#this would have to be g4.5 i think

[captainzigo]

Luster Dawn should've been the first villain of G5

Opaline is fine, but Luster is WAY more interesting as a potential villain

Then again, maybe I'm just salty over Luster being forgotten about after G4

now personally i don't think she is evil. i think she's just a loser. also i dont know if timelines line up for her to be a bad guy in g5 unless she is extremely old, or immortal somehow.

however

that would be awesome if she was evil. or at least misguided. i think her evil plan / evil ways would be unethical friendship experiments. like forcing people to be friends to power a laser. figuring out how to put friendship in jars for later. studying friendship in a lab and putting the test subjects through like science rat mazes. kidnapping people to study their friendship. using friendship magic for evil stuff. making people do weird shit to harvest their friendship more efficiently. that kind of thing.

and in the process of defeating her people would have to like convince her subjects that their contrived super friendships aren't healthy. or that friendship is cooler when a machine isn't sucking it out to use for evil. or even that their friendships are cool, but that they're being used to hurt people.

at first our heroes might even help her because some other threat vaguely justifies having more powerful friendship magic. and the experiments would start out being ethical and kinda cool. like learning how to be better friends by putting it to the test in a lab. or just general social studies. but the whole time leading up to them realizing she is evil, she'd always be ready to take things too far.

she would be unstoppable by even super friendship magic because she would have some of her own. she would keep a few friends of hers in a bunker somewhere to power her with their friendship. she would keep them in a plato's cave truman show style situation. every so often she would visit them to foster their relationship and like give them a bunch of gifts and love. and they would have no idea what she did when she left their cave. a little friendship cult to make her immune to the the-elements-of-harmony-were-just-symbols style friendship blasts even when all else fails.

she's described as twilight's best student, and that's certainly not because of her friendship skills. and if we pretend that that must include starlight, then that probably makes her the most powerful unicorn of all time. so if she goes super freak style with the friendship alchemy then she'd be unstoppable. beating her would mean they'd have to go rainbow power again but this time it's like nebula power, or aurora borealis power or something like that. which would be great for toys

I’ve always thought it would be cool to have a my little pony villain who was like doing friendship, the right way, and had all of this friendship magic stuff as a result, but was also bad and evil. and like the whole lesson can be like some people can be really good friends or even do really nice things and even be really nice people but still do bad things and stuff like that. a lesson I’m sure they’ve had before, but they’ve been going for nine seasons. What lessons haven’t they had. I think luster is a good candidate for this role based on her like two lines from the finale lol.

[hpmort]

I am legitimately baffled that no one has made a PMV for this, either for shipping stuff or just best pony stuff.

Also, there is no (Watsonian, the Doylist is that no one noticed) heterosexual explanation for this song, or at least its singer.

Also, even aside from the glaring lack of PMVs, the only uploads of this video are shoddy quality and/or YouTube Kids-friendly, and the one lyrics video I could find misspelled many words.

[painttasticpony]

TMI Tuesday: What do you think of G4.5 and G5?

I really only watched G4 and the G5 movie. G4 is pretty much my childhood so I stand by it and I probably always will, but G5s lore upsets me. They should've just made something separate without trying to connect it to G4. I think it's ridiculous that everything would fall apart without the mane 6 so easily. Therefore, I don't really consider G5 Canon (to Paintiverse at least). Aside from that, the movie was actually pretty good. Sunny is cute, I just don't really like G5 as a whole. Now to those who have G5 blogs, it's no hate towards you. I just personally wouldn't rather associate it with my universe, I'd rather build my own future for equestria than go with G5.

[ponyguru]

Hi, can you help me? I really like my little pony dolls and ive been wanting to start a collection of all the generation four gals if I can (i would settle for the mane 6 and a few others), however i have no idea where to start or how to find any, and on amazon i have only find weird knockoffs that have hard silicon hair. I also want to have an archive of all thr launched dolls, both mlp and equestria girls, but again, i have no idea how to research or really do any of this, do id really really like some pointers, or if you dont have any, for you to point me to someone who does.

Hi! Oh gosh, sorry for the late reply!! I'm not great about checking my Asks, and I only seem to get notifications for messages about half the time! >.>

So... it's a funny thing! Because when I was building most of my early collection in the early 2000s, the way to do it was to buy big eBay lots, and sell/trade any extras you didn't want from there. But now with eBay prices skyrocketing, and more folks getting into collecting/flipping pony lots, prices are all over the place - mostly ridiculously high.

Prices for G4, at least, seem to still be pretty low! More people are selling than buying. So if you're looking for G4 ponies, I highly recommend looking for eBay lots. I've still gotten some good deals there, even on harder-to-find ponies like G4 Minty. There's a fair amount of people just flipping them from the thrift, or selling childhood/post-fandom collections, so you can get good prices for them still. (G1 is less so! And G3 seems to be creeping up as well.)

I also suggest Mercari! Mercari is, unlike Facebook pickups, generally assumed to be for mailing items, so although there's some stiff competition, you can still find good deals! You can use that as an app or on their website! (If you are good at IRL stuff, you could always try the thrift stores yourself, or try local flea markets/toy fairs/Facebook sales! G4 is plentiful among toy collectors, especially those who trade secondhand, and you might be able to get some deals!)

I'm curious about what hard silicon hair ponies you're finding! I took a quick look, and I think you may be seeing the Ponyville/blind bag figures, which are minis. When I look on Amazon I still see some G4 stuff, but it's mostly 3rd party sellers, so it's very expensive. I still scroll through the Amazon Warehouse from time to time - you won't find older ponies, but if there's any newer releases you like, they may have those a little cheaper with a banged-up box! I found a cool Cutie Mark Crew set for $6 on there recently!

The most well-organized and comprehensive site, at least for the first few years, was Strawberry Reef (here's her release list by year), but I believe she fell behind in the past few years, since it only goes up to 2013. (She may have skipped G4 in favor of G4.5? I see links for G5 stuff there now.) MLP Merch is keeping up admirably, but I'm not sure if they have a chronological guide. There may also be some stuff in the various MLP wikis, but I haven't done a lot of research on that yet!

I suggest eBay by and large, but I also suggest checking out the MLPArena - it's one of the last remaining pony forums, and there's still folks selling and trading there! MLPTP is also still going, but they seem to be less busy than the Arena. I'd suggest Facebook, but the crowd there is Real Bad, and a lot of the folks who've become popular there were previously banned for being scammers on the forums. So if you join MLP groups there, be wary, and pay very strictly with Paypal goods/services - no friends/family, no Facebook pay. (Neither will give you ANY level of buyer protection!) There was once a feedback group for Facebook, but it turned out that it was run by some of the same scammers who got banned from the forums.

I'm trying to think of what else to say - I've found some nice and cheap G4 ponies on instagram flash sales, and I've also found some overpriced G4 ponies there! It really just depends on who's selling and how popular/packed their sales are. Jupiter.magia, for example, is a very popular, friendly seller; I got some great basic G4 ponies from her! But her sales posts would get claims within like .05 seconds. Ditto for Kristwoforks, a popular thrift reseller. She does a lot of sales, and has a LOT of fans! (And then of course, there's the classic "super popular seller who everyone loves but will occasionally scam people out of their items and attack anyone who speaks up", which I've personally run into in the past, as well as witnessed my friends get scammed by multiple Big Names.) Instagram, sadly, isn't a real sales platform, so there's no protection if things go south; your only recourse is through Paypal, and there's no real way to leave feedback, so scammers thrive there, as they do on Facebook. You have to be very careful and mindful of your claim deadlines, so I generally warn beginning buyers away from there until they gain a little more experience, and can pick up when someone's giving off bad vibes. I've found most of my IG buys from people I follow; they'll say, 'oh I got this last week from X!' so I'll go follow X's page for their next sale; or Y will get their sale post boosted on my friend's story, so I'll go check them out too. It's much safer IMO to find sellers by this sort of word-of-mouth, because then you know someone who had at least one good interaction with them.

I gave you a LOT of information here, ha ha, but I'm doing my best to be comprehensive! You've decided to collect G4 at a very good time, because with the end of the series, folks are losing interest, and selling off their collections. Not everyone of course, but quite a few! I wish you the best of luck in your future collecting adventures! And feel free to pop back around if you get stuck or have more questions!

[yodawgiheardyoulikeponies]

04/12/2021: Pony Acquisition Post 466: G4.5 Pony Life “Budget” Ponies: Gusty, Sunset Shimmer, and Rarity!

Hooray! When I was in a conference, my parents went shopping, and my dad went surprise pony hunting and came back with these for me! He’s the best!

These are really cute figures found at 5 below. They’re about $3 each, and really cute for the price. Their only packaging is these small, recyclable tags with paper strings attached. Maybe that also lowered the price on these guys!

These ladies are designed to be budget figures, so yes, they only have one color in their hair, and less detailed symbols, but honestly I think they did a really great job on these! Their hair is all different from each other, and their eyes are really nicely done!

Of course, it’s really cool that we get some new characters! This is my first G4.5 Pony Life Sunset Shimmer, and they did a really nice job on making her unique hair shape come to life, and I love her colors.

And we got a G1 Throwback: Gusty!!! She is not a pure white as I thought she would be, as compared to Rarity, she has a slight blue/green tinge to her. I love her unique hairstyle and it’s lovely to see a G1 pony come back to life!

Fizzy is also available, and I really want her, but my dad said they didn’t have her, and felt bad only getting me the two ponies, so he got me Rarity instead (Bless his heart). I love her unique hairstyle and her really cool eyes!

These guys have posable tails and ball-joint heads too! I’m so surprised how nice they made these ladies!

Pray I find Fizzy!

[silverloke]

Show your ponies!!!

but they’re so many D:

the main cabinet, gonna have to rearrange it a bit, take out the 25 and 35 yr repro packages and stuff in more 80′s ponies/G1 and there’s plenty of space in the bottom right just need to add another shelf for them to stand on but you know, procrastinating

playsets and more ponies waiting to get shoved inside the cabinet also 2 fakies i know i didnt bother to remove them for the photo

this huge-ass playset occupying my floor because i havent found something big enough to put it on but i have plans of when i do, wanna add grass and trees and shrubberies and lights, fill the pool with coloured glass marbles etc. also a few more loose ponies that also haven’t gotten to move in with the others

spot the unopened g4 playset castle in the background for comparison of new vs old style on things?

even more loose ponies also a few doublettes that i’ve been meaning to sell for like 3 years but procrastination is a bitch

the new repro ponies found in stores and webshops (with prettiest Stranger Things upside down applejack in the middle there) as well as even more 80′s ponies that have been temporarily stashed here. i have even more 80′s ponies scattered around but cba to find them all

the g3′s and the keyper horses and cute fakies oh and i just noticed the g4 when uploading the pic

the g4′s and the one lonely g2 at the far left side. i don’t think i’m gonna buy any of the brand new g5 (or g4.5 as they should be?)

ughh i don’t even wanna think of how much money i’ve put on this collection 🙈 and i know i should sort them out and sell a bunch like ice crystal and fireball while the prices are still insanely high, but...... that’s difficult to do. oh also just noticed you can’t even see my most expensive pony in the pics lmao fail

anyways this is just a small collection compared to what others have.... my dream would be having a pony made in India or any South American country <3 (but like hell i could afford it together with the current shipping prices lol... BUT IF ANYONE WANTS TO DONATE ONE, HIT ME UP)

[wolfman-al]

Good bye horses and my lack of activity

So it is over. Last night the series finale of "My Little Pony - Friendship is Magic" aired. Nine seasons, 9 years and 2 days - from 10.10.2010 to 12.10.2019. What a ride. What a run we had. I got on the ride in February 2011, a few month into the series, and for the last 9 years, almost a quater of my life, the ponies have been a part of my life. So it is hard to let go. It hurts. I´m going to miss our girls. I watched the finale streamed from 2:00 am to 3:30 am and at the end I was crying like a baby. I had to take a long walk in the middle of the night to collect my thoughts before going to bed. So nine years of FIM, what can we take from it? Well, first of all the TV-show may be over, but there is still the comic and the manga. The comic just announced that they will brand themsleves as season ten, which I find a little presumptuous. Don´t get me wrong I read the comics and like them mostly, but they have been quite bad at times, story and art wise. Also sometimes characters act out of character, stuff is added that doesn´t fit in the universe and the lore of Equestria. I don´t consider the comics canonical to the show. So if they want to be season 10 (and beyond) they really have to step up their game. The Manga however is brilliant. It really has that season 2 feeling which was IMO the best season of the show. I really can´t wait to see what they will add here. What makes me really sad is also that I feel like many opportunities in the show were wasted, you had promising plotlines that were abandoned while completely pointless ideas that led nowhere were followed through. And there is the issue of zombification, which comes even to the best shows, the last Seasons really showed some signs of zombiefication. So in a way I am glad that it endet before it turned into a shambeling husk of a show like Spongebob Squarepants or the Simpsons. And well, I don´t think this is the end, the fandom will live on. The fans will keep the show alive, with fanart, comics and stories. I mean look at Star Trek, or other franchises where the fandorm survived for decades without any new media. Well and then there is G5. We know literally nothing about it, aside from some leaks of a very early development phase. Some people say that it will be more adult oriented than G4, some the opposite, that it will be quite dumb baby entertainment like G3.5. Supposedly it stars new incarnations of the M6, so its quite possible more of something like G4.5. However, there are some people who believe that G5 could bring back the fandom to its glory days of ca.2011 to 2014. I doubt that. FIM and the brony fandom was a lightning in a bottle, a once in a lifetime thing that is impossible to repeat. Being part of this fandom was a stroke of luck, being at the right time at the right place. Its a popcultural experience that happens once every decade, like being at Woodstock in 1969 or seeing Star wars in cimena back in 1977. I can say that I had the luck to be in this fandom from the beginning and, I for one, will stay in it untill my drawing breath. You can take the ponies off the TV, but you can´t take them out of me. Anyway lets see what the future brings for us and our ponygirls. No matter if G5 will be good or a dud, G4, Friendship is magic was a hell of a ride, especially the early fandom and I am gratefull that I was, that I AM a part of it. So after that long winding horse show related ramble I would like to excuse myself fo the lack of activity in the last weeks. Work was and still is hell at the moment. There was a new law introduced and that dropped a shitload of extra work onto us. I have to work overtime almost every day and at night I´m too shagged out to draw, work on art or upload stuff. I really hope this changes soon, but I think its probably untill November untill stuff gets back to a normal level. I still have a lot of Photos from the Frankfurt motor show to upload and some comissions to draw. Also I need to help a friend of mine with his comic project. So much to do so little time. Again sorry for the lack of new content from me.

[i-am-literally-deranged]

Definitely production limbo. At the tail end of g3/.5 they had started to sell off in stores a bit. Like, they were fading into obscurity on the toy shelves just a bit. When g4 dropped it came with a huge boom of new toys hitting the shelves, and g4 picked up speed pretty quickly. To be fair though, g4 was sort of a phenomenon as we all know. This same sort of shaky transition was kind if how it went between g3 and 3.5 I really only distinctly remember one line of toys being distinctly .5 branded, and g3 toys were definitely still on the shelves. They were still releasing g3 toys actively until right before the g4 drop where they (as far as I know) stopped production and sold off what they had before absolutely bombing stores with the new g4 stuff. Although, while I wasn't exactly.... Super AWARE for the switch between g2 and g3 (on account of being a toddler at the time. Which IS the prime age for intaking My Little Pony, but is unfortunately also not great for like. Hard market knowledge) I can tell you confidently that they continued to sell g2 toys WELL into g3. Actually a significant chunk of my collection are g2 toys that I bought AFTER the switch to g3 in 2003.

You'd think that after the huge success of g4 that they would want to replicate that kind of success and do something similar marketing wise, but also maybe it's BECAUSE of that success that they aren't willing to make another clean break and hard reboot the way they did before. But what really feels to me like a lack of confidence in their product is the weird scattered quality this new generation has. It feels like they can't make up their mind on if it's a totally new generation, or if this is g4.5. with EVERY previous generation they've come out the doors with a heavty toy drop, and a series. But g5 keeps futzing around with like the comic, and the shorts, and basically a lot of stalling to keep from having to actually commit to BEING a whole new generation. The toy situation looks a LOT to me like the change between g3 and 3.5

There's a visible lack of direction that's really concerning.

im curious, do i have any followers old enough to remember the shift from g3 to g4 my little pony in its merchandising? i ask because g5's been in "full swing" since september 2021 and so far its been sporatic at best with its release. were almost a full year in and weve gotten a movie, shorts that are just humor based, the comics with the lore that have been on somewhat of a hiatus for almost 2 months (after only 2 were released i might add) and one special that teased an actual Story

not to mention in stores theyir presence is near nonexistent, in a buncha stores ive been to they keep getting shoved further and further back behind rainbow high and barbie and when i do find them, theres a chance theyll still be g4 toys and i cant tell if theyre leftovers or if theyre new because hasbro is STILL releasing g4 stuff.

did this happen post g3/g3.5?? or is g5 in some sort of production limbo where its just kinda..There but not really...?