“And that’s why that Gloom evolved into a Bellossom instead of a Vileplume!”

“…and she used it to evolve her Cottonee into a Whimsicott!”

@Background Pony #2E68
I’ll admit that I didn’t know about the G1 thing, though, so maybe I was just reading too much into it.

It could be both at the same time, with that explanation being part of why Hasbro/IDW were okay with it. The whole two-part comic in question is full of references to lots of other non-pony stuff, and Twilight’s statement of “and then the sun stone was safe” in part 2 seems to lend credence to the idea that it was intended. (In Sejic’s Sunstone comics, “Sunstone” is a safeword.) But even if it wasn’t actually intended to be a reference, the fact that it seems like it could be one is still interesting.

This is the Sun Stone:

It’s a reference to G1. There’s an entire miniseries about the Sun Stone called “The End of Flutter Valley”, involving the Flutter Ponies (the forerunners to G4’s Breezies) and the witches responsible for the creation of the Smooze.

Okay, now that somebody added a name for her, that answers the cutie mark thing, but it still seems like a reference overall even if that background pony exists elsewhere. (It’s still a no-context statement to a pony who looks like she could be a pony version of Ally.)