 Ponyville Confidential colon the history and culture of Milo Pony comma 1981 dash 2016 and if I could have gone on from there like being a study of a certain pop culture franchise da-da-da but this title was long enough I think. This is a history and scholarly study of Milo Pony with an emphasis on the television series my little pony friendship is magic and the Milo Pony Equestria Girls movies and now we're going to move on to one of the more controversial aspects of the book in which I make several references to the fact that rarity is the best and yeah there's been some controversy about this mostly coming from bronies and not just because the accepted terminology among the fandom which again I do not belong to would be rarity is best pony not rarity is the best you know they don't like it when you change their wording the rarity in question is of course the unicorn from friendship is magic and the biped from the equestria girls movies the character name of rarity was first used in the 2006 film and video game the runaway rainbow part of what's referred to as my little pony generation three and she's fine but she's not the best the character name and species was retained for generation four and the series friendship is magic but it was otherwise entirely revamped and the show's overarching mythos rarity represents the element of generosity and this is the typo written introduction on Hasbro's meet the ponies page from 2010 and I'm not convinced of the person who wrote it really knew much about the character no one is really sure where the show was going but I will read it to you here rarity could possibly be the most beautiful unicorn you've ever seen as she prances down the street her coat gleaming pure white and her royal purple curls bouncing every pony's head turns and boy does she love it a talented fashion designer her biggest dream is to one day design for Princess Celestia which is not true that's not her biggest dream at first glance she may seem like a typical debutante spelled incorrectly vain and entitled but it's simply not so generous to a fault she's spelled incorrectly believes so badly that the world should be beautiful that she's all too eager to get to simply give away the designs she works so hard on and to offer any pony a custom rarity makeover which is not true either she's actually like a strong businesswoman but and should you make it through one improper use of semi-colon you'll learn that rarity's greatest beauty is her heart and now this is a rebuttal from friendship magic creator Lauren Faust to an incredibly tone-deaf article on the Ms. Magazine blog accusing the series of being homophobic racist and smart shaming by a writer who admitted that she'd never actually watched the show indeed everything she knew about it was from the Hasbro ponies page that I just quoted from as Faust mentions rarity is a business owner starting with her carousel boutique in her hometown of Ponyville by the shows currently running eighth season she's also opened locations in the big cities of Cantaloupe and Maine Hatton and here's what Lauren Faust had to say it's been a challenge to balance my personal ideals with my boss's needs for toy sales and good ratings there is also a need to incorporate fashion play into the show but only one character is interested in it and she is not a trend follower but a designer who sells her own creations from her own store we portray her not as a shopaholic but as an artist and rarity's workaholic nature drives the show's second truly great episode suited for success as shown in the two halves of the song the art of the dress an homage to putting it together from Stephen Sondheim's Sunday in the park with George rarity goes into panic mode when her friends reject her original designs for a fashion show that night but she rises to the impossible challenge it should be noted that all the friendship is magic clips that I'm going to show were from season one when the producers had no reason to suspect that the audience would be anything other than young girls and their parents as a result this song unintentionally foreshadows what it would be like what it would be like when the bronies discovered the show and started demanding that it be exactly what they wanted it to be and just think for a minute how many sat words were in that song again this is a show which again they so far as they knew it was just going to be young girls and they assume the young girls could keep up with this kind of thing you could put the word obtrusive in a song and it would not be a problem it's one of things I love so much about the show especially this first season and more than any other episode in season one the episode sonic rainbow may account for the bad rap that rarity gets as being self involved in vain and dare we say it feminine as her obsession with her temporary magic wings makes her oblivious to her friend rainbow dashes ongoing panic attack and much of the difficulty stems from the fact that rarity knows who she is and she loves herself and when a lack of humility is combined with femininity in American culture it gets described as shame as vain and shallow but when those same qualities are associated with a less overly feminine character such as the tomboy rainbow dash it becomes just another notch in their awesomeness though rainbow's awesomeness is not on display in this clip for me panic attack rainbow dash is my favorite rainbow dash it's a shame but I just love her when she's breaking down like that the thing about rarity is owning her femininity does not make her weaker helpless as demonstrated in the episode a dog in pony show in which she uses her gift of gab to escape from the brutish diamond dogs and rarity voice actor tabitha tabitha saint's remain does MVP work here particularly when one of the dogs accuses rarity of whining a loaded word which has been used at least as far back as the suffragette movement to denigrate women who speak up against injustice and oppression rarity gives the dogs an object lesson in complaining which she was up sorry when it was farther in complaining which she was doing and whining which she was not whining I am not whining I am complaining do you want to hear whining this is whining I will do anything miss rarity anything heck to the yeah a dog in pony show showed rarity at her best so it's appropriate that its follow-up green isn't your color she'll show rarity at her worst as her friend flood as her friend to fluttershy accidentally finds success as a model now rarity may represent generosity and the intense jealousy she showed displays in this episode not only a desire for another pony has but for them not to have it since her far afield from her element and that's a good thing because she's a character not a symbol for an abstract concept prony I've been waiting here so long obviously fluttershy is just too busy with her new career to spend time with her best friend I'm sure she just got tied up of course she did she's a big bright shining star I wish that star would burn out rarity fluttershy is your friend I know I know and I should be happy for her but instead I'm just jealous oh please promise you won't tell her I feel this way please please please please please you have my word losing a friend's trust is the fastest way to lose a friend I'm not usually a fan of pinkie pie but I like her in that episode that's a good one for her and then the flashback heavy the cutie mark chronicles we see that rarity has aspired to be a fashion designer since she was a filly and has always been willing to work hard to achieve her dream it's also worth noting that rarity has always used her ability to locate gyms to make other ponies look good not just herself I tried every trick I can think of but nothing seemed to work the costumes just weren't right and the play opened that night maybe I'm not meant to be a fashionista after all I have no idea where my horn was taking me but the unicorn magic doesn't happen without a reason I knew this had to do with my love of fashion and maybe even my cutie mark I knew that this was my destiny and of course that was the scene which you know inspired time Todd Vanderwerft all he took from it was she was such a cute little pony yes she was it's like are you paying attention dude are you actually watching the show there so the biped biped universes rarity doesn't get as much to do in the equestria girls films since they tend to focus on Twilight Sparkle and the new character sunset shimmer but her limited screen time always counts as these as this montage from the first three movies show biped rarity is just as creative hard-working and generous as her pony equivalent her comic timing is also every bit as sharp and she has the best scoff in the multiverse that may actually be my favorite image of rarity ever right there just says so much maybe motocross outfits just on a whim and she's so happy about it and so in last year's my little pony the movie which was named the best film of the year by some hack at SF Weekly so right there whatever a simple act of gratitude by rarity has a profound impact on a character who had originally planned on selling the ponies into slavery so the movie gets dark at times whoa hey hold up now whoa here you go I do apologize if we were back home I could have done something truly fabulous okay what's the catch nothing after all that you've done for us considerate a thank you oh don't thank me now where are they going okay no need for violence they're headed to Black Skull Island and something I'll say about the movie is that one of the reasons I love the film so much in fact the framed poster along the back there along the bottom are my ticket stubs from all the times I saw in the theater I took it saw it as many times as I could I just love the animation style so much it's made on computers as everything has to be these days but it feels to me like a Don Bluth film it's a computer-generated movie which feels like classic or at least early 80s hand-drawn animation that's kind of thing I just love to get lost in but rarity of course is at her funniest when she's at her most evil like and she has a classic she has a classic breakdown in the movie as the rigors of her epic adventure as their epic adventure start to get to her and though the film came out in 2017 here she demonstrates how I felt on the night of the 2016 election bad guys of one say that to myself practically on a daily basis and there you have it incontrovertible proof that rarity is in fact the best you're welcome to try to it but you'll be wrong thank you when I would humble brag to a friend that I was writing a critical study of my little pony after they were done laughing they would usually start going on about something they read or seen about the bronies as though the subjects were interchangeable the hope is that this book will reframe the discussion about my little pony by putting the franchise in its historical and historical and social context and allow friendship is magic and equestria girls to be considered for what they are beyond the knee-jerk reaction of ha ha bronies it should also be noted that the words brony and fan are not used as synonyms now as a child I was in a big hurry to grow up when I was treated like the five or six year old that I was say when I was handed a children's menu at a restaurant I felt like I was being stripped of what little dignity I had and if the waiter tried to give me crayons I wanted to curl up in a ball under the table oh by the way if anyone wants to use the crayons and coloring books in the back of the room adults and kids feel free I might I will not be a fan please go for it absolutely right on that's what they're there for my feelings about these things have changed in case you hadn't noticed even worse were the things that kids were expected to watch the 1970s and 80s were not a golden age of children's fair and I was offended to my core by being expected to watch most of the cartoons being produced or inexplicably popular Sid and Marty Croft shows like the Bugaloo's seriously did they think we were stupid or what it helped that I grew up in a permissive family and I wasn't forbidden from watching things meant for grown-ups admittedly most everything made for broadcast television up to that point was designed to be non-offensive but mash and Star Trek were my favorite shows because they were what my siblings and parents enjoyed both the live-action and animated versions of Trek were in regular rotation for a while and they were equally valid to me the only new cartoon I watched with any kind of regularity in the 1980s was Inspector Gadget because it was the voice of the guy from get smart another favorite of my family it had interesting stories that were said and something resembling the real world and most importantly the real hero of the show was gadgets young niece who inevitably saved the day using her intelligence and her confidence that I could appreciate I started watching Milo Pony friendship is magic in mid 2011 shortly after the end of season one I've been vaguely aware that the show existed and that had a and that it had a rabid fan base and corners of the internet that I generally ignored but the tipping point was an article by Todd Vanderwerf on the AV club my favorite pop culture website he compared it to the recently included Battlestar Galactica series in that they were both remakes and far superior to their source material yet with legacies and titles that made it difficult to recommend without adding and I know how it sounds but trust me disclaimer plenty of people in the months to follow laughed in my face when I told them that my little pony friendship is magic was actually really good and also more recently when I told them I was writing Ponyville confidential though Vanderwerf ultimately praised the show the tone of the article was hesitant at best in addition to describing it as a show built to advertise a toy line and a way to create new toy ponies to sell to little girls and that in some respects it may be a toy commercial sure he cited friendship is magic's greatest art obstacle as being the fact that it's about effing cartoon ponies he did not use the word effing but you can figure out what you said there he was distrustful of what he described as the show's sheer and utter joyfulness but that his inclination to watch it with an ironic sneer of detachment was worn down by the time he was giggling maniacally at a tiny cartoon pony being dragged against her will toward a giant rock adorable frown affixed firmly to her face she was such a cute little pony yes she was the scene was a flashback to the character of rarity who is indeed the best and we'll discuss that later from one of the best episodes of season one and it is indeed funny but the infantilization of the character makes no sense further ABB club coverage of the show would similarly indulge such as a January 2012 article about an online character generator in which Genevieve Koski wrote that regardless of what you think of the series and its attendant web phenomenon status it's hard to deny that these ponies are the cutest little ponies ever yes they are though she clarified that she was not a fan of the show I still found myself wondering was she even referring to the same my little pony friendship is magic that I watched and if so where did the baby talk come from what I had discovered when I started watching is a show that featured well-developed characters strong writing even if I could tell where an episode was going I could never tell how it was going to get there or what might happen next and a deeply humanistic occasionally morally ambiguous worldview which eschewed the magic of the title it was beautifully animated and nice to look at with a purple heavy palette which appealed to my own aesthetics but prettiness without substance gets pretty boring pretty fast what's more my little pony friendship is magic has a strong feminist bent showing its cast of female ponies as fully rounded individuals with their own strengths and weaknesses they gain much of that strength from their friends but are also able to work out problems on their own often under extreme duress they can do anything a boy can do and never need one to save or complete them there were some strong indicators of children's television of course such as an often ham-handed attempt to shoehorn in a moral at the end of each episode during season one often followed by the deeply hacky everybody laughs ending you know the kind where someone makes a weak joke everybody laughs and the credits roll but I never felt condescended to all watching friendship is magic or like I was watching something which presumed the viewer was unintelligent or immature regardless of their age nor even that I was watching something inappropriate for a tax paying grown-up in her late 30s oh her late 30s I was so young in those days my gosh this wasn't the bugaloo's nor did it resemble the bits and pieces I'd seen of the 1980s series my little pony and friends this was something new different and a notable alternative to what was still a largely male-oriented animation world I also found a show which rewarded close attention with a season long arc in the first season that ended with the best night ever one of the best-written most emotionally satisfying half hours of friendship is magic or any other show sure my little pony friendship is magic is just about effing cartoon ponies and the equestria girls movies are just about teenage girls but by that same logic all that needed to be said about the critically acclaimed Battlestar Galactica reboot which Time magazine had frequently listed as one of the best shows of the given year was that it was about sexy killer robots in space see being reductive is never wrong thank you thank you thank you very much or hand thank you this is from a section called ponies grosser by the gross Hal Erickson's reference book television cartoon shows and illustrated history illustrated encyclopedia 1949 to 1993 was published in 1995 by McFarland the same publisher as the work of scholarly sparkliness you are now reading it's an astonishing tome a television cartoon shows not Ponyville confidential containing approximately 600 entries over the course of 659 pages multiple shows from the same franchise are grouped together and this is how the joint entry for the 1986 series my little pony and friends in the 1992 my little pony tales begins and I've been doing a lot of quoting and as I'm reading someone else's words which I do a lot I'm gonna do this just so you know and if you find air quotes offensive as some people do just imagine I'm doing little bunny foo foo you know whatever whatever makes it okay for you it together with GI Joe and he man my little pony was Hasbro toys principle source of income in the mid 1980s the pony marketing strategy was founded on gender old notions that purportedly route dated by 1984 if boys would respond to a line of action figure soldiers girls would enthuse over an equally overpopulated line of toy horse toy horses perhaps it wasn't in the best interest of sexual equality to assume that girls would bypass warrior dolls to purchase toys that look like pretty ponies but that assumption proved accurate this writer the rex and not me knows of several otherwise rational high school and college young college age young ladies of 1994 some within the family who have my little ponies by the gross tucked away in their attics the characters weren't simply horses of course but humanized representations of various traits like vanity pride courage and so forth see Care Bears all were gifted with magic powers all were bedecked with flowing hairstyles of various pastel colors all were and all were evidently regular customers of pony lands Institute of eyelash elongation pony land was of course the idyllic mythical land with background art apparently based on the Beethoven pastoral sequence in Disney's Fantasia whence the tiny pony dolls owned by a human girl named Megan would retreat and come to life so there are knits to be picked if one were inclined to pick knits and this book a pony feel confidential not television cartoon shows will indeed engage in a great deal of nitpicking details matter in criticism and conclusions drawn from faulty assumptions and inaccurate readings of the text being criticized as the case with a vast amount of the criticism of my little pony must be called into question not mentioned by Erickson in this entry the transformers range outsold my little pony by a wide margin in 1984 1985 and 1987 thus making it a far more principal source of income for Hasbro at the time he man was a Mattel property not Hasbro and also though there was a biped girl named Megan in the 1986 my little pony of the movie and the subsequent my little pony and friends series the ponies were not her own dolls come to life a lot toy story nor were they tiny this misrepresentation reinforces the narrative of all my little pony animation being a commercial for the toys which preceded it a concept which will call my little ponies original sin now those are all minor details of course the sort of thing which can be corrected in later editions those errors were not corrected in late in the updated and expanded edition of television cartoon shows in 2005 but you know they could have been his snark about the feminine characteristics of the ponies vis-a-vis their eyelash length is not paralleled in his He-Man or G.I. Joe entries neither of which contains similar comments about the exaggerated masculine characteristics of their biped heroes Prince Adam and He-Man is already pure beefcake before he transforms into the even more beefcakey title character but Erickson refers to He-Man as super powered and leaves it at that without suggesting that say Prince Adam is a charter member of attorneys 24 hour of fitness or anything of the sort most troubling is the hostility in television cartoon shows the book that is not in general toward both the my little pony toys and their young female owners a hostility that had already been going strong elsewhere by the time of that book's publication in 1995 and would continue for the next two decades now to say the female oriented marketing of my little pony perhaps wasn't in the best interest of sexual equality is a terrible burden to put on a toy that became available around the time that the equal rights amendment officially failed to be ratified Erickson statement that the marketing strategy was founded on gender role notions that purportedly route dated by 1984 raises the question of who was purporting such a thing the Supreme Court's first female justice in its 200 year history had only been serving for three years and a woman was nominated for vice president for the first of only two times as of 2016 and as nominee nominee Geraldine Ferraro pointed out in her acceptance speech to the Democratic National Convention on July 19th 1984 women were still getting paid 59 cents on the dollar compared to men for the same work at the time while a great deal of progress had been made thanks to the rise of feminism in the 1960s and 70s there's no evidence that gender role notions were anywhere close to being considered outdated in the early to mid 1980s or that my little pony was counter revolutionary to the cause furthermore this book will demonstrate that both the content and popularity of my little pony friendship is magic is contributing to the necessary job of dismantling rigid gender roles in the United States Erickson's best interest of sexual quality statement also presumed that masculinity is the universal norm and that equality among the genders equates to girls liking boy oriented things but not the other way around there's no similar statement about gender equality in his entries on He-Man or G.I. Joe nothing to the effect of perhaps it wasn't in the best interest of best interest of sexual equality to assume that boys would bypass toys that look like pretty ponies to purchase warrior dolls this double standard is at the heart of the disconnect surrounding friendship is magic that something attendant intended to appeal to young girls cannot be enjoyed by people of all ages and genders and if some pony outside the prescribed demographic does enjoy it that means there's something wrong with the consumer and not something right with the product in her 1993 book sold separately children and parents and consumer culture Ellen Cider develop devoted a chapter to my little pony observing that while my little pony and friends and other girl oriented cartoons such as rainbow dash rainbow I wonder where that came from rainbow bright strawberry shortcake and the Care Bears were not only denigrated as the trashiest most saccharine most despicable despicable products of the children's television industry a wave of denigration which only got stronger after 1993 but they were also the first cartoons that did not require girls to crossover and identify with males so I'd argue that some of the most virulent attacks on the licensed character shows were in fact diatribes against their feminine appeal e.g. Erickson snark two years later about the pony's hair and eyelashes and that these shows were about the emotional lives of the characters much like soap operas family melodramas and other disreputable family oriented female oriented genres she quoted Tom Englehart's essay the shortcake strategy in the 1987 collection watching television in which Englehart bemoaned the in the stream of these happy little beings with their magical unicorns and their syrupy cloud cuckoo lands which have paraded across the stream demanding that they be snuggled cuddled nuzzled loved and adored as though that were the worst of all possible worlds a previous borrower of the San Francisco San Francisco State University Libraries copy of sold separately underlined the following text regarding the importance of my little pony and friends and then drew an arrow at it and again this is the this is the part from Ellen Sider's book sold separately that was marked by the person little girls found themselves in a ghettoized culture that no self-respecting boy would take an interest in but for once girls were not required to cross over to take on an ambiguous identification with a group of male characters now while McFarland my publisher does not encourage the defacement of library books the passage was indeed worthy of highlighting and if you have your own personal copy of Ponyville confidential by all means to face it to your heart's content you have my permission to do so like maybe like draw a little picture of rarity pointing at the above text that would be my suggestion but by all means mark it up however you like consider also Erickson's reference in television cartoon shows the book to the many otherwise rational young women of his acquaintance some of whom he's related to who have my little ponies by the gross tucked away in their attics while the suggestion that those young women have them by the gross a square dozen or 144 maybe exaggeration for effect something this writer would never do in a million billion kazillion years let's take the economics of that statement at face value my little pony dolls had a suggested repro retail price of $4 in 1984 and Hasbro sold an estimated $70 million worth of them in that year alone and another $95 million worth in 1985 that means there were at least 40 million of the four inch dolls out in the world by 1986 though as we'll see later congressional testimony quotes a much higher number and thus making it more feasible for them to be collected by the gross in 1994 or by 1994 most troubling is the implication that women having collected my little pony dolls without discarding them at whatever age Erickson deems appropriate constitutes a sign of irrationality of the other television shows from that era known to be based on toys the aforementioned he man and G.I. Joe as well as transformers Erickson makes no judgments about the collectors of those products indeed though he uses the he man and transformers write ups to discuss the program length commercial phenomenon which will just be discussed later in this very book Erickson praises those boy oriented shows suggesting that without he man to show the way there'd be no duck tails tiny-tune adventures or Batman the animated series should truly be the worst of all possible worlds I guess the second edition of television cartoon shows of published in 2005 and covered an additional 450 shows spread out over two volumes totaling more than a thousand pages as mentioned it did not fix the factual errors in the first two paragraphs of my little pony entry though Erickson did update several otherwise rational high school and college age young ladies of 1994 from the 1995 edition to several otherwise rational young adult women for the 2005 edition suggesting that retaining one's pony collection will never not be irrational it's also worth noting that one such grown and otherwise rational woman though probably not of clan Erickson who held on to her own far less than a gross of childhood my little pony dolls well into adulthood was Lauren Faust the creator of my little pony friendship is magic and considering that she's been a creative force on no fewer than four successful television shows the Powerpuff Girls fosters home for imaginary friends friendship is magic and wander over yonder she's done quite well for herself in spite of her apparent irrationality yeah that still bugs me so I'm just gonna read one more a little quick bit here this is called ultra feminine yet vinegary ponies also published by McFarland your source for fine scholarly card fine scholarly books about cartoons oh great joke and I blew it damn David Perlmutter's 2014 America tunes in a history of television animation devoted a single paragraph to my little pony and friends Perlmutter referred to as toy synergy as no less disturbing than that of the militaristic GI Joe though admitted that pony was milder in tone and intent he also referred to the 1992 follow-up series my little pony tales not by name but as new episodes which further entrenched the sticky sweet ambience of the project that last statement linked to an end note which constituted America tunes tunes in only reference to friendship is magic in note 121 in the early in the early 2010s has been revived the project under the title my little pony friendship is magic while the ultra feminine pony land setting and characters were retained the writing and characterization brought a shade more vinegar into the sweetness in the fashion of later production such as the Powerpuff girls this was no accident when you consider that this pony had as its executive producer Lauren Faust a veteran Powerpuff girls writer and the wife of Powerpuff creator Greg Craig McCracken to boot buried in the end notes this offhand mention kept friendship is magic from being listed in the index while to say that Hasbro revived the project suggests that the show is a continuation of either of the either of the previous series is which it is not friendship is magic is said in the sovereign nation of Equestria and centers on the rural town of Ponyville not the ultra feminine pony land of the 1986 series and while its main cast is female and it portrays a matriarchy without being oppressive to other genders in the manner of patriarchy is in our world one would be hard pressed to describe rainbow dash applejack or even twilight sparkle as ultra feminine and aside from certain names and physical traits the characters not retained from my little pony and friends and or my little pony tails friendship is magic's writing and characterization bringing a shade more vinegar into the sweetness is an excellent way to describe the show's relationship to its forebearers though it's closer to being a light meal than just vinegar shaded candy the reference to the Powerpuff girls was also apt though magic creator Lauren Faust only had writing credit on two Powerpuff girl episodes was also the storyboard artist for six and the director of twenty nine altogether but to imply that Faust being married to Powerpuff creator Craig McCracken and to specify her as specify her as being his wife which though accurate is a semantic choice which places her in a subordinate position to McCracken to suggest that that's at all responsible for either specific Powerpuff like qualities of friendship as magic or any degree of the show's success is to integrate the talent of not only Faust but the entire production staff some of whom also worked on the Powerpuff girls without being married to its creator it's a pity that the digression takes up 10 of the 89 words in that paragraph or that discussing it here takes up half of a paragraph in this book space that could have been served by something more important like working in another reference to how rarity is the best now is this degree of nitpicking necessary for something as frivolous as My Little Pony cartoons considering that the official description of America tunes in says the book discusses the ways in which the genre has often been unfairly marginalized by critics and that it takes pride in it takes pride in taking seriously something often thought to be frivolous then yes friendship is magic and equestria girls deserve to be taken seriously thank you very much questions complaints comments requests