Good Morning Poniverse,
There is no news to report on Derpy, at least on the official side. On the fandom side, the campaign is in full force with multiple sites and petitions running. Here is what has been handed to me so far, and I say sign them all.
- www.SaveDerpy.com
- Hasbro Studio/The Hub: Do Not Change Derpy’s Name (original with 33,500 signatures so far)
- Save Derpy (and Hasbro’s creative process)
- Derpy Hooves: Name Change
- #savederpy on Twitter.
- Save Derpy Hooves Tumblr
- After The Last Roundup aired on television, it appears and then disappeared on iTunes.
- Its noted that the week following the episode that it was not re-airing on The Hub. MLP is on everyday, and the new episode is repeated at least twice a week.
- On 2/2/12 we got word from a WLF employee that Hasbro was pressuring their company to remove the Derpy merchandise.
- Later that night, the name disappeared off much of the merchandise, but returned the following evening.
- On 2/6/12 an e-mail from [email protected] said “We can confirm that we are not changing the name of Derpy”. This was sort of questioned, as its basically a branch of Hasbro, and not the head hancho in Rhode Island. Between this and the WLF merchandise returning, people felt that maybe, Derpy was safe.
- For the month of February, The Last Roundup is missing from iTunes and still has not replayed on The Hub.
- On 2/24/12 The Last Roundup reappears on iTunes, people check it, and the scene has been changed.
And as I’ve said, until someone, somewhere, gives an official notice, we don’t know what is going on. I know several individuals who are trying to talk to contacts within Hasbro and the Hub, but so far nothing has been turned up. When we do find something out, of course we will let you know.
The one thing I do see is that people are acting like Derpy is dead, when she is not. Hasbro is not going to take the time to purge her from past episodes; that’s just a waste of money. If they were going to spend that kind of money, they would have changed her in The Last Roundup since they already basically went back and edited it, but she still remains. Personally (and I know I’m not alone) the voice was good, yes I had fallen in love with the way the original sounded, but this was more female sounding. But then again what people are taking offense to is the fact, it was edited, they removed her name, and they fixed her eyes.
For now all I can say is we got about business as usual, make sure to spread the word of Derpy to everyone in the community, and make sure that it is known that we want our Derpy. It has been confirmed by the Studio B staff that no other scene planned with her for Season 2, so this was her only spotlight (not counting all the minor spotlights in the previous episodes). Before Feeling Pinkie Keen, that is all she was, a background character. And we still loved her as much before that. So I say do not despair, lets just make sure she doesn’t vanish from Season 3 altogether.
So for now and outside of signing petitions, there is little we can do except move forward. (Pictures and a video comparison behind the page break).
[03/02/2012] : Comment Section is now closed. There is a central page for DerpyGate located here.
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