My Little Pony Friendship is Magic part 18: We Don't Need No Stinkin Hiatus

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Hasbro says MLP is doing rather well while teasing that something is coming in 2026.

For over 40 years, My Little Pony has been a cornerstone of pop culture, and 2025 will be another banner year as the brand celebrates the 15th anniversary of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. Hasbro will mark this milestone with new collaborations, including with Ty’s Beanie Bouncers, and there are more surprises in store.

Beyond toys, the brand continues to shine in fashion and lifestyle with recent collabs with Hot Topic, Dolls Kill, Heydude, Miniso, Loungefly and others. In China and rolling out across markets, My Little Pony x Kayou collectible trading cards have become a sensation, with over 2.97b packs sold to date. The brand is also performing well in the collectibles and plush market with dynamic and highly localised releases from Mighty Jaxx and Reesee, catering to nostalgic fans and new generations alike. Released last year, My Little Pony: Tell Your Tale on YouTube brought fresh storytelling and music, deepening fan engagement. With even more to come in 2026, My Little Pony continues to spread joy, friendship and magic across the globe.

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Not sure how confirmed/rumored this is, but unless this is an EQG movie I assume "live action" just means CG.

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Turns out that bat ponies were planned for G5 before it was cancelled.

Some interesting information has arrived from the panel happening at Trotcon right now starring G.M. Berrow. Apparently, bat pony land was planned for generation 5 before it got cancelled. The writers wanted to expand to more side creatures like griffons and bats, but as you all know G5 has ended.

She also mentioned that she wanted Make Your Mark to be 2D, since it is difficult to get 3D assets, limiting what they could do.

I wonder if any of this will be rolled over into G6? Here's hoping... I still need my Halloween Town bat village.

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And even more G5 info with the bat ponies. They had like 5 seasons worth of stuff to go, and were even thinking of doing a G5 EQG. Turns out the ones making the show did not want to do 3D either, cause of how difficult it was to do 3D models.

Expanding on the Bat Pony Land fromk before, apparently each pony was going to travel to a different "creature" land to powerup magic necklaces, and for bats in particular it was planned to have Misty visit them. They didn't detail what all she'd get into while there, but that would have been a cute interaction for sure.

This all was going to start with Dragons and work through different side races. No kirin were planned though. Poor Kirin... They did say most of these were going to be pony-based races strictly due to the limits of having to create 3D assets. That complicates everything and is why G.M. Berrow originally wanted to go with 2D.

Apparently all of Make Your Mark season 2 was outlined, but things were canned in March of 2023, so everything was handed over to the Tell Your Tale team to do what they could with it over the shorts and specials. Basically we lost half of the planned MYM content from the cancelling.

The Tell Your Tale Team and Make Your Mark team exchanged ideas to keep things cohesive over coffee meetings essentially, which is how some characters like Senor Butterscotch appeared in MYM.

And finally, they had plans to do an Equestria Girls style thing with humanized ponies, but under a new name. Obviously we never even got a hint of that one on our end, but I wonder where they would have gone with it?

Anyway, that about covers it! If any other news arrives, I'll get another post up as always.

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A leaked image of Tell Your Tale came out and someone colored it, could this have been Twilight?

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Got around to watching Fixed, Gendy Tartakovsky's newest film, and I hate to say it, but it's definitely his worst film/show.

The real crux of it is that this film doesn't really seem to have much of a story. Sure, it has a plot, this one dog, Bull, want to get with this other dog, Honey, before his testicles are removed. It's your usual teen movie in that way, but it really doesn't start until nearly 40 minutes in.

Issue is that time is spent with some pretty unfunny jokes. Yes, you certainly understand them, and their crassness isn't the problem, but many times the jokes aren't going anywhere and are straight aimless. It honestly feels like Gendy had an idea and plenty of jokes for it, but didn't have a way to weave them together with the characters and plot. At the very least there was one funny section where I got some laughs, but I honestly spent more time making the "keep it going" finger motion more than making Ha Ha noises.

The film does look classically animated, and it very well may be, and the almost Ren & Stimpy style does mean you like to look at it, but it's a shame that this film doesn't really give you much joy outside of a few brief moments.

Gendy does amazing work, from Samurai Jack to Primal, but this was clearly a rare miss for him.

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Long shot, but does anyone know how to get hold of Valcron? Was looking to commission him to do the cover for my first book. I think he's perfect for it.

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So you folks remember 14 years ago, the second season came out on the day I went on a big epic ride to get over some shit.

Well I did that same thing this weekend, but instead of going on a grand journey of mental/emotional recovery this was instead some fun to go back down to where I used to live and go to a concert hall and see Weird Al.

It was a strange experience this time. I left earlier to have as little traffic as possible to contend with, but while this time was for fun something just felt off. This time I went to where thousands would be and yet it was so lonely, unlike last time where I was heading somewhere I'd be alone and yet so many were cheering for me back then. To say the darkness on those streets felt almost stifling is an understatement. There was nothing behind me, but hills and the dark, and yet instead of stopping so much like before I kept pushing, not because of some fear but because I was able to.

It was strange hitting the same spots and yet it wasn't as hard or tiring. What was a 12 hour trip before was 5 1/2 this time, and the difference was stark.

It's weird how that time shrank as I looked back at the years since the last time I made this same ride. So many gone without a word, others gone because of many words, and the few that linger here. I miss those folks, the Freys, Valcrons, Keenaxes, and so many others, but it's also no wonder people grew apart as unfortunate as it is.

In the end the concert was fun, hotel staff started calling me "bike guy" since it seemed my story made the rounds of cycling 40 miles to get there. Though I wish I got more sleep, only about an hour of it over the past 53 hours. While it was unfortunate I couldn't explore my old home and the area around it this adventure was exactly what I wanted to do, just a long ride with a bit of spite over my friend saying I couldn't do it, lol.

Time is weird how we can improve and worsen and yet I know things have improved more than they have gotten worse.

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Looks like the 3rd set of the MLP card game in China is Halloween themed (they are calling it Halloween instead of Nightmare Night, for some reason.)

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Here we have Sunny's mom. Looks like they were going for a pseudo alicorn lineage, perhaps with her knowing more of the history of Equestria, if we go by what Sunny's dad knew already. It's amazing just how much Gen 5 was gutted before it really had a shot.

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Looks like the next MLP card game is coming out early next year. I'll probably pick up a couple of starter decks and see how it goes. As long as it's better than the last card game, and does better than what the Neopets card game is likely to do.