I had a chance to chat with an artist that I commissioned a piece from at BroNYCon in January. I thought you guys might have a bit of interest in the insight that she shared about the previous generations. The conversation about that is quite short, and I did my best to remove erranous content in the article. I hope you guys enjoy this sharing of conversation. The insight from someone who was actually around for G1 on up is really rather nice. Perhaps it is time to give G1 a chance…not so much 2-3.5, though.

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bee-chan:
This convention was a test for me, to be perfectly honest, to see if I could, as an old school G1 fan and artist meld well with the new fans of the G4 line. Getting to meet the new fans face to face, I have to wonder why people from both sides of the fandom don’t get along too well, at least online! We’re all pony fans, regardless of which generation we all like, and I had NO problems with ANYONE from the G4 part of the pony fandom. I kind of felt like one of the, “big sisters”, there, with so many people from the new part of the fandom acting as fun, “younger siblings”, in a sense. I still say there is NO other fandom anywhere that has a nicer bunch of fans, and I’m happy to be able to welcome the new Friendship is Magic fans into the My Little Pony fandom!
Fadflamer:
From what I’ve witnessed, heard, and overall have seen with the fandom, it seems like the issue that people have with previous generations has to do with character developement. Specifically, the issue of the shows seeming like they were designed with nothing BUT the toyline in mind, whereas FiM seems very far from that concept.

Personally, I haven’t watched enough or engaged enough in the past generations to have much of an opinion, except that Cheerilee is terrifying. They all kind of are, but it’s because of that intense makeup. She’s kinda cute without it.
bee-chan:
I could never deal with Cheerilee when she eventually became part of the infamous Core 7 when the G3 line was still being made. To be honest, I wasn’t a fan of the G3 and G3.5 cartoons. It was ALL about the toys for me in the G3 line.

I didn’t get into the G2’s much because I didn’t really KNOW about them.

G1 and G4 are the generations that I love the cartoons for. G1 was 1980’s girls cartoons, with a sweetness and innocence, where girls didn’t have to worry about fitting in or what they looked like or how they should act. Yeah, the story telling kinda sucked at times, depending on which part of the series you looked at ( My Little Pony and Friends… oh GOD! Xx; ), but on the whole, it latched onto something for girls that NO other show could.

What I love about the G4 cartoon is that not only is the animation fun, but the stories are just as fun as the original show, AND they’re actually well written. NOT something you see in shows nowadays that are technically geared towards girls. I think that’s, THANKFULLY, all due to Lauren Faust herself being an old school fangirl and keeping involved so deeply with the fans. Honestly, how many show creators are willing to keep in constant contact with their fans? She is one of the few, and we love her for it. ^__^

I do agree, the G2 and G3 lines WERE created with nothing but the toy line in mind, which was fine for the toy collectors, but not so much for those who actually want a good story. It took Lauren and her crew, and the fans, having to kick Hasbro in the butt for them to realize why the MLP line was doing so bad. One of many reasons why we all used to nickname Hasbro, “Hasbroken”. They weren’t listening to what their actual fans wanted. Now they are.
Fadflamer:
The way you’re describing it really makes me want to look into watching some episodes of the G1 series. Sadly enough, I have a lot of G4 episodes to catch up on. I’ve yet to watch a majority of S1, and the S2 Discord episodes, but when I get some time to, I want to play catch up.

I’m still really impressed with how interested Faust’s been with the fandom itself, and how supportive she’s been. It really IS nice to see the people who’ve had a major hand in a project taking that kind of time to both care about and in some cases defend the fan community for it. For me, a lot of the draw is the fan community, and it’s nice to see that support. If anything, the fan community helps to make the show that much better and stronger, when it’s already very strong and solid on its own. There’s just something about watching an episode with friends that just can’t be topped.

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If anyone’s actually interested in the full conversation transcript, feel free to ask.