by Tuesday PopeIn 2019, our beloved generation 4 of My Little Pony ended with an okay finale and an amazing prologue. The book the show opened with closed for good as Princess Twilight and her friends looked down wistfully to the friendship culture they had cultivated for so many years. And before the horse was cold in the ground, we got a look at what their next adventure was and it looked to be “good as hell.”
A new commercial with the small equines in a Teen Titan Go art style appeared on Hasbro’s YouTube channel. The ponys sang along to one of Lizzo’s hits, but only to the line “feeling good as hell.” And hearing these pony’s curse was…strange. It was strange. The toys looked really cute with a sort of LOL surprise vibe. And then an interim show before generation 5 of MLP kicks off was announced with these new designs.
The brony community was ablaze. People hated it, shocker, and the herd took to YouTube in droves to voice their displeasure. This fire was only fueled when the ad was pulled from YouTube. While these horse fellows bellowed victory, it was probably just because a parent complained about the pony potty mouths. It wouldn’t be the first time G4 had seen parental outrage.
So things have been quiet in the way of any information on this show, that is, until sometime toward the beginning of 2020 when the toys began to drop onto store shelves. Being a pony fan myself, curiousity killed me and I had to check it out.
So I get to target and the first thing I notice about the toys is that they’re extremely cute. And they also have a weird potion bottle motif going on with a new pony named Potion Nova. Considering the potion motif, if the show is still go, I assume she’ll be important in some way. Currently there’s brushable toys of her, the mane 6, and Trixie. There’s also a few Equestria Girls (the human versions of the pony’s we know and love) toys in the pony life style. One has Twilight and DJ-Pon3 as humans and the other is a set of two combo packs with a human and pony of the princess day and night sisters Celestia and Luna. There was also a set of blind bag ponies. This isn’t uncommon for G4, but these were in small potion containers.
I picked up the Celestia set and two loot boxes and was on my way. I was disappointed that the packaging offered no clue about what was happening in the show. The Celestia box only said that she was on vacation, so perhaps this between ending and prequel like the new comic series and Celestia is off getting some rays with her diplomat days behind her. The Celestia is adorable and good quality. She’s a heavy plastic and every limb, head, and her tail are articulated so you can move them around. Better quality than I was expecting for the $15 I spent. Her human counterpart was freaky looking. I am not a doll fan so she got sent away to Tartarus—I mean placed in a ziplock bag to be given to someone else along with the over 20 accessories. Including, you guessed it, a selfie stick. No wait I mean a potion bottle. There were also 6 mystery accessories which included an outfit for the doll and some other accessories that were recolored versions of ones shown in the packaging. Overall a good value for the money.
Next was the loot boxes. Like most people who buy loot boxes, I was made a fool. The packaging is a plastic water bottle with a blue cloth bag inside. What you’re supposed to do is put water in the potion bottle and shake it to dissolve the cloth, but I’m an inpatient adult and I just cut the bags open. The box in the store showed the ponies playing with their pets so I assumed that there were both ponies and pets. Which there are, but I wasn’t so lucky because I pulled a llama. Okay. Not a horse, but this llama has G1 origins so whatever. She’s green and I like green. I open the second blind box. It’s a hippo. With a horn. WHAT? In the movie there’s a hippo joke, but I didn’t realize they would manifest this joke into this plastic oddity before me.
Over all, the blind bags were not worth it. They’re only $3 each, but for another $2 you can just get yourself or your kid the Fluttershy they actually want. There’s only 5 horses in the whole set. The containers are coded so if you’re a fan that needs all the Rarity or Lyra products, you can easily figure out which bottle to pick up.
I for one, must admit I think pony life looks cute. It’s not going to be the strangely epic show that G4 was, but it’s not trying to be. You can easily skip it when it does come out, or enjoy some more silly antics from your favorite ponies. I will gladly buy more of the articulated ponies if they bring more out. I always hated the brushable hair, so I appreciate these are sculpted. I look forward to the future of pony and am tentatively excited for the new movie next year.
