Title: Ice Cream Wars

Summary: The First Tooth Baby Ponies are put in charge of the Newborn Twins: Sniffles & Snookums and Milkweed & Tumbleweed. The unruly twins are temporarily subdued with the promise of ice cream, but first the First Tooth Baby Ponies must reunite the feuding ice cream makers Rocky Ripple and Fudgy McSwain, who have cut off Ponyland’s ice cream supply.

Initial Thoughts:

I remember nothing of this. I can’t believe the newborn twins are in this, but no sign of Twice as Fancy. strangebat pretends that she rates the TaF ponies as highly as I do, and supports me when I rage that they’re not on the show. I love her for that.

Also, isn’t Baby Lickety-Split a first tooth pony? After the events of the movie, I wouldn’t trust her with a cardboard box, much less other babies.

Recap:

We open with an establishing shot of Lullaby Nursery, overlaid with baby crying. Yeah, nope. I’m out.

And I’m doubly out. The newborns – which I’m going to refer to by colour: Pinks (Sniffles and Snookums) and Yellows (Milkweed and Tumbleweed) – are wailing while the First Tooth Baby Ponies (North Star, Lickety-Split, Fifi and Quackers) babytalk at them. Yeah, I’d be crying too.

Did strangebat scam me? Did she remember that the opening seconds of this episode contains everything that we loathe about this show (aside from broken magic and nets dropping from trees)? Is strangebat an evil genius? Or is she the good guy and this is the origin story of me, her evil nemesis? Do bad guys get origin stories?

[bat: No comment? Though I am an evil enabler™.]

Any of those questions are far more interesting than the recap, but I did agree to recap this, so, let’s go on with it.

For some reason, they don’t animate when the Pinks speak, so it’s creepy overlaid voices – WHY ARE THEY FUCKING FRENCH? BAT! WHY ARE THEY FRENCH! IS THERE EVEN A FRANCE IN PONYVILLE? WHY ARE THEY FRENCH? – over static images. God the budget was busted by this point. [bat: The faux French speaking shtick comes up again, just wait.]

Pink throws her slop and it goes all over Fifi. The newborns laugh. Quackers gives Yellows a duck, which one tosses up in the air, it dislodges other toys which land on Quackers’ head. The newborns laugh.

OMG, BAT WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO ME?

THERE IS A SONG.

A SONG IN BABYTALK.

WHAT THE FUCK?

[bat: Holy crap, I didn’t think that was possible. But it happened. My god, it happened.]

Once the song is done, the writers return to the well that has served them so well in the minute this show has been on. Pink throws food and it lands on Lickety-Split’s head.

Lickety-Split decides they’re going to take the twins to the Satin Slipper Sweet Shoppe (BUY OUR MERCH).

[bat: I remember when I got that big ugly shoe playset. Man, how decides to put chairs in a playset that Ponies cannot sit on?? And the shoe like parts and I was always catching my finger in it. Ugh. Not as terrible and/or ugly as the Baby Bonnet School of Dance playset but still, in the top worst Pony playsets.] [Dove: Now I actually loved the Baby Bonnet School of Dance, but I wasn’t delighted that the big pink bow would fall of as easily as a flutter pony’s wings.]

It’s dark when they get there… uh, so nobody put the babies to bed or made sure the newborns were asleep? The parenting is awful here. [bat: At least the Ponies are consistently awful parents.]

Lickety-Split calls for Scoops and orders hot fudge sundaes all round. Scoops says they’ve run out of ice cream. Everyone is disappointed. Particularly Tic-Tac-Toe, who suddenly exists. Probably in place of Fifi, who has vanished.

In other news, Quackers gives this strange gipping/gasping sound after she’s done speaking. I at first thought it was an audio crackle, but no, it’s actually a tic of hers. It’s meant to be a duck noise, but mostly it sounds like she’s drowning in her own phlegm.

The newborns howl in despair.

Scoops: Rocky Ripple has shut down the Mixville ice cream works to drive Fudgy McSwain out of business.

[…]

Fudgy runs the Creamy Confection Business and makes all of the ice cream toppings in Ponyland. They really hate each other. And the saddest thing is: they used to be such good friends.

That sounds like a lot of plot to be resolved by six minutes from now, especially if they linger on the babytalk and the screaming newborns.

Lickety-Split announces that they’ll just have to be friends again. Smash cut to the four First Tooth ponies pushing the newborns in strollers (Tic-Tac-Toe continues to replace the missing Fifi). Tic-Tac-Toe asks if Rocky will even talk to them. Lickety-Split points out that they’re adorable and everyone will “do anything we ask”.

Satisfying smash cut to Rocky yelling “Never!” in their faces. He says Fudgy is a thief. He stole Rocky’s best flavour. He’d created it and was ready to start and the recipe vanished.

Smash cut to Fudgy’s place. He tells them to fuck off too in a weird Scottish/Irish accent with lots of rolling Rs. The newborns wail. This convinces him to talk to Rocky.

Smash cut to Fudgy and Rocky together with Lickety-Split, North Star, Quackers and… I don’t know.

I put her through my ID machine, and have no clue who the fuck that is. No baby pony has that colouring (white body, red, green, brown hair). Is it the fabled Reverse Gusty? I’m honestly baffled here.

Fudgy says that he would never have stolen Rocky’s recipe, their business is mutually beneficial, and he’ll help him look for it. They hug, but before they do, Fudgy hits an on switch.

The baby ponies cheer. And Reverse Gusty (???) has turned back into Fifi.

The camera pans back and it reveals a machine whir to life and launch a blob of ice cream right in Fudgy’s face. I cannot see the benefit of a machine that fires ice cream missiles at face height with such aggression. Unless we’re gearing up for the cutest and stickiest apocalypse ever. Which sounds bloody lovely compared to 2020.

Fudgy flies into a rage so strong it causes Rocky to develop his own Celtic mish-mash accent.

Lickety-Split says it’s time to go. She says this to Fifi, Quackers, and a white pony with blue hair. If her hair was lighter and she was a beddy-bye-eye instead of First Tooth, it might be Sleepy Pie. But it’s not, is it? It’s a botch.

Fifi is suddenly French and begs Fudgy to wait. Oh, so the newborns aren’t French, Fifi was talking to them (as them???) off screen, and just happened to say exactly what they were thinking? Good Christ this is a hot mess.

Fudgy turns the switch from Off to On (yeah, no, that’s not my mistake, that’s what happened), and rages about how he’s going to get even.

The rest of the ponies show up pushing strollers and this time it’s Fifi, Tic-Tac-Toe, Quackers and… if I’m being super kind, Bouncy, who is greenish-yellow with blue hair, but hers is more teal and this is navy blue against a light yellow body.

They abandon the strollers and run forward, which suddenly cuts to the strollers being to the side of them, and left on a conveyer belt – why is there a conveyer belt in an ice cream factory? Whatever.

The unnamed yellow/blue pony does have wings, so maybe it is Bouncy. Why she’s here suddenly is not explained.

On the conveyer belt, four clamps reach down and pull out the newborns – why would there be a conveyer belt with clamps? It’s ICE CREAM! The newborns are dumped into containers and drizzled with toppings, which they eat.

Quackers quacks.

She and Tic-Tac-Toe put the strollers at the end of the conveyer belt, where they fall into the strollers neatly and are not flattened by the huge containers, which are big enough to contain four newborns, but small enough to fucking vanish when they’re off screen.

Out wheels a tank driven by Fudgy who threatens to drown Rocky in chocolate syrup. It flings ice cream at the outside of the Mixville factory.

Well, that escalated quickly and… are these buildings side by side or something? WTF am I watching?

Rocky levels his own rocket launcher at Fudgy and lets loose a stream of pink ooze.

“This no good,” Lickety-Split comments to herself. No, she’s not talking to herself, there are literally two of her on screen. [bat: How much did the animation department drink to get through this episode? It’s really showing in the errors.]

The war rages between the two, but somehow all those ponies are fine.

“Oooh-la-la,” comments Fifi. Because she’s French. The lineup hasn’t changed between scenes, and I’m going with the assumption that the mystery pony is Bouncy – and this is later confirmed when we see her cutie mark.

The ponies decide to get the newborns back to the Satin Slipper Sweet Shoppe. Where the newborns wail. Just drown them. Hold their squealing heads under the ice cream that’s raining down.

Scoops: It’s just what I feared: an all-out ice cream war.

REALLY? HOW ON EARTH DID YOU SEE THIS HALF-WITTED PLOT COMING? I DIDN’T AND I READ THE TITLE AND THE SYNOPSIS. I ASSUMED IT WAS A FUCKING METAPHOR!

Quackers quacks. Then adds the newborns are hungry. And ice cream is the only possible thing they can eat, you quacking moron? Give them milk. Or… what the fuck do babies eat? Mush. Apple sauce. That. Feed them that.

Jeez, I hate to say this, but Megan could have solved this problem. Without search parties too.

Scoops breaks out her last tub of ice cream, she was saving this for a special occasion, but the squalling infants make her reconsider. North Star borrows Fifi’s French accent to talk to the twins. Because why fucking not? Everything is mystifying here. Part of me thinks this episode might end right now, like The Magic Roundabout, and we’ll never know how it all resolves.

Milkweed spits out some paper and it’s the recipe. For my part, I think the damage is done. When you come at your former BFF with a tank, I don’t really think saying, “Oh, I found that missing item” is going to help.

Lickety-Split says they are SORTING. THIS. OUT. NOW.

The two idiots are approaching each other in their tanks across a field. Even though in order for the beginning of this episode to work, their shops must have been next door or opposite each other, but whatevs.

North Star grabs the recipe and stands between both tanks, and it’s just like Tiananmen Square [bat: But French and with ice cream!] as both ice cream vendors try to come to a halt. Only they don’t, and both tanks explode, their pieces vanishing on impact, rather than raining down a metallic death on North Star.

She shows them the recipe and explains where they found it. And problem fucking solved. Even though they’ve been trying to kill each other all episode. Things are so delightful that Rocky now has a New Jersey accent instead of Scottish. So… uh, that’s a thing that happened.

They offer the ponies all the ice cream they can eat. The ponies say that they’ve seen enough ice cream for one day, and they want a salad.

Hilarity ensues.

Final Thoughts:

Grade: D-

That was incredibly stupid. A complete waste of time. A terrible message (hurt your friends if you feel justified, it’ll all come reet in the end). Just awful.

The only reason it doesn’t have an F was because the animation/voice acting fails were so epic that it actually became a fun game.

Think about that: the high point of this is how bad it is at a meta level.

[bat: I gotta go with F. It was all that fucking babytalk bullshit that I cannot abide, coupled with one of the worst plots ever.]