Most egregious product placements in MLP media?

Mrs. Prospector

Mystical Magical Unicorn
Joined
Aug 9, 2021
Messages
233
What are some of the most blatantly ridiculous things you've seen the MLP shows do in order to push a new product? Or missed opportunities to do so?

If I had a nickel for every time a beloved home for the ponies was destroyed in order to replace it with a better, cooler playset, I'd have two nickels, which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice! (Dream Castle in the G1 movie and Twilight's library in the FIM S4 finale. It's kinda funny how that's become a recurring theme in MLP!

I find that the opposite happens a lot in G4, especially in the later seasons. You'll see things that look like an attempt to introduce a new toyline, but then you'll find that there aren't any toys. Introducing six new main characters in season 8? Only 2 got toys, with limited releases. Transforming the changelings into cuter, more colorful beings has to be to make them more marketable right? No Changeling toys! Introducing a whole new pony race, the Kirin, late in the show? No toys here! Hasbro's saving their energy for rereleasing Pinkie Pie for the 458th time!
And then of course, there was the third destruction, where the Tree of Harmony was rebuilt as the treehouse, but that didn't even have a playset!
Same goes for G5. With the way they hyped up Ruby Jubilee in the Bridlewoodstock special, you'd think it was to promote a toy of her, but nope!
 
Last edited:
I'm still salty about the Kirins, Autumn Blaze was one of my favs, she 100% deserved a toy she was the reason i made my oc half kirin.

the Pippsweaks are a big one for me to. They where clearly meant to serve as a replacement for the CMC but not a single toy.
i would have loved a little G5 filly Seashell but nope.:hmph:

also G3 Spike, they could have at least thrown him in a playset as a bonus figure.
 
Last edited:
What are some of the most blatantly ridiculous things you've seen the MLP shows do in order to push a new product? Or missed opportunities to do so?

If I had a nickel for every time a beloved home for the ponies was destroyed in order to replace it with a better, cooler playset, I'd have two nickels, which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice! (Dream Castle in the G1 movie and Twilight's library in the FIM S4 finale. It's kinda funny how that's become a recurring theme in MLP!

I find that the opposite happens a lot in G4, especially in the later seasons. You'll see things that look like an attempt to introduce a new toyline, but then you'll find that there aren't any toys. Introducing six new main characters in season 8? Only 2 got toys, with limited releases. Transforming the changelings into cuter, more colorful beings has to be to make them more marketable right? No Changeling toys! Introducing a whole new pony race, the Kirin, late in the show? No toys here! Hasbro's saving their energy for rereleasing Pinkie Pie for the 458th time!
And then of course, there was the third destruction, where the Tree of Harmony was rebuilt as the treehouse, but that didn't even have a playset!
Same goes for G5. With the way they hyped up Ruby Jubilee in the Bridlewoodstock special, you'd think it was to promote a toy of her, but nope!
There were a lot of side characters in FIM who had a big enough role that I feel should have had figures in the main toyline. Characters such as Cozy Glow, Granny Smith (she had mini figs, but no standard brushable), Sapphire Shores (there was a fashion style, but again, no standard brushable), Daring Do (same case as sapphire shores), Spitfire (she had a toy in the reboot toys but I felt she really should have had a toy in the main line), Minuette, Aloe (They had lotus blossom but no Aloe?), Babs Seed, Mayor Mare, Autumn Blaze (as mentioned above), etc...

I love G4 with my whole heart, but I really wish there was a wider variety of characters in the toyline. The show is so expansive and the world is so vast, there are hundreds of characters in the show that would have made great toys, but we still really only got the same six characters released over and over again, with a handful of other characters early on.
 
There were a lot of side characters in FIM who had a big enough role that I feel should have had figures in the main toyline. Characters such as Cozy Glow, Granny Smith (she had mini figs, but no standard brushable), Sapphire Shores (there was a fashion style, but again, no standard brushable), Daring Do (same case as sapphire shores), Spitfire (she had a toy in the reboot toys but I felt she really should have had a toy in the main line), Minuette, Aloe (They had lotus blossom but no Aloe?), Babs Seed, Mayor Mare, Autumn Blaze (as mentioned above), etc...

I love G4 with my whole heart, but I really wish there was a wider variety of characters in the toyline. The show is so expansive and the world is so vast, there are hundreds of characters in the show that would have made great toys, but we still really only got the same six characters released over and over again, with a handful of other characters early on.
I wish they had bothered doing family sets for g4 the way g1 at least had themed family sets. I actually always thought it would be cute if they had released "grandma and grandpa" g1 pony sets- Calico Critter has some grandparents I think. I don't like the Big Mac they eventually released as brushable (just give him longer hair!) either, but they didn't even release a brushable "family" set. I also like the idea of having a "different" type of family with the Apple family.

I mean if we're really going for the most egregious, it's gotta be Princess Cadance. Her intro episodes are one of my favorite specials of the whole series but she was very clearly just made for product reasons and I was so sad she didn't really get further development. It's like the showrunners were told "put this in an episode" so they did but then they refused to budge on their vision for the rest of the show/seasons so they would ignore it and go back to the status quo whenever they could. But given that MLP FIM went on for so long, it's bizarre they didn't go back to her.

And then they made Flurry Heart and I was 100% convinced they would simply reboot the series using Flurry Heart as a protagonist. It makes the most sense imo- hook in older fans, your protag would be a literal princess unicorn-pegasus, the coolest possible thing. But then they just... kept going and afaik they never even made her an adult, in the toys or the shows at least.
 
I wish they had bothered doing family sets for g4
I hadn't thought of that! That would be sooo cute. I would've loved an apple Fa ily set, especially including Pear Butter and Bright Mac, or Aunt and Uncle Orange.

They had a Sweet Apple Acres line with a ton of the apple family in the mini figures but never in the brushables.

Or a Pie Family set, beyond just Pinkie and Maud.

Or a Twilight Family set, I would've loved to have Twilight Velvet as a brushable!

I liked that they released more stallions in the reboot series, but I wish there were more in the original. All we ever got was Shining Armor.
 
I liked that how almost every pony and place in G1 had a toy that went with it, so you could act out the show. From what I can tell, please correct me if I'm wrong, the G1 show was based on the toys and was created to help promote them. While G4's main point was to sell toys as well, it feels like they tried to create an actual TV show and sell toys based on the TV show, instead of make the show based on the toys. I wonder if the toys had come first, would the show be the same quality it had now? I do wish we had seen toys for all of the other stuff the later seasons had, I would have loved to see toys for the rest of the new 6!
 
G4 and G5 had so many missed opportunities for toys. G5 especially you can tell there were things that were meant to be toys but thanks to the new CEO's thought-process of "get rid of the old stuff in the warehouses before we start making new stuff" very little of it actually got made. One of the most egregious examples, and the one I'm most disappointed about, was the "Boardtrot", introduced quite late into TYT's run but mentioned in MYM's recently leaked pitch bible from 2021. It's a seaside boardwalk amusement park with a stall/ride/attraction for each of the main ponies. There were so many playset opportunities for that, either as one big set like with G3's Sweet Sundae Amusement Park, or as separate sets for each pony to eventually build up the whole park, like you could buy Zipp and her roller coaster or Misty and her popcorn stall.

Also the auroricorns, RIP.
 
I liked that how almost every pony and place in G1 had a toy that went with it, so you could act out the show. From what I can tell, please correct me if I'm wrong, the G1 show was based on the toys and was created to help promote them. While G4's main point was to sell toys as well, it feels like they tried to create an actual TV show and sell toys based on the TV show, instead of make the show based on the toys. I wonder if the toys had come first, would the show be the same quality it had now? I do wish we had seen toys for all of the other stuff the later seasons had, I would have loved to see toys for the rest of the new 6!
I could write a whole essay on this (and i have drafts of one lol) but-
The 1980s toy boom that g1 was a part of was due to 1. rising number of people owning TVs and 2. deregulation of the Federal Communications Commission, removing their ability to limit advertising to kids. TV series like MLP and friends were made as advertising which He-Man pioneered (and He-Man was directly influenced by the Star Wars boom and retailers realizing that movies sold toys at massive scale).
By the 2010s the market was heavily saturated with toy media properties, but IMO they realized it wasn't enough to just "have a TV show", you wanted to have a story that kids could invest themselves in deeply enough that they remember that story. Also, I have a theory about this- in the 1980s the toy boom was heavily influenced by Star Wars, and you know what happened in the 2000s? Star Wars mania again. In the 1980s the assumption was "make movie = toy$$$" but then 20 years later SW proved that it had cultural relevance and lasting power. That simply wasn't matched by being a toy company that made movies, you have to be a "media franchise" to stay big. I mean this was also when Disney rolled out the Princesses line to dominate the toy + media market too.
I mean, Hasbro brought in Lauren Faust and she had already worked on PPG and Foster's Home so she was a pretty solid foundation for the TV show. I don't think her style translates very well/easily to 3D toys so I think the fact they went with hers is a pretty strong indicator that they investing more heavily into the show than the toyline.
I think this goes back into what Mrs. Prospector was saying re: them not having toy tie-ins for stuff in the later seasons. I wonder if a lot of that stuff had scrapped plans they just never rolled out. If you're getting kids invested in a franchise, it seems easier to just produce some of the low effort stuff- the main 6 ponies, blind bags, etc.
 
Back
Top