My Little Pony: State of the Recappers
Guess who’s back for more Pony-related torment?
That’s right. Us.
But first, before we resume our recaps, a bit of a personal-type update. Yes, it’s been *checks notes* two and a half years (give or take) since our last My Little Pony ‘N’ Friends recap was published. Now, granted, no one is responsible for the years lost when time was rendered… how did you describe it, Dove? “Linear time was rendered useless” by the world-wide pandemic?
What was originally a “rest and recharge” situation – hey, you try recapping a feature-length film, two television films, and 61 episodes in a timely and thoughtful manner! – stretched way beyond intended length due to health and work issues. The pandemic was already making our brains spill out our ears, so it was not a feasible time to assume we could think about, let alone actually write recaps. [Dove: To be honest, I blame everything on the endless Flutter Valley run of episodes. I have trauma from the never-ending nature of that arc.]
Granted, we both did other recaps during this time – Dove with Sweet Valley; bat with god-awful films such as Cool As Ice. [bat: For which I will be eternally apologizing.] But for some reason, Ponies was just too much to ask of us. I mean, is it any wonder, after the mind-numbing, preposterous, suspension of disbelief that we both experienced during the first go round? HOW DOES MAGIC FUCKING WORK, INDEED.
So now it’s 2023 and it feels like it is time. [bat: Ask me how much I hate The Lion King, I dare you.] Dove and bat got together and hashed out the all important parts, asking questions such as “Which episodes seem to be ones we’ll hate the least while recapping?” and “Oh god, are we masochists for taking on this project?” For some reason, this incarnation of the cartoon involves a lot of tea pots. Ask Dove how excited she is about that revelation.
Yes, friends and readers – hopefully, someone is reading this – Dove and bat are back to tackle the continuing saga of My Little Pony, with generation 2’s cartoon series: My Little Pony Tales! [Dove: I’m already cringing from the way they walk on their back legs.]
Yeah, we don’t know how this got green-lit, either.
For context, this series aired in 1992 and was extremely short-lived. Consisting of 13 thirty-minute episodes with 26 segments (which Dove and bat have equally divided in order to survive with some semblance of our sanity intact), everything you thought you knew about Ponies was scrapped and a revisionist world was built to introduce Ponies to a “new” generation… while the original G1 toy line was winding down. Somehow this entire series aired on, you guessed it, The Disney Channel. [bat: Is there anything Disney can’t ruin??]
Without totally ruining the surprise, let’s just say this is when the “humanization” of the little Ponies begins.
Gone were Ponies associated with the original toy line and cartoon. Yeah, kind of a bummer, that. This fresh batch of Ponies were all supposed to be ten years old [bat: What in the actual fuck?] and the episodes followed their daily adventures growing up in Ponyland. WILL THESE BE MORALITY TALES WITH LIFE LESSONS SHOEHORNED IN?? You’ll have to find out.
[bat: I remember watching this in real time during its initial run. I’m not sure how I found out it existed; we’d had the Disney Channel forever by 1992, so I must have seen a bumper ad for it or something. By 1992, I wasn’t exactly into Ponies anymore but I still had a fondness for the original line. (By ’92, I had seen The Lost Boys and that meant vampires > Ponies.) I do remember thinking ‘what the actual fuck’ (though not in those exact terms; I didn’t swear as much then as I do as an adult) a lot while watching this cartoon. I was not the target demographic at that point and I sorely felt it. Unlike the original G1 series, I have super vague memories of this series, so it’s going to feel relatively “brand new” during this series of recaps. I don’t know if I should be excited or terrified.]
[Dove: I have never seen these episodes. I have owned copies of them for literal years, but I have never gotten past the first couple of minutes of the first one. This is going to be awful. But it can’t be worse than Flutter Valley.] [bat: Oh yes, yes it can be, Dove.]
And with that ominous warning, we will see you next in our first recap of My Little Pony Tales!
