick Berman going to the DS9 guys "Hey, Klingons are bad guys again. But we have to use your show to do it." (slash, insert any of the albatrosses Berman threw at DS9).

As far as the writers are concerned, there is no significant difference. If anything, the first is preferred, because there's no leash on the quality of the work. The problems come if the meddiling comes FAR later, like if Hasbro walks up to the team post-production and says "Oh by the way insert this", which some product shill media has done in the past and is what typically fucks them up.

God dammit Yuri, they're writers not miracle workers. I mean, there is only that much you can do with a mandate when the mandate is... well, that.

[SuccubusYuri]

It's...still not special when the boss tells you to include X in the story.

[AllanO]

TL;DR Hasbro isn't Disney. They make toys first and cartoons to market them second.

Note you seem to have two very different theses you are arguing for and from.

One is that MLP:FM is heavily determined by its nature as a franchise for selling toys with lots of executive mandates and the needs of marketing determining the existence (but not necessarily the placement or presentation etc.) of story elements. Fair enough, hard to prove one way or another the exact mix but something like this is obviously true. However that means those elements can be doing lots of different things, they can be driving a superficial plot or a complicated plot or being symbolic or establishing characterization etc. on top of moving merch. So while true this is not enough to justify your claim that people are reading too much into the tree house destruction.

Your other thesis is that at least in some cases the marketing and toy promotion motives exist in the absence of any other motivation and to read any story telling, role in the plot, symbolic, character development etc. in them is a category mistake. Specifically you to seem to claim that all that can be said about the destruction of Twilight's tree house is that they needed to sell a new play set, not that it serves to establish stakes or give a reason for Twilight to fight harder or anything even on the most superficial level. Some story elements in some productions are like this, a total non sequitur that has no other meaning or function than marketing. However I don't think this works as an interpretation of the scene, but it would justify the idea that reading anything else into the scene would be reading too much into it...

[AlucardNoir]

The way I see it this is a toy commercial first, second and third. It's a well written toy commercial that has pretty enough graphics and a complex enough plot to be able to stand on it's own - and as such be exempt from the typical scrutiny of government regulatory bodies. BUT, it's still a toy commercial. To analyze this as if it were any other show is disingenuous. This isn't any other show, it was never intended as a stand alone show, it was always intended as a toy commercial and as such should be analysed at least partially from that perspective.

Think about it like this, the only reason this show is so much better then all the previous iterations of MLP cartoons is because Lauren Faust was three things, an accomplished writer, a good cartoonist and a fan of the original toys. But she never got the money she did to make the first season of this because any of that. She got that sweet, sweet Hasbro toy money because a Hasbro exec thought a new cartoon would help popularize their MLP toy line and new character designs were something they were already looking for. That's not to say the show doesn't at the very least have it's good parts, or it's strong episodes but at the end of the day, this show lives and dies not on how popular it is with girls 3 and up but on how well the toys it's based on are selling.

Since I doubt most people here, me included would describe themselves as bronies let me use a Transformers analogy. Beast Wars is wildly touted as one of the best if not the best Transformers animated series. The sole reason it exists is because Hasbro saw it could get away with a half an hour toy commercial in the 80's and since regular Transformers toy sales were in a slum sought to reenvision the toy line, the highly successful Beast wars cartoon series was just a marketing ploy for this new reenvisioned Transformers toy line. To ignore the merits of the show because it was a half hour toy commercial would be wrong. To ignore the fact that every episode is nothing more then 22 minutes of advertising you, me and and a lot of people would happily pay to watch is worse. In select cases like that of The Transformers: The movie we are fortunate enough to know exactly how much executive meddling there was with the plot. For most other series we have no idea. Under such conditions we need to be careful when interpreting a work of art and even more so when giving praise to the men and women responsible for it's existance.

Some story elements in some productions are like this, a total non sequitur that has no other meaning or function than marketing.

When we are talking about works such as MLP:FIM I think it's important we always remember that at the end of the day we are talking about a 22 minute toy commercial and that we can't take anything at face value when it comes to it's plot, characters or development. It may seam easy to point to the new forms the main six take at the end of the episode or to Twilight's new castle as corporate mandates but the show as a hole is a toy commercial. Everything, EVERYTHING in the show is designed to make little girls want to buy the MLP toys. There is no magical line in the sand where the commercial ends and the show begins. This isn't a legal drama where one of the lawyers just "happens" to order a Jack Daniels at the bar. Each individual episode of MLP: FIM is a toy commercial.

[CareerKnight]

TL;DR Hasbro isn't Disney. They make toys first and cartoons to market them second.

All very true, but I think it's important to note as well, and I believe this was your intention in any case,

Since this all started with Alacard complaining about people examining the story elements of twilight's home being destroyed, I don't think that can be assumed.

The way I see it this is a toy commercial first, second and third. It's a well written toy commercial that has pretty enough graphics and a complex enough plot to be able to stand on it's own - and as such be exempt from the typical scrutiny of government regulatory bodies. BUT, it's still a toy commercial.

And this is a good reason why I find your argument so weak. Its the genetic fallacy aka the logical fallacy: fallacy of origins. So what if Hasbro mainly funded the show to sell toys (Chuck addressed this very thing in his first review of mlp)? You could apply this line of thinking to any media since they are all arguably trying to sell you something but that line of thought won't really get you anywhere besides being needlessly cynical. Let me restate, just because Hasbro is a business (and therefore interested in making loads of money) and occasionally made requests to the show to include some new toy doesn't mean the writers didn't care/put no effort into the implementation or didn't do it in a way that even strengthened the story/added depth. Heck you can't even assume every new thing was put in for the sake of a new toy as it sometimes happens in reverse (the show comes up with something new and they then make a toy). Unless you have behind the scenes info its hard to tell when this happens... except when no toy appears (for example with Transmutate and the original Arcee).

In addition your whole stance on Hasbro doesn't really hold up to scrutiny. You have argued that they don't give a damn about the quality of the shows they produce but, to go back to Beast Wars again, they deliberately sought out Bob Forward and Larry Ditillio to be the head writers for the show cause they wanted a strong story. They didn't come to Hasbro cause they wanted to make a Transformers show, neither of them knew anything about the franchise. Hasbro went after them.

So to sum up, art and success often come from overcoming obstacles. So even if Hasbro didn't give a damn about the quality and every new thing was mandated by them that would make the writing in the show even more impressive, not require an asterisk at the end of any discussion of it.

[BunBun299]

I would describe myself as a Brony. In fact, I'm a 38 year old man, and am actively wearing a Pinkie Pie T-Shirt.

[Deledrius]

To analyze this as if it were any other show is disingenuous.

In what way does this differ from any other commercial television show?