The Market's Cold Hands

My Little Pony/Ponyville, Hasbro

A peculiar uniqueness to my own generation’s turn at parenting is how much of our childhood is being repackaged and sold to our children. It might even be more accurate to say, being resold to us to give to our children. Fond memories of certain toys are now slickly marketed in such a fashion that, subconsciously, we must imagine that in some way we are gifting to our children what was pleasant about our own childhoods.

As a father, there is a limited overlap between what I played with and what The Littlest Critic plays with now. To a degree something of an obsessive completist from childhood on, I had at least one of every single Star Wars Action Figurine you can remember — and many I’m sure you don’t. TLC is too young to really get into Star Wars much, and she’s still frightened by The Backyardigans episode “The Soccer Ball Mystery” where the beloved penguin Pablo growls and sings a song about being a soccer monster. Darth Vader might be more than she can take.

My exact memories of my sisters’ My Little Pony toys is hazy at best. Most likely it was my youngest sister who was into them, as she was more a child of the eighties than my older sisters who were on the cusp of their teen years by then. So, what I say about the particular marketing of the toys now might equally apply then, I can’t say for certain.

For a little background, though, we step back to the Reagan years. In 1984, the FCC under the Reagan Administration removed governmental restrictions on commercials, notably time limits (ultimately giving birth to infomercials, but that’s another story), among other deregulation moves. My own beloved Star Wars toys had demonstrated how profitable children’s toys associated with programming could be. Regulations regarding characters advertising products in childrens’ programming were lifted and a glut of new cartoons, launched in conjunction with the rollout of new toys, was in full swing. He-Man, Pound Puppies, Transformers, you name it. As Reagan era deregulation progressed, it became de rigeur for cartoons to be merchandised to toys, books, games, stickers, coloring books, whatever. The sky was the limit.

With My Little Pony, the trend was slightly reversed. First released as a toy in 1982, cartoons came later in 1984 (at least according to Wikipedia, and I’m really not in a position to argue). The cartoons, as described in the same source, were typically adventure related and the full-length features include aspects that might appeal to adults stuck watching such dreck.

Not so the Ponies in their current incarnation. Stuck watching more than one My Little Pony feature to appease my daughter, I can safely conclude as a first-hand witness that the latest cartoons feature no appeal to adults, have very, very minimal elements of action or plot or character. They are, it is to be noted, all about the kids.

They also are all about the selling.

Now, I’m not so naïve as to believe that nothing I wrote above applies almost equally to each and every toy sold to children nowadays that has any kind of subsidiary market. Yes, there are Backyardigans water bottles, clothes, toys, etc. Yes, Strawberry Shortcake, my daughter’s previous cartoon infatuation, has dolls, dollhouses, books, etc. (though one of the lamest, most irregular, and most inconsistent merchandising efforts I’ve noticed). All of that is true.

But there is a kind of purity in comparison. There are, for instance, only five characters in The Backyardigans (Pablo, Tyrone, Uniqua, Tasha, and Austin). Desert-centric Strawberry Shortcake features approximately the same number of major characters with occasional cameos by minor characters like Rainbow Sherbert.

The recent purchase of Fun Days in Ponyville, replete with 120 “reusable” stickers (just barely true, that “reusable”), demonstrates just how mercenary this Hasbro line of toys is. It shows just how fixated the company is on introducing as many ponies as possible with the goal of getting your child to hyperventilate until all are purchased. This twenty-three page “book” introducing the ponies presents us with twenty different characters.

Having sat through three different My Little Pony cartoons, I can tell you that there are more than are displayed in this volume. Having read a number of (checked out of the library) My Little Pony books, I can tell you there are more still. Were you to toddle over to the Hasbro My Little Pony website, you would notice on their products page that there are thirty pages of items clocking in at 262 My Little Pony/Ponyville products.

Worse still, as a writer being made to sit through these inane children’s productions, there is absolutely no drama, no real conflict, no character development, no point to the cartoons save to sell more MLP products.

Again, I am not naïve. I know the vast bulk of children’s programming exists anymore either to sell a certain product or with the goal of getting popular enough to market ancillary products. But the sheer volume and vastness of the MLP merchandise empire is staggering and disgusting simultaneously.

Anyway, having watched as much MLP as I can possibly stomach, I can outline the basic plot of every Pony narrative to come down the pike until this trend fades and the toy manufacturers move on to some other childhood memory to bugger. A big event is planned (to be held as the cartoon’s “climax”). The ponies all are excited and spend a lot of energy frantically getting ready. At least one pony (maybe more) is having trouble either fully getting ready or getting into the spirit. Then something happens. And everyone lives happily ever after.

That is all that these stories tell. Princess Promenade? Check. “Dancing in the Clouds”? It’s covered. The Friendship Ball will be a success. Rose Blossom’s First Christmas? That shit is under control.

The saving grace for me as a parent is that TLC just doesn’t care that much for the ponies in comparison to other toys and cartoons. True, when she first gets a pony movie or pony toy, it’s all she can do to put it down or not watch it obsessively. 2007’s Christmas was marked by her insisting upon nearly every one of my in-laws either read to her the book version of Dancing in the Clouds or watching the cartoon with her. One day, in her illness, I think she watched the 18-minute cartoon for well over two hours solid.

And since then? Not once. She has moved on. My Little Pony may cast a bewitching spell at first, but its diffusion into six thousand characters and toys dilutes any staying power it might like to have. In the interest of short-term gain with its plethora of characters, the Hasbro geniuses have foregone stayability and charm and individuality.

Again, maybe I’m naïve to not believe that such a crass, short-minded marketing strategy will pay off twenty to thirty some years from now with my daughter’s generation buying Ponies for their children as some magical attempt to recapture the past. Maybe I’m naïve enough to think that the single-mindedness of this current crop of toys, games, videos, etc. will end up leaving no lasting emotional impression, their sheer vapidity obvious even to a child.

Maybe I’m naïve.

But maybe it’s hope.