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= MY LITTLE PONDERS: G5 =
 
(TL;DR version: following the numerical headers and last paragraphs)
 
So I recently saw a petition calling out for 20,000 signatures to try and get Hasbro to continue G4 instead; well good luck with that (at the time there were a few hundred signatures btw). In trying to keep to realistic expectations though, and without shifting gears to one side or another, these were just my straight thoughts based on the designs and conceptual leaks we got. I also really wanted to try and put things into perspective on where my outlook comes from.
 
1. A reboot is never the desired answer for a successful story franchise.  
When a popular story franchise is successful, and it’s time for a change or an update, nobody picks it up and throws it in the trash and starts from scratch with a reboot. “Yes, let’s take this stuff which works extremely well and everyone likes, fire everybody, and work on hiring an entirely new production team.” A reboot occurs when either the material is running very dry, the fans have run their course, the production team spread their resources too thin and they have to back out and cut losses, or (most often the case) a reboot happens because the original failed or is failing but there’s still some potential behind the concept.
 
Instead, a popular franchise series creates a new generation. They keep the timeline, they keep the events, but they shift the perspective to somewhere else. Star Wars (the prequels and the new series), Harry Potter (Magical Beasts), Doctor Who (each new Doctor), Star Trek (a new generation), CIS (NCIS and expansions), etc. Because MLP is getting a massive reboot, known shortly after the MLP movie, and it’s most probable it made similar or bigger percentage profits than The Last Jedi, we can say that it was fairly successful. So if it’s working out well, why would Hasbro be dunking everything into the trash?  
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2. We need to separate Hasbro Inc. from the show’s production team.  
Just thought I could help make it clear. While the people who animate, write, and voice for the show, they are paid by Hasbro to make the show’s content, and that is their only affiliation. The beloved guests we see at the cons understandably like the fandom and clearly support it. They are traveling thousands of miles every year to attend to these events. In short, it’s hard to blame them. The changes we’re getting is coming from something in the industry called “corporate meddling”. When something changes on the menu at a restaurant chain or new product comes into your grocery store, you can’t be mad at the server or the cashier for that.
 
That said, it’s clear to me that the people who have put time and effort into Generation 4 love us a lot and would like to see the fandom grow and continue. Quite frankly, Hasbro doesn’t really care as much and they don’t have much reason to.
 
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3. Nothing is set in stone, but we need to be honest with ourselves on what we’re seeing.  
I’m not going to sink into eternal dread that this is the way things are and accept these new changes as fact. Without the ability to predict the future, that’s not for sure. I’ve seen fandoms and other interests create surprising impact on big companies recently and in the past. But at the same time, most likely, this is coming, and there’s very little we can do to stop it. That doesn’t mean try if we think this is a bad thing, but some other assumptions need to be squared away for that to possibly happen. Since I’m pretty sure they won’t though, I’m keeping a realistic level head.
 
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4. The brony community’s mere existence does not indicate direct success of what Hasbro sees.  
No, we bronies do not make Hasbro, “lots of money,” and thus, “therefore, it would be stupid of them to do this and anger the fandom.” You are correct if we were talking about the production team owning the rights to My Little Pony, but they don’t. Let me explain with the merchandising concept.  
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4A. Merchandising makes a lot of money; movies and TV series don’t.  
Believe it or not, merchandising makes the bulk of the money in a franchise. The reason is simple. You pay a very small team of people to sketch, sculpt, and design a physical product, you pay a small fraction of the cost in materials, and put up-front cost for any new machines to build them (usually) in an assembly line, and hourly workers to help run the machines and package the product. They make money when the stores buy them in massive bulk quantities. The stores mark up the price by a considerable percentage, and then we as consumers buy them. The more we buy, the more successful it is, and the more they make for us to buy—free market system 101. We can go ahead and toss video games in there as well though based on who I’ve met and what I know, going to be a bit more expensive.  
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This all squared away, it is significantly easier for a visual-media product (like a movies, even comic book) to make money through franchising than an actual franchising company can on visual-media product. Why do video game and toy-based movies usually seem to suck so badly or get such poor reviews? Because of where the money flows. When a video game or toy company want to make a movie, they have to find a line of producers willing to make it. Unless those producers are strongly interested in original product (which is almost never), all the producer wants to know is if this will make them money.
 
It’s rare that the following for video games or toys are going to be interested enough to draw large crowds at the box office because they’re a niche market so they usually cut back on the allocated budget for a good production in anticipation it will do poorly. It’s easier to make money on a blank-slate movie designed to appeal to an entire audience (a general sci-fi movie for example will attract many sci-fi fans). Outsiders tend to assume that the movie is specific to that audience and will usually keep away, which creates a horrible loop because any who would be interested, are usually confused by the movie they see.
 
Movies are incredibly expensive to make, and television shows aren’t easy on a budget either. The team of people involved is a sprawling army of people compared to the handful working on a toy or a handful more making a video game. The other problem is that the sales on movies and TV shows are extremely limited by comparison, especially since a vast majority of the profits go to the producers and their main actors who put the most amount resources into it. A TV show for instance can only make money on commercials (when products, similar to merchandising, and direct sale rights of their episodes, and a movie only has a few weeks of movie ticket sales to grab and then the home video release.
 
Since this is a relatively poor way to make money in the modern age, a toy company gets a very, very tiny cut of the profits due to the monstrous production costs. As such, willing to get anything they get, a toy company is likely to allow a lot of budget-cutting skips and cuts to quality, giving free reign to the producers to mishandle the design.
 
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4B. It’s easier for a movie franchise to make money on merchandising, than merchandising to make money on a movie.  
But, when a movie franchise wants merchandise (like toys), now multiple toy companies are vying, bidding, and fighting each other, trying to offer the cheapest and best contracts compared to their competitors. A broad-audience movie franchise (like Star Wars) already has a large number of interested people and fans wanting to show support and engage with their community with buying things, like toys and collectibles. Since a line of toys are significantly cheaper to make, it is a lot easier to make big profits on them, and the toy company and the movie franchise both make lots of money.  
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5. Hasbro’s outlook is probably bleak for the pony fandom.  
We have Lauren Faust to thank for providing Hasbro with an unexpectedly good basis for Gen 4. She loved the franchise already, and everything she touches is a labor of love. But while Hasbro might have enjoyed some buff to success, it didn’t go over that greatly. Hasbro’s factories are designed to make cheap, plastic, mass-production toys and board games. By the company design, they thrive on selling a million cheap-o things to parents who work on impulse buys and gifts to entertain their children. It’s easier for Hasbro to put effort into making 100 brushable dolls based on the same body with just different paint and dyes for a nickel each, then the same cost into making 5 more expensive toys that only a pinch of their customers might be interested in getting for a one-time collectible purchase.
 
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That all in mind, I have a very strong feeling that Hasbro is looking on cutting its concern, stress, and cost with the pony fandom by washing their hands of it. Think about it; all Hasbro wants to do is sell oodles of cheap toys. Their primary concern to consumers is how safe the toys are and avoiding a lawsuit over recalls. They’re probably going to want to keep their toy-line production people and lawyers cheap as possible. It’s time for them to go back to what they were doing with the previous generations. Cheap, one-dimensional characters on a cheap budget, to make an excuse for little kids to buy a new line of cheap toys by the millions. .Note, I said probably, not definitely. I try not to state things in absolutes because we can’t really be sure. And you bet I hope I’m wrong. That’s this My “Little” Ponder.
 
Wing salute, feather well.