My Little Pony memories
So I hear a lot of people like this new My Little Pony show. A lot of them defend this new My Little Pony show by saying OH IT'S TOTALLY NOT LIKE THAT LAME OLD MY LITTLE PONY SHOW FROM THE 80S. This proves that these people are stupid and do not know shit, because the old My little Pony show was awesome. I used to watch it when I was like 7 or 8 back in the late 80s on a little black and white TV with the two knobs, because it came on weekday mornings right after Heathcliff and I could usually catch the first segment befoe I had to run for the bus. A lot of these kids nowadays automatically assume that because the original MLP was designed to sell girls' toys that it was a lame girly show, but the truth is that the ponies had amazing adventures, like the one time that this rock and roll star stole all the ponies' shadows to turn into a giant monster cloud or the time that the evil penguin king tried to freeze ponyland with his lazer eyes or the My Little pony movie where these three witches create a giant blob of sentient oatmeal to devour all of Ponyland because ummmm well I'm sure they had a good reason. Now that I think about it, the original My Little Pony really felt a lot like Adventure Time. I'm not bagging on the new My Little pony or anything, I'm just saying that it's a different animal and the original version had its merits too. Also, literally every episode was a multi-parter that ended on a cliff hanger, so it was pretty easy to get addicted.
One of my clear childhood memories involves playing My Little Ponies with the neighbor girl Lauren. Lauren was totally obsessed with the ponies; she had ALL the pony toys. She was kind of a brat, but when you're 7 you usually pick your friends based on how easy it is to walk to their house rather than on any actual mutual interests. Anyway, Lauren and I used to play ponies with her pony action figures, but, being creative as kids are, we made up our own pony mythos. Our regular cast of characters included:
THE PONIES: These were, of course, represented by Lauren's pony toys. I forget which ones she used, since all the ponies were pretty much interchangable to me. The only one I was ever able to distinguish from the other on the TV show was the sort of snooty intellectual one who talked in a faux British accent. Oh, and there were those sea ponies that just sang SHOOBA DOO SHOOP SHOOP SHOOBA DOOP everytime they appeared on screen. And there was Spike, who was my favorite character, but Lauren didn't have a Spike action figure. :C Lauren played all the ponies.
MEGAN: Megan was a character from the My Little Pony TV series, I think she was a teenage earth girl who fell through a portal into Ponyland or something. She was represented by another of Lauren's action figures. Lauren played Megan.
BOB: Bob was an original character that I created, a boy who similarly fell through a portal into Ponyland. He was represented by a Fisherprice little people mailman figurine, you know, the one with the blue body and blue hat. Originally Lauren's ponies were really racist toward him because he was a non-canonical character and Lauren had apparently learned nothing from that one pony episode where the ponies save these beautiful flower people from giant ugly crab monster but it turns out that the flower people are actually WANTED CRIMINALS and the crab monsters are actually POLICEMEN and everyone learns an important lesson about prejudice and I think Megan sings a song about it. Bob was best friends with Ick the slime worm (See below). I played Bob.
ICK THE SLIME WORM: Ick the slime worm was a giant slime worm that lived in Ponyland. He was the first thing to befriend Bob after the ponies rejected him. Ick was a friendly fellow who taught the ponies an important lesson about acceptance. I played Ick the slime worm by using my hand and forearm like a puppet.
SQUIRT: Squirt was the main villain of our Ponyland adventures. He was some sort of cephalopod monster tyrant with a magical amulet that appeared in one plot arc in the series and I think we incorporated him into our world mostly because he had an easy to remember name. At least, I think it was Squirt, but we could have misheard. I don't think Hasbro ever bothered making Squirt action figures, so Squirt forever remained an off-stage character in our world. Like, we'd always have the ponies say stuff like OH NO THIS MUST BE SQUIRT'S HANDIWORK or SQUIRT HAS SENT THESE MONSTERS but we never actually had them meet Squirt.
CRASHER: Crasher was a giant monster who lived on a nearby hill above the sandbox where we usually played ponies. He would periodically come barrelling down the hill to smash up the ponies and ruin whatever the hell it was they might have been doing at the time. More a force of nature than an actual villain, Crasher was represented by my little brother's Big Wheels tricycle. My little brother named Crasher and usually played him by riding his Big Wheels over our play area.
THE LEAF PEOPLE: A race of evil sentient leaves that lived in a dimension parallel to Ponyland. I played all the Leaf People by grabbing handfuls of dead leaves off the ground and pretending to make them talk. The Leaf People didn't speak English, they just rasped in Donald-Duck-like gibberish. Lacking both "hearts" and "feelings," the Leaf people were easily suseptible to the ponies' unicorn love powers (I have no idea if the actual TV ponies had these powers; I think we were actually conflating them with Carebears), and blasting them with horn lasers would cause them to disintegrate.
THE ROCK PEOPLE: A friendly race of sentient rocks who lived in the same parallel dimension as the Leaf People. Like the leaf people, I played all the rock people by grabbing random rocks and making them talk. The only recurring rock person was the tribe's leader, who was represented by a lump of hardened concrete studded with pebbles which I liked to imagine were multiple, misshapen eyes. The Rock People could speak English and, on several occasions, rescued the ponies from the clutches of the Leaf People.
I forgot most of our games, they mainly involved Crasher smashing stuff up, the ponies lamenting the mechanisms of Squirt, a one-sided romance between Megan and Bob, and the never-ending war of attrition between the Rock and Leaf peoples. Kids, you know?
One of my clear childhood memories involves playing My Little Ponies with the neighbor girl Lauren. Lauren was totally obsessed with the ponies; she had ALL the pony toys. She was kind of a brat, but when you're 7 you usually pick your friends based on how easy it is to walk to their house rather than on any actual mutual interests. Anyway, Lauren and I used to play ponies with her pony action figures, but, being creative as kids are, we made up our own pony mythos. Our regular cast of characters included:
THE PONIES: These were, of course, represented by Lauren's pony toys. I forget which ones she used, since all the ponies were pretty much interchangable to me. The only one I was ever able to distinguish from the other on the TV show was the sort of snooty intellectual one who talked in a faux British accent. Oh, and there were those sea ponies that just sang SHOOBA DOO SHOOP SHOOP SHOOBA DOOP everytime they appeared on screen. And there was Spike, who was my favorite character, but Lauren didn't have a Spike action figure. :C Lauren played all the ponies.
MEGAN: Megan was a character from the My Little Pony TV series, I think she was a teenage earth girl who fell through a portal into Ponyland or something. She was represented by another of Lauren's action figures. Lauren played Megan.
BOB: Bob was an original character that I created, a boy who similarly fell through a portal into Ponyland. He was represented by a Fisherprice little people mailman figurine, you know, the one with the blue body and blue hat. Originally Lauren's ponies were really racist toward him because he was a non-canonical character and Lauren had apparently learned nothing from that one pony episode where the ponies save these beautiful flower people from giant ugly crab monster but it turns out that the flower people are actually WANTED CRIMINALS and the crab monsters are actually POLICEMEN and everyone learns an important lesson about prejudice and I think Megan sings a song about it. Bob was best friends with Ick the slime worm (See below). I played Bob.
ICK THE SLIME WORM: Ick the slime worm was a giant slime worm that lived in Ponyland. He was the first thing to befriend Bob after the ponies rejected him. Ick was a friendly fellow who taught the ponies an important lesson about acceptance. I played Ick the slime worm by using my hand and forearm like a puppet.
SQUIRT: Squirt was the main villain of our Ponyland adventures. He was some sort of cephalopod monster tyrant with a magical amulet that appeared in one plot arc in the series and I think we incorporated him into our world mostly because he had an easy to remember name. At least, I think it was Squirt, but we could have misheard. I don't think Hasbro ever bothered making Squirt action figures, so Squirt forever remained an off-stage character in our world. Like, we'd always have the ponies say stuff like OH NO THIS MUST BE SQUIRT'S HANDIWORK or SQUIRT HAS SENT THESE MONSTERS but we never actually had them meet Squirt.
CRASHER: Crasher was a giant monster who lived on a nearby hill above the sandbox where we usually played ponies. He would periodically come barrelling down the hill to smash up the ponies and ruin whatever the hell it was they might have been doing at the time. More a force of nature than an actual villain, Crasher was represented by my little brother's Big Wheels tricycle. My little brother named Crasher and usually played him by riding his Big Wheels over our play area.
THE LEAF PEOPLE: A race of evil sentient leaves that lived in a dimension parallel to Ponyland. I played all the Leaf People by grabbing handfuls of dead leaves off the ground and pretending to make them talk. The Leaf People didn't speak English, they just rasped in Donald-Duck-like gibberish. Lacking both "hearts" and "feelings," the Leaf people were easily suseptible to the ponies' unicorn love powers (I have no idea if the actual TV ponies had these powers; I think we were actually conflating them with Carebears), and blasting them with horn lasers would cause them to disintegrate.
THE ROCK PEOPLE: A friendly race of sentient rocks who lived in the same parallel dimension as the Leaf People. Like the leaf people, I played all the rock people by grabbing random rocks and making them talk. The only recurring rock person was the tribe's leader, who was represented by a lump of hardened concrete studded with pebbles which I liked to imagine were multiple, misshapen eyes. The Rock People could speak English and, on several occasions, rescued the ponies from the clutches of the Leaf People.
I forgot most of our games, they mainly involved Crasher smashing stuff up, the ponies lamenting the mechanisms of Squirt, a one-sided romance between Megan and Bob, and the never-ending war of attrition between the Rock and Leaf peoples. Kids, you know?