The Friendship Express Review

My Little Pony 16 comments

Soon my Pretty... by ~atryl

Well yesterday was the drop of the first of many MLP dvds, The Friendship Express.  Its kind of depressing when you compare it next to another resent release for the Transformers fans, a Blu-Ray disc with all sorts of extras on it. But as I’ve said before, this is a product that is being produced for the retailers to throw at children’s parents in the check-out line, someday in the future we might get that DVD we all want to add to our collection, but this isn’t it. And don’t blame Shout! Factory, they are doing what Hasbro wants, and probably what they could do with I’m sure a limit budget for producing the DVD. No one has screamed that The Last Roundup was edited, so its safe to assume its version 1 as promised on the DVD, which does make it worth purchasing in a way.

But there seems to be a few errors going on with the DVD, at least one major one (unless it was just the one person), but minor mistakes here and there.

  • Rainbow Dash is missing her cutie mark on the back cover.
  • Episode One seems to have a sound sync issue, by the time it ends its about 500ms off from the scene.
  • G3 Movie Trailer between the FBI warning and Main Menu (okay, not exactly an error, just good old product placement).
  • The Character Bios are for Rarity, Twilight, Pinkie Pie, Applejack, Fluttershy and Celestia. Rainbow Dash utterly missing.
  • Celestia’s bio claims that she is the only pony born with both wings and a horn. (Luna, Forever Alone).

 

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  • Jon the Brony

    RD is missing her cutie mark on the front cover as well, and the train on the back cover is off the track

  • I’m not impressed with the DVD. I mean, I wasn’t expecting much, but it’s actually even lower quality than I imagined it would be.

    I would like to confirm the sound sync issue. As far as I know, it’s only in the first episode. It’s the last 3rd of the episode or so, from the surprise party to the end of the episode it is significantly off (starts when it comes back from the final “commercial break”). It’s really distracting and considering there’s only 5 episodes, indicates pretty poor quality control before release…

    Also, despite what the box says, the episodes *are* in 5.1 surround sound. There are actually 2 audio tracks per episode – one in stereo, the other in surround sound.

    The menus and everything just seem like kind of a low quality rush job. Which I’m sure it was, for the reasons stated in the post.

    Obviously Derpy is there in all her unaltered glory, so that’s cool, and the extended intro singalong is a very cool bonus.

    Finally, there’s the shocking G3 advertisement right after the FBI logo. Nearly had a heart attack thinking there’d been some horrible mistake and I’d been sent a G3 dvd.

    So is it worth $10? I guess so, but pretty much only in the hopes that enough sales will show that there is interest in a box set (preferably blu-ray with extras, pretty much like the Transformers Prime release). As it stands, in the eyes of those making it, this dvd was clearly “just yet another My Little Pony release for little girls who don’t care about quality”

  • TrueHeart

    I can confirm the audio issue in the first episode, as well. It’s obvious enough to be a significant distraction. The only reasons I can think of to buy this thing are the completely unedited version of Last Roundup or to show Hasbro that people really will buy this kind of thing. Otherwise, it’s a pretty pathetic effort.

  • The issue is also with episode 2, however it is less obvious than in episode 1. I’ll be keeping one of my copies just for support/Derpy..however I’d like a fully working copy as well. How about just forego all this and make a clean bluray version.

  • StarStrider

    Actually in one of the early promos for the show, they said that Celestia was the only pony with wings and a horn as well. So they probably just copied that

  • Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 6000:

    Quality over speed.

    GOd damnit, we were all wrong.

    (Derpy: “I’m keeping this DVD my whole life because they didn’t change me! YAY!”)

    • P.S.: What is up with Rainbow Dash? Is Hasbro completely undecided about something with her?

      • Alisha Gray

        I think they’re trying to decide if they should censor her out of the entire show because some people think she might be a lesbian. >_>

        • Attempting to get into Rainbow Dash’s horseshoes so she can have her say…

          Rainbow Dash: “What’s all this about me being a lesbian? I’m not going to marry a mare! It’s just most ponies say I sound like a stallion filly! Well I guess I kinda do…but it’s all about perspective. I can sound like a girl or a boy, it doesn’t matter. This whole thing is just stupid and not awesome. If I get censored out, I might just have to break something. And that’s NOT an empty threat.”

  • From the sounds of it, this DVD doesn’t seem to be conforming to the whole ‘high quality entertainment for girls’ ideal that was behind the show…

  • Jon the Brony

    The main reason I bought it was for Derpy. I’m pretty sure that episode was put on for bronies, it was only a just over a month old when the DVD came out and that’s a VERY short turn around for anythin to go to video. Maybe Shout! Factory felt which way the wind was blowing and knew how to boost sales…

    • Those particular three episodes, including The Last Roundup, were included because they all feature trains.

  • Jordan

    From the back of the box:
    “DVD Producer: Brian Ward
    Package Design: Samantha K. Pennacchio”

    Blame them?

    • Anonymous

      Brian Ward has repeatedly stated on the Shout Factory forums that he believes there is not a market for a “real” MLP release, like season box sets or whatever. Shout Factory, unfortunately seems convinced that MLP is still only for little girls, and that MLP releases are only going to be bought by parents hoping to make their kids shut up for a while. Hence the low quality of this DVD.

  • Rippy

    I’m looking at it now, and RD’s cutie mark is missing on both the front and back cover.