Some people are weirded out by the immense popularity of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic. But other than the terrifying Equestria Girls, FiM has nothing on the original My Little Pony cartoon. Here are a dozen weird bits of trivia about the classic show and the toys that may blow your pony minds.
1) The First Pony Was Not Little
My Little Pony actually started out as My Pretty Pony. It was a larger, 25cm horse doll that was part of Hasbro’s Romper Room line in 1981, but was moved over to Hasbro proper in 1982, shrunk, and released as MLP then. The original My Pretty Pony still had brushable hair, but could wiggle her ears, swish her tail, and blink. However, she only came in one colour: brown. Still, given that all actual MLP figures were just solid hunks of plastic, that’s quite the downgrade.
2) The Ponies’ Friends Were Corporate Shills
When the first MLP cartoon aired in 1986, it was titled My Little Pony n’ Friends, because the first half would be an MLP cartoon, and the second would be based on another Hasbro toyline marketed to girls. These included The Glo Friends (based on the best-selling Glo Worm toy), Moondreamers, and Potato Head Kids, which was about a bunch of potato children being marginally watched over by Mr. Potato Head.
3) The Ponies Were Not Good At Naming Themselves
Hopefully all of you remember the fantastic “Porn Star Name or My Little Pony Name?” quiz from the classic Brunching Shuttlecocks site. Seeing as Cherries Jubilee, Ruby Lips and Chocolate Delight are all pony names, it was kind of brilliant. However, some ponies had horrible names that didn’t make them sound like they starred in pornography, including — and these are all real — Whizzer, Salty and Steamer. Actually, these do sound like potential porn star names, just really, really niche ones.
4) How Baby Ponies Are Made
My Little Ponies breed like rabbits taking fertility treatments, which we know because 10 of the original MLP characters had babies who they invariably named after themselves, either out of vanity or lack of imagination. Thus the child of Lickety-Split would be named Baby Lickety-Split. This means that even as an adult horse, she would still be named Baby Lickety-Split… unless there’s some kind of ritual where Baby Lickety-Split kills her mother in order to formally pass into adulthood.
5) Some Ponies Are Immaculately Conceived
That said, My Little Ponies could breed without traditional sex. The Baby Ponies — a special line of babies unique from the regular Babies — were “born from their mother’s reflection,” which is super fucking weird when you think about it because that means looking into any reflective surface would potentially make a tiny homunculus of yourself pops out (or pony-nculus, I guess). However, Wikipedia stress that “several Baby Ponies never had their own mother”, which seems like a cruel thing to note.
6) My Little Ponies Liked A Little Light Bondage
Several My Little Pony playsets came with bridles, which seems fucked up to force sentient talking horses to wear.
7) Some Ponies Wore Diapers
In 1989, Hasbro released a special line of Drink n’ Wet Ponies. They are actually more horrifying that you realise. Here’s the official story behind them, as per the original packaging:
Wearing their new diapers, the Drink n’ Wet Baby Ponies scampered outside to toss a bouncy ball. They threw the ball higher and higher into the sky, until it bumped into one of the rainbow’s stripes. Magical crystals fell from the stripe and onto the baby ponies. The little ponies quickly splashed into their wading pool to wash off the sticky crystals. As they splashed in the water, the rainbow crystals on their wet diapers changed into little hearts, making the diapers as pretty as can be. Now, whenever the diapers get wet, colourful hearts magically appear. And that is how the Drink n’ Wet Baby Ponies got their magical diapers.”
Note that the magically appearing hearts does nothing for the literal pounds of horse shit that must fill these diapers regularly.
8) My Little Pony Was Pretty Satanic
The first My Little Pony TV special was titled “Return to Midnight Castle,” and featured the ponies trying to rescue their friends from Tirek, who is basically Satan as a centaur. Tirek sends his monsters, led by Scorpan, a bat-winged, alligator-faced monkey man, to capture and enslave ponies so they can pull his Chariot of Midnight. He also turns the ponies into dragons. This is literally the most metal thing I have ever heard of.
9) No, Seriously, Like Really Satanic
Actually, My Little Pony sounds like most of its episodes were based on Man o’ War album covers. Villains for the series included Arabus the cloud demon, Lavan the lava demon, Tirek the aforementioned centaur demon, and Grogar, who isn’t just a ram demon but a Ram Demon Necromancer. The original My Little Pony cartoon featured a fucking Ram Demon Necromancer. That’s insane.
10) Ponies Think Bees Are Lower-class Citizens
Even besides all the demons, Ponyland was not a happy place for everybody. At some point the Flutter Ponies banished the bee-people of Flutter Valley into a frozen, barren wasteland. Dubbed Bumbleland, it’s a place where no flowers can grow, and again, these are bee-people. With a big zero on the quality of life scale, Queen Bumble was forced to steal the sunstone in hopes of making some flora grow in Bumbleland, which nearly destroyed all of Flutter Valley. At that point, the ponies were gracious enough to let the bee-people have access to their flowers once in a while.
11) There Was a Goddamned Prince Pony
There was a Prince pony. Not as in a member of royalty, as in the rock star. His name was Knight Shade and a demon was forcing him to help steal his ponies’ shadows because My Little Pony is weirdly, weirdly dark.
12) My Little Pony Killed Jem
Well, the My Little Pony movie killed any chance of you getting to watch an animated Jem movie. Apparently it and the Transformers movie underperformed so badly Hasbro lost $US10 ($13) million on them, which not only killed the theatrical release of the G.I Joe movie (it went straight-to-video) but also destroyed a Jem movie that was actually in development.