My Little Pony (1986–1987) User Reviews

My Favourite Childhood Cartoon

[boyinflares · 7/10 · 9 July 2005]

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

Both good and bad episodes.

[morphricky · 7/10 · 24 July 2012]

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.

Watched this in grade 3

[skywalker-46567 · 7/10 · 5 May 2022]

I remembered watching this in TV back in grade three in my grandma's room with my sister. That was the first time I've ever watched My Little Pony and the resolution was quite old. That was 8 years ago.. wasn't that long ago.

Because I used to like movies like the lion king and Bolt, watching a "girls TV" was a new thing for me (as I never liked Barbie and stuff) but I actually liked this show. The animations were cute!

Surprisingly good!

[La Gremlin · 19 July 2000]

This was one of the better cartoons of the 80s (and surprisingly good for one based on a toy). If you were to watch it today, it would remind you a lot of the current series "Dragon Tales" on PBS.

Then again, I don't know if the dragons have to deal with such enemies as the soul eating Arabus and the youth stealing Somnambula. Then again, 80s kids ARE made of tougher stuff. And this was a cartoon for GIRLS!

One of the most memorable childhood cartoons

[Stompgal_87 · 8/10 · 23 October 2010]

When I was little, I had about three 'My Little Pony' videos and I watched them constantly. Even though this cartoon is mostly for girls, my brother liked it as well because he liked the brightly-coloured ponies.

My favourite Series 1 episodes are 'The Return of Tambelon,' 'Fugitive Flowers,' 'Pony Puppy,' 'Crunch the Rock Dog,' 'Mish Mash Melee,' 'The Revolt of Paradise Estate' and 'Sweet Stuff and the Treasure Hunt' while my favourite series 2 episodes are 'Flight to Cloud Castle' and 'Ice Cream Wars' because they're the ones I always watched on video when I was younger. I didn't see 'Crunch the Rockdog' and 'Mish Mash Melee' until I was about 11 because those two episodes were on a video tape that was exclusive to Asda stores in the UK at the time. I thought those two episodes were originally broadcast in 1990, the year on the tape case, but I soon found out that they were broadcast in 1986 like most of the episodes.

The things I like the best about the show are the songs, the memorable story lines and dialogue and the diverse range of characters. I have recently found episodes of this show on YouTube and there were a few on there that I hadn't seen before. I also liked looking out for continuity errors in this show because there were so many of them that let the show down a bit, but overall, the show is an entertaining nostalgia trip. 8/10.

I actually quite like this

[TheLittleSongbird · 8/10 · 25 April 2012]

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.

Still good

[Lady Jasmine · 5 February 2002]

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.

Best MLP Cartoon

[emftamatalk · 9/10 · 8 November 2014]

As much as I love My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, I feel that this is way better. Even though it was made over 10 years before I was born, it really captures my heart and makes me smile.

First of all, I love the theme song. It's so cute and catchy, and the cuteness is matched by the show itself. The ponies are adorable and more realistic than the Friendship is Magic designs, and I also find them more likable. They seem younger than FIM characters, making them even more innocent and endearing so that young girls are able to relate to them better. The ponies' voices are so adorable and my heart always melts when the baby ones talk! Despite the cuteness, this show seems to be pretty dark sometimes. I will not go into detail because I don't like giving spoilers, but some of the episodes take shocking twists and have really intense situations. The episodes are pretty long but are well thought-out so that they hold your attention for long enough.

It is amazing to see human girls in such a wonderful world filled with cute critters and colorful ponies. I think it will really stimulate the imagination of young girls.

In conclusion, I find this show utterly captivating and it definitely deserves more love from My Little Pony fans.

What Was The Attraction?

[Nicholai · 1 August 2003]

I was vaguely aware of this show back when it was airing during the mid to late eighties, and I remember watching some episodes and being charmed by them, even though I was too young to remember those episodes in any detail. So I decided recently to rent an episode of MLP because I thought it would be a delightful trip back to memory lane.

All right, perhaps I'm not being fair. Perhaps this episode, "The Glass Princess" was not really a representative episode of what is supposed to be a popular and thoughtful children show. But then again, if this is what they consider an episode worthy of distributing in commercial VHS, then we might have ourselves a problem.

I can honestly say the opening and closing sequences were the best parts of this 35 minute treac-a-thon. The music was upbeat and wistful at the same time, which would beckon kids from whatever activity they may be engaged in at the time and embrace them for the fanciful adventures that will be sure to follow. The closing sequence stripped down to the many flutes provided the proper denouement of a mythical adventure that recalls the dance of the satyrs.

But instead of a carefully considered bit of storytelling, we are subjected to a continuous traffic accident of plot holes barely small enough to cover with an infield tarp, disconnected plotlines that were haphazardly stitched together, carbon-copy characters I could care less about and (worse of all) VERY superfluous songs which were lazily written.

For specific examples, the ponies were preparing for a Pony Olympics at the beginning of the episodes, yet less than five minutes in you wouldn't even know there was a huge event being planned. The main-character pony, Shady, gets into a song about how useless she is, only to be sung back into comfort by one of her human friends - an exercise that could have been easily resolved by a few well crafted dialogue. In this episode, Gusty the magic unicorn and Heartthrob the pegasus were kidnapped along with Lickety-Split the "earth pony" and kept in bondage - even though magic unicorns can *magically* teleport wherever they want and pegasuses can fly away under their own volition as welland were give several opportunities to do so as well. And the show just generally suffers from the fact that it has too much characters and too little time to distinguish between them and make them compelling and interesting enough.

What is really inexcusable, however, is the slipshod animation it serves us. This has got to be the one of the cheapest, most weakest production of a cartoon series this side of juvenile anime. Missing cells translate into jerky and stuttered movement of every character. Continuity of form is thrown out the window. And lip sync? They might as well be dubbing over an Estonian film for the type of attention they've paid to it. Oh well, at least the cartoon has a lot of color that will stimulate the mind of the youngest audience.

All this seems to indicate that the producers of this cartoon only intended to make this a vehicle to which to sell their many toys and pony dolls, which were virtually ubiquitous during that era. Any new and useless character introduced will usher in a new doll and the cycle will repeat itself at the bidding of the toy companies. This is not the 12-year-old boy repelled by anything that would appeal to girls, I showed this tape to two of my younger sisters, and they were appropriately repulsed by it. It's a shame I have to do this, but this saccharine piece of popular watered-down pablum deserves only one star. I was expecting a LOT more.

* out of ****

Fun and charming.

[WeirdRaptor · 28 November 2012]

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.