nostalgic(Please note that I am not defending Ponyville, home of the current My Little Pony line. The denizens of Ponyland would have beat down these little pink pretenders all the way to the glue factory, where they would doubtless be rendered into cheap, glittery paste that didn't actually hold anything together for very long. No. I'm talking about the originals, the Ponies that started with Megan and Firefly and expanded to encompass Spike and Wind Whistler, and oh, it was one hell of a time...)
Girl's toys tend to be pink, and pastel, and visible from space. Girl's toys tend to be anthropomorphic, and look more like cartoons than human beings. Girl's toys tend to be short on projectile weapons and high on castles and the trappings of a romantic fairy tale past that never really existed. These aren't things that most girls get a say in; that's just the way the toys come. And yes, that's what some little girls want, while other little girls would be a lot happier if they were allowed to play with the He-Man guys once in a while. I was fairly equal-opportunity as a kid—I'd play with anything—but my true passion was reserved for the infinitely expanding stable that contained the My Little Pony world.
My first Ponies were Cotton Candy, a pink horse with white speckles on her rear and pink hair, and Minty, a green horse with clover markings and white hair. Minty wound up getting her tail braided by my grandmother (something I allowed almost no one to do, ever), and became the My Little Pony housekeeping service, because she could use her tail to sweep the floors. The herd sort of exploded from there, growing to overflow shelves, fill a large trunk, and generally make me the darling girl of Hasbro's Marketing Department. If they made it, I wanted it. My room was a sea of pink. And yet...
See, during the 1980s, people were so worried about violence in cartoons aimed at boys that they kept all the censors busy watching GI Joe and Masters of the Universe. No one was paying attention to what was happening over on My Little Pony and Friends. Let's start with the special, wherein a pink pegasus named Firefly crossed the rainbow to kidnap a farmgirl named Megan in order to save the rest of the Ponies. Save them from what?
THE DEVIL.
Because, you see, THE DEVIL was harassing the Ponies, largely by kidnapping them and turning them into GIANT FUCKING EVIL DRAGONS. Once they were GIANT FUCKING EVIL DRAGONS, they would go kidnap more Ponies, so that THE DEVIL could turn them into GIANT FUCKING EVIL DRAGONS. His plan, once he had enough GIANT FUCKING EVIL DRAGONS, was to unleash his sack o' dark shit that, y'know, was bad-ass enough to turn magical teleporting unicorns into GFEDs, and bring about eternal midnight. Also, evil. Also, did we mention that the sparkly pink horses were fighting THE DEVIL?
After the My Little Ponies made their entrance by kicking the ass of THE DEVIL, they went on to fight against the evil witches who lived in the Mountain of Gloom. They, like many people, only saw the fact that the Ponies were pink, and never bothered to ask themselves how insanely badass something would have to be to have that little natural camouflage and yet still survive to procreate. My Little Ponies, like poison arrow tree frogs, are brightly colored for a reason, and that reason is to provide an immediate and easily visible warning of the fact that if you mess with them, they will FUCK YOUR SHIT UP.
The witches unleash the Smooze. The Smooze is like "Yo, I am coming to FUCK EVERYONE UP." The Smooze makes its case by eating the Rainbow of Light, which was previously used to defeat, as you may recall, THE DEVIL. So the Smooze is also pretty badass, and messes solidly with the normal "frolic, nap, frolic" schedule in Ponyland. The surviving Ponies travel to Flutter Valley, where they meet up with the Flutter Ponies, who look like they should be easy to kill with a fly-swatter (and are thus, naturally, the baddest badasses in the world). The following occurs:
MEGAN: Rosedust, Queen of the Flutter Ponies, the Smooze fucked everyone up.
ROSEDUST: Sucks to be you.
MEGAN: Please come fuck the Smooze up.
ROSEDUST: No.
MEGAN: Guess we'll just live here, then.
ROSEDUST: Let's fuck up some Smooze!
Then here's a musical number, and then? Smooze-fucking. Big fun.
The cartoon went on from there, and taught an entire generation of girls that it was okay to be pink and pretty and also FUCK SHIT UP. My Little Pony was like Gormenghast with frills. The boys got bloodless battles and exploding helicopters and moral lessons, and bad guys who never went away. My Little Pony got THE FUCKING DEVIL. And anybody they beat down? Stayed beat down.
My Little Pony is FUCKING METAL, yo.
(Also, for a laugh, check out My Little Demon. I have way too many of these hanging in my house.)
March 26 2010, 18:03:12 UTC 7 years ago
March 26 2010, 21:28:43 UTC 7 years ago
March 29 2010, 01:49:10 UTC 7 years ago