WeirdRaptor Hello, ladies and gentlemen, WeirdRaptor here. This is the very first animated incarnation of My Little Pony. It was set in a fantasy world called, Ponyland, or Dream Valley (no two writers could decide whether the former was a part of the latter, or if the latter was a part of the former). Anyway, wherever it is, all the stories are placed within it…somewhere. The basic framing composition of the series was always the same, but it worked.It went something like this: Magical sapient ponies live idyllic lives in their home, first Dream Castle and later Paradise Estate, and frequently go on adventures to save the latest victimized one shot character from the latest villain. The nature of these adventures (oddly) usually involved the villain having ambitions to either destroy Ponyland/Dream Valley, or change it so fundamentally as to render it desolate for everyone else. They were often helped by a mushroom-themed gnome named the Moochic and his beleaguered assistant, Habit. A handful of episodes focus not on averting the latest Apocalypse, but on more mundane matters, such as using your imagination for fun, scavenger hunts, taking care of stray animals in need, dealing with bullies, and mending political ties following the catastrophic Ice Cream War II (Hey, don't look at me that way! A friend of mine lost both his legs in that war!).There were 65 episodes in all. 16 were multi-part serials, most of which were either 2-4 parts long with one Ten Episode Pilot. There were only 9 standalone episodes.Some technical aspects of the series: its continuity tended to be "lax-to-non-existent. The animation was cheap, animation errors were in abundance, the characters' faces would sometimes just look weird because of this, but it was good enough to get its job done. There were some inspired moments in design that led to creative settings, backgrounds, and character designs.The writing was uneven, ranging from decent to serviceable to "Criminey, somebody actually wrote that and they actually got an actor to say it".The voice acting was on par with the rest of the show. Some of the voice actors really knew what to do with their characters, while others just sounded awful. The Baby Ponies in particular were a big offender on having annoying voices, what with adult actresses trying way to hard to sound cutesy and young. My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic does young pony voices right, by casting actual kids. Oddly, the human children featured in the series were voiced by actual kids, but the Baby Ponies weren't. Figure out that logic behind that one.In all, when the show was at its best, it was a solid, fun watch. And when it was bad, you had Miss Piggy wannabes and their Dog-Bird…things from Jersey, attempting villainy, by GASP! cutting ponies' hair! Yeah…this show could get out there sometimes. Did I mention Miss Piggy Wannabe's powers were to turn things to glass, and her Achilles Heel was the destruction of her cape? In all, it was a decent show and a fun one. If you like My Little Pony and you're not too turned off by the overly sugary look of the show, I'd recommend it.Parental Warning: The overt strangeness and sometimes, frightening, nature of the villains and the effect they have on the ponies and their environment has been known to be a rife source of nightmare fuel for some of the wee ones. If you're hoping for something along the lines of G3, this is not for you.Objective Vote: 6/10. Subjective Vote: 7.5/10.

morphricky After watching "My Little Pony: Friendship is magic" and being tortured by the excess dialog, it reminded me of why I love the old cartoons so much. I personally hate any movies and animation where the characters are talking excessively, it also feels like a bad excuse to fill the show with dialog rather than animation. As for the old episodes, the characters talk at a normal pace and at least in the Swedish dub from the eighties, they had normal sounding voices and rarely any excessively squeaky.As for the actual show, some of the episodes have good morals and are fun to watch, such as the episode where the baby ponies learn to use their imagination. It also develops the characters very nicely as you get to know each pony and their dreams. I also enjoyed the episode where Sweet stuff is treasure hunting and they teach the morals about being happy about being yourself. Some episodes were not dubbed in the eighties and watching the new dub is unbearable as the translators sometimes completely misses what a sentence meant.However, there are some episodes which are quite frankly dreadful. I find that the episodes which focuses on characters which are only there for the plot are usually the worst. I hate the episode with that unlucky creature. I did as a child as well and they gave him a very annoying voice in the Swedish dubbing. But compared to 20 minutes of "Friendship is Magic", I'd rather watch that episode.... twice! I also found some episodes a bit too dreary/violent, such as the ice cream wars. That episode is nothing but bickering, arguing, crying, whining... and then "Moral of the story" slapped on in the last two minutes of the episode. Similarly I feel about the episode with the evil queen and her daughter.The show is enjoyable, though I tend to watch the same episodes. Because of the clumsiness of VHS, it was hard to watch certain episodes as they (as I assume was deliberately) crammed the boring episodes in the start of the cassette and the good episodes were last.

TheLittleSongbird I remember seeing My Little Pony n Friends as a kid, and I loved it then. Re-visiting it a decade or so later, I do still like it now, if not as much as I did when I was younger. The animation is of inconsistent quality, the characters are well-drawn, and mostly the colours are vibrant and backgrounds fluid, but the continuity from things disappearing out of frames, things appearing out of nowhere, colour changes in the same scene, voice actors speaking different characters' lines and sometimes a lack of consistency between story-lines has never been a strong suit. Some of the characters served a good purpose in some episodes but were pointless in others. This was especially true of the sea-ponies. However, while not always memorable, the songs are sweet and tuneful and the characters are likable and engaging, with Megan a sympathetic character, the ponies and Spike adorable and the villains interesting, some comical(Hydia in a sense), some threatening(Tirak) and some very dimensional(Catrina). The writing always maintains it gentle nature, while showing humour, poignancy and suspense also, and the story lines are charming often in their simplicity with some having a dark tone like Rescue at Midnight Castle and perhaps Return of Tambelon. The voice acting is great, Nancy Cartwright I am most familiar with, but Susan Blu and Ellen Gerstell also stand out. Overall, I quite like this show. 8/10 Bethany Cox

Lady Jasmine Charming, gentle, and in a strange way educational...that's MLP...there will never be another cartoon quite like it. I was devastated the day I found they had removed the old MLP movies from the rental shelves and replaced them with some badly translated anime movies. I felt like a stage in my life was just gone...I hope my that one day my own kids can appreciate this series for the unique show it was.