The Teacup

2011-07-16T12:57:00.000-07:00

A few days ago a video of the Friendship is Magic musical was thrown up on Youtube, as you can imagine.. It is not anything superb. It basically boils down to a chopped together generic Hasbro plot and a bunch of re-renditions of songs from the show. The costumes were crap, the set was non-existent and it was really nothing more than a corny little romp designed for little girls as a blatant cash-grab.
The voice actors did a great job with what they had and did a much better job at imitating the show's VAs than I expected. It was a lot of fun to hear them performing songs from the show even if the words they replaced because of a lack of half the mane cast really threw off the flow of the songs.
Clearly I didn't like it much, but that's fine because it wasn't targeted at me.

I'm sure their target audience will absolutely love it but what annoyed me and prompted this blog post is the reaction the Brony community had.

I've been part of this community since early March and so far it's been a lot of fun but I just can't escape this one daunting thing, Bronies can be fucking stupid sometimes when it comes to My Little Pony. The reactions to that video really made me lose a little bit of faith in this community.

I'll save you the hastle of rummaging through the comments and sum up the Brony community's thoughts on the matter in one sentence:
They did not care for it.

I understand and relate to the amount of hate coming from Bronies on the subject of this musical but they all seem to forget one simple fact, they are not meant to like it. It's meant to be a fun little romp for little girls, it does not have to be completely show faithful or have a rich and intriguing plot. This is a musical being performed at a theme park. Have you ever been to a show put on at a theme park before? They're usually shit.

Now look, don't get me wrong because I absolutely love this community to bits. It's one of the best I have ever had the pleasure of being a part of in my entire life but there is one thing that Bronies need to get drilled into their heads:
WE ARE NOT THE TARGET AUDIENCE FOR MY LITTLE PONY.

Let me give you another example, all too often I see Bronies complaining about the brushable Ponies, they tend to complain that - out of the packaging - the Ponies have really poor looking hair. It will be long and scraggly with almost no resemblance to how it looks in the show (if they even have a show counter-part.)
This is the most retarded thing you can ever say about My Little Pony (with the possible exception of Pony X is my Waifu.)

My Little Pony originally became popular with little girls because of the ability to brush and style your Pony's mane, if the Ponies all came pre-styled out of the packaging it would be an incredibly boring toy and would not have gained anywhere near as much of a following as they did. People cry and complain about the accessories that come with the brush-ables, I'll admit that it is a bit silly to be throwing in wagons, saddles and inappropriate pets but who am I to dictate Hasbro's audience to them? Sure enough a smile spread across my face when I saw my brush-able Applejack came with a rather faithful little plastic Winona!
Bronies seem to over-react and cry heresy whenever something that is not show accurate is put on the market, Celestia is pink? heresy. Luna is not entirely show accurate? Heresy. Ponies not from the show being made into brush-ables? Heresy.

I can understand the hate behind pink Celestia but what you have to understand is that Pink toys DO sell better to girls. They don't just pull this stuff out of their arses you know, there is market analysis and statistics to back up their decision. Celestia was made pink because a pink Pony will grab a little girl's attention far more often than a white one will.
I can also understand the hate behind the re-colour Ponies but what I don't get is how there was an ASTRONOMICAL amount of hate surrounding Lily Blossom!

Who is Lily Blossom?

Lily Blossom is quite honestly the first original G4 Pony that Hasbro have created. I thought she looked great, there had clearly been a bit of effort put into her design and hair style this time around where as every non-show brush-able up to this point had been a lazy recolour; as such was the first non-show brush-able I purchased.

But despite her being the first non-show non-recolor G4 Hasbro produced people still whined and complained, they want background Ponies and minor as brush-ables.

Now look, I want a Derpy brush-able as much as the next Pony fan, I would love nothing more than to sit down with a Colgate brush-able and style her hair to replicate the show as best as possible but you guys have to realise that this situation is a first for the people who design My Little Pony toys!
There has never been a generation before this where Hasbro did not have complete control over what Ponies were being churned out, normally the characters in the shows were solely based around the toys that Hasbro wanted to market at the time.

When they were first designing the G4s they probably had NO idea what a phenomenon Friendship is Magic would become. My Little Pony toys are designed months to years in advance so they probably never even realised there was a market for the background/minor Ponies to become brush-ables!
And to be honest, even if they do make them you're going to complain about it anyway. Don't lie, you know it as well as I do. The second they make that Trixie brush-able you're going to complain because it isn't entirely show accurate out of the box or because she is missing her hat and cape.

My Little Pony is for little girls, guys. I think sometimes we all forget who this merchandise is intended for and sometimes we all need to take a few steps back and look at exactly what we are saying from an objective view point... Because do you know how dumb you look to an outsider when you complain about things like this?

Yes, it would be nice if we got a few more bits of merch aimed at us - and judging by that interview video it looks like they DO have some stuff lined up for us - but you have to man up and accept that Hasbro will never have you in mind when they think about who they're marketing the My Little Pony toys to.
I think that's about all I wanted to say on the matter.

Losing an idol makes you feel old..

2011-04-20T02:54:00.000-07:00

Yesterday the world drew ever colder as one of the finest actresses ever to grace British television lost her battle with cancer. Elisabeth Sladen, best known for her work as Sarah Jane Smith on Doctor Who, passed away.
Though I cannot pretend to have known her, I wish I had. She was my favorite classic Companion of all time, albeit the only one I ever seriously watched due to my limited access to Doctor Who when I was growing up.
I'm glad that the BBC used her so much while they had the chance, while Sarah Jane Adventures wasn't the best spinoff (it was for kids, what do you want?) it still provided me with many hours of enterainment and it saddens me deeply that I may never see a new episode.

From what I understand; half of the series has been filmed. Personally I hope that they do show those episodes when the time is right and round off the series nicely, I doubt they'll admit that Sarah Jane will never return, they could easily do a story arc explaining what has happened to her in-world, I just hope they do something tasteful and leave the series at that. It wouldn't feel right the show continuing without her under the same name.
Several of her co-workers paid tribute to her today, including a lengthy and heart-felt blog post from Tom Baker.

Sarah Jane dead? No, impossible! Impossible

My thoughts exactly, Tom. Except I fell out of my chair while thinking that. I blame Tweetdeck.
Elisabeth, you will be dearly missed by me and, I'm sure, every other Doctor Who fan. My thoughts and love are with your family and friends at this trying time.
Travel well.

Whenever one of my idols or someone who influenced me passes on, I like to do a tribute in some form. With that I have been working on a small video tribute for the last few hours.
Vale Sara Ioanna

Video Advertisement, how not to do it.

2011-04-14T10:31:00.000-07:00

I will never, ever be using UPS. Would you like to know why?

Well, as they say.. That's Logistics.

The first time I heard the "Logistics" commercial was back in January before a Nostalgia Critic video, at first it didn't bother me. The jingle was catchy, the video was well put together and it didn't out-stay it's welcome. Then I heard it a second time before the BFF report, then again before Legendary, and a again before This week in MMO, and again before The Republic.. And then at least once a day, every day since then. The same obnoxiously loud jingle.. Over and over again. Every day.

Now let's get one thing straight, I have no problem with video advertisement. Sure, it's a bit annoying but I can deal with it most of the time. The problem that I have, is with Blip.tv's way of dealing with video advertisement. It seems to me that they will show you the same advert before every video for months on end. To the point where you're completely exhausted by it.

Video advertisements have always perplexed me, they're always so irrelevant. If I'm watching a video about World of Warcraft, what exactly makes you think that I'd be interested in Britney Spears' new album? I don't think that there's anyone on this planet who is still interested in Britney Spears, least of all World of Warcraft players! They could easily advertise something geeky there, it would have far more of an impact than Britney Spears.

Most videos have tags tied to them, why not use those tags to display an advertisement that is relevant to the video? I believe Youtube already does this with the little advertisement toasts that pop up, so why not do it with the pre-video advertisements too? Even without a system like that, it wouldn't be hard to at least ALTERNATE the advertisements you're playing so people don't get sick of them so quickly.

Oh, and stop disabling the mute button when an advertisement is playing, you dicks.