My Little Pony: 40th Anniversary Celebration--The Deluxe Edition

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The next day, Melanie, Kelly, and Tiffany meet up during recess and discover Julie never showed up for school. Getting the nurse to excuse them from the rest of the school day, the three head over to the barn. There, they find Julie tied up to a chair and their living pony toys magically captured by Hugh Mann and his henchmen. It is revealed that Hugh is originally from Equestria and that he was banished to the human world for attempting to tear down the ponies' homes to build his shopping mall; some of the ponies followed him to the human world and took the form of toys to keep an eye on him. However, when Julie found his spell book, it reactivated his magic and returned the toy ponies to physical form. There’s always a certain amount of finesse, intelligence and silliness. Just like any TV show theme or anything that accompanies music-to-picture, you really have to think about whether this supports the narrative. To me, that feels like a paint by number situation. Be fun within the lines. When I wrote the original theme for Littlest Pet Shop, that was for a little bit of an older audience — similar to My Little Pony. I had such a blast doing that, because some of the references were Fitz and the Tantrums. But how do you take Fitz and the Tantrums and make it also universal for kids, for the families that are watching? The first story takes place in 1984; elementary school girls Julie, Melanie, Kelly, and Tiffany are best friends that share a mutual love for My Little Pony. During the summer before they start middle school, they regularly visit a nearby barn so they can play with the horses in the stable. While grooming the horses one day, the girls overhear a phone conversation between barn owner Mr. Pine and land developer Hugh Mann; Hugh is offering to buy the barn and surrounding land to build a shopping mall. There’s just so much hooky, zanny, specific stuff in a lot of those that it feels almost like AI couldn’t lyrically or musically match the distinctiveness of these themes. Do you think it’s possible for artificial intelligence to match the work of humans in the work you do? When Julie wakes up hours later, she comes up with an idea to save the barn. She races to the barn, locates a magic book under a pile of hay, and reads a spell incantation from it. Nothing happens at first, but when Julie wakes up the following morning, she discovers her pony toys have come to life and grown to the size of actual horses. Julie calls her friends and tells them to come to the barn right away, but they are unable to drop what they are doing to come by. As soon as Julie hangs up the phone, someone off-panel catches her.

Forty years ago, Butterscotch, Blue Belle, Minty, Snuzzle, Cotton Candy, and Blossom galloped onto the shelves and became an instant hit! The Hollywood Reporter spoke to Vaughn, who is a singer-songwriter in her own right, about crafting music that not only captures My Little Pony’s steadfast themes of friendship and magic, but pays tribute to its distinctive eras. She also discusses making music for brands in the social media age, creating music for young audiences, and how Web3 technologies and AI are reshaping the modern music industry. It features the unnamed G1 ponies referred to by collectors as Princess Royal Purple and Princess Royal Pink The G1 pony names in Celebration synopsis, matched with the pony toy names shown on an "RI" Special cover; and human girls appeared in the Celebration synopsis and on the "A" cover.Suddenly, Julie wakes up, her entire magical adventure having been just a dream; she and her friends are still split apart, and the barn is still in danger of being sold. Julie is about to talk to her mother about this, but Julie's mother enters with positive news: the barn owners have decided not to sell. What's more, Julie's mother has brought over Melanie, Kelly, and Tiffany so they and Julie can have a sleepover and celebrate their precious barn being saved. Their friendship rekindled, the girls take this chance to start over and face the hardships of middle school together. My Little Pony debuted in a time when toy lines were frequently adapted into TV shows,and before there were more restrictions around marketing to children through the TV. Which is probably why those theme songs feel so catchy —they weren’t just themes, they were toy jingles. Do you feel like the My Little Pony theme embodies jingle elements that make it memorable? If so, what are they? It’s never going to be the same. For example, I love working with Hasbro because Equestria Girls and My Little Pony, those resonate with all genders, but as a young woman growing up, it obviously spoke to me. So it’s easy for me to pull from within myself when I’m creating for those brands. It feels real, because it is. AI and anything Web3-related —I don’t think anyone’s trying to avoid it, but it should be used as a tool to enhance the creators’ experience in a way that will help them resonate with their audience, or create a better allocation of time. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a replacement of what they do because then we miss out on true art that connects to people. I feel like everything you do should be an extension of your humanity. Everything should come from an authentic place, or else what are we really doing it all for.

During the comic's reveal in late March 2023, there were some confusion in the fandom about whether 40th Anniversary Celebration and 40th Anniversary Special were the same book or different books. Beyond your work with Hasbro and other networks and shows, you are attached to a nonprofit focused on Web3 technologies. AI isn’t Web3 exactly, but it is an increasingly discussed topic in terms of how it’s used in relation to artists and their rights. In what ways has AI impacted your work? Do you use it at all in your process?

Equestria Daily

It was a really exciting project because we got a ton of amazing female creators involved as well as the bronies, the producers that we worked with. We got to do a ’90s pop version, an ’80s remix. It was just a lot of nostalgic moments, as well as some modern touches. But it came about organically. I spoke to the head of music [at Hasbro] and we put our heads together to figure out what would audiences want to interact with. We had the one theme sped up, as that’s what Gen Z kids and younger want, and then a whole reimagined EP. But we are going to be doing some more My Little Pony across a lot of fun generations. Remixed in size and color after the 1981 My Pretty Pony fell short in inspiring young buyers, the My Little Pony brand took off with the release of some Gen1 ponies in 1983, followed by TV specials, shorts and animated series bearing the toy line’s titular name. By the mid- to late ’80s, the ponies had become a fixture of the children’s media and toy industry.