My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic

My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic is the latest cartoon based on the My Little Pony toys, and has become quite possibly the largest Internet phenomenon. The concept of the show is that a studious unicorn pony named Twilight Sparkle is ordered to live in Ponyville and make friends.

The fad originally started as a troll gimmick on 4chan. Trolls would proclaim it the best show ever made without any of them having actually seen the show. But of course, it was inevitable that someone would eventually believe them and watch the show. To the trolls' surprise, the people who watched it really did enjoy it and proclaim it the best show ever. The show's popularity exploded from there.

Adult fans of the show, calling themselves "bronies" and "pegasisters", range from all ages, some being as old as 60. They they like the show because they find that the characters are relatable to everyone including males, even though most of the cast is female. This is mainly because the show's creator, Lauren Faust, is a feminist and hates the idea that entertainment for girls can only be about makeup and crushes on boys. (Despite this, people who refuse to watch the show still assume it is in fact about makeup and crushes on boys.) Bronies also find the ponies to be adorable, some people even being attracted to them.

The show's staff is extremely supportive of the fanbase. Lauren Faust has a DeviantArt account which she mainly uses to promote unrelated projects of hers, but she also actively looks at fanart and answers questions from fans. Lauren and other staff members have also participated in fan events, such as interviews. Several well-known staff members such as Lauren, Jayson Thiessen (the current showrunner), and the voice actors have appeared in person at several brony conventions. Shoutouts to the fanbase are regularly written into the show. The most infamous shoutout is Derpy Hooves, who originally started out as an unnamed background character, but named so by the fans because of an animation glitch that gave her crossed eyes. When the staff noticed this, they started to make her eyes intentionally crossed and eventually had a character call her Derpy for the first time, causing the fanbase to explode with glee. (However, a loud minority group of people soon decided that this was an ableist joke, and Hasbro responded by editing the episode to uncross her eyes and rerecord the scene's lines so that her voice was changed and Rainbow Dash didn't call her Derpy; there is no legally available uncensored version at this time.)

Like all loud fandoms, many people hate bronies and wish the fad would die. There are often more topics on CE complaining about bronies than there are topics about MLP. It is not uncommon for an MLP topic to have at least one message telling the TC to keep it in the MLP General topic (one of the longest-running topics in CE history) or to go to an entirely different board. Some people refuse to believe that grown men really like a show for little girls, and think it's still all one big troll gimmick. People often generalize bronies as gay, autistic, furries, and/or pedophiles. Haters also insist that the people involved with the show secretly hate bronies and are only pretending to like them for the support, and if a single staff member shows even a slight state of discomfort at a single brony, then that's proof that everyone on the staff hates all bronies. Ironically, the franchise itself was originally created for both boys and girls before Hasbro decided to only market it to girls.

Another recent Hub show based on a Hasbro toy line is Littlest Pet Shop, about Blythe Baxter, a human girl with the ability to talk to animals, helping to save the Littlest Pet Shop from closing down. (Blythe is based on yet another Hasbro IP, Blythe, which started crossing over with the LPS IP in 2010.) The show shares the same animation studio and many of the same writers and voice actors as MLP, and the creators have stated that they're trying to appeal to bronies. Its adult fanbase is currently very small, however, which suggests that MLP is a one-time thing.