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.

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

boyinflares OK, so i am now 21, but My Little Pony has just been released on DVD in New Zealand, and as it was my favourite cartoon from when i was a kid, i had to get it on DVD to relive the adventures of the ponies and their friends. But my adult mind sees several things wrong with this animated series.So, the good and bad parts about this animated series: The ponies themselves are too cool. North Star, Whizzer, Paradise, Magic Star, Gingerbread, Masquerade and Ribbon were my favourite, but nearly all of them were good. They all had varying degrees of characteristics, some of the ponies were well developed, for example, Wind Whistler was always incredibly wise and remained calm at all times, a sort of leader for the group. Gusty was brash, brave and impatient. Fizzy was fun, excitable and a friend to everyone, while Hearthtrob was a true romantic. However, some ponies, while cool, were not that well developed in terms of depth. North Star mainly stood around looking posh. Whizzer unfortunately never got any main stories, except for being faster than everyone else - in flight and speech. Cupcake, well, Cupcake just got to bake.One thing that was a let down was the amount of guest-characters that were "needed" to drive the story, which in my opinion just got in the way. Like the Grundles and Moochick who were just annoying, and one-off characters that the ponies meet on their adventures, like Puck. The human characters Meggan, Danny and Molly were pretty cool though, as was Spike the Dragon and the Bushwoolies. Various other ponies took up time too - like the decent Flutter ponies, the boring baby-ponies, the pointless Sea-ponies, the Big Brother ponies and the one-off Princess Ponies. I think more time should have been spent on the development of the ponies and less on the various guest stars. The villains though were fairly decent, like Grogar and Somnambula.The animation was fairly poor. Plenty of mistakes occurred in terms of characters speaking but no open mouths, or the words coming from the wrong character. Also, the wrong ponies being shown at various moments plagued the series, for example if four ponies went on a mission, at one point a different pony would have been drawn in place of one of the correct ones. But there were plenty of bright colours and illustrative settings.Continuity was terrible, in "Return of Tambelon" especially, the group of ponies who were not captured changed from episode to episode, a tragedy for what i believe the best episodes from this series.The voices were great, particularly famous voice-actor Susan Blu as Paradise, Catherine Cavadini as North Star, Sarah Partrdige as Wind Whistler and Ellen Gerstell as Magic Star, Whizzer and Masquarade... at least i think she did all three, no where can i find a complete list of which ponies were voiced by who. Of course it is a well known fact that the famous Nancy Cartwright (Bart from "The Simpsons") played Gusty.Some of the best episodes were those that allowed for more story, like the 10 part "End of Flutter Valley", 4 part "Return of Tambelon", 4 part "Magic Coins" and 4 part "Ghost of Paradise Estate". These longer stories allowed more screen time for various ponies, and were more fun to watch as opposed to singular or 2 part episodes. It would have been heaps better to have longer stories, but the show was shared with another 10 minute cartoon ("Glo Friends", "Moondreamers" or "Potato Head Kids").Overall, this animated series is a fun watch, it has a great cast, fun characters, exciting settings and plenty of good stories with fun songs and has good morals, but is plagued with inconsistencies, errors, and goofs. A new series would be cool, but with the same actors and ponies, only having longer stories with more development in the characters. But then again, this series was aimed at kids, so maybe now i expect too much! 7.5 out of 10

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.