The rare opposite sex in children's media and toys

 

It will likely come as no surprise to you that popular children's media and toys are very, very segregated along sex and gender lines. The more something is created out of commercial motivation, and not artistic inspiration, the more prominent the issue. Your average children's novel might aim primarily at a male or female audience, and thus have (mostly or solely) boys or girls as the main heroes, but the rest of the world within it will nevertheless be populated by people of both sexes in a statistically credible mix. However, if you visit the toy store, it will be good if you can find one Ken for every twenty Barbies in there, and you won't find many more (if not fewer) female soldiers and officers among the military-themed action figures.

You can see them. Top right, all in the same black suit. Just as diverse as the girls.

Of course, toy companies do that because they believe this is more likely to sell and bring them profit. Not only do they assume girls will prefer to play with the themes of fashion and home, while boys will favour action and adventure – they also assume that girls will want to dress up only or almost only female dolls, while the boys’ action heroes will be almost exclusively male. Now, personally I disagree with this: I always liked both types of games, and I was always annoyed by the lack of diversity available. Getting a good selection of Kens for my Barbies was always a very difficult mission, and my G.I. Joes had Happy Meal Barbies and Disney princesses of the same scale as both romantic interests and combat allies. I’ve known other children who complained of the same (including my own now), not to mention adult toy collectors. But let’s say those are all exceptions, that the average child does prefer more toys of their own sex (though I think this is dominantly market-induced even when it is the case), and that the companies made correct calculations. As annoying as it may be for me personally, this is the lesser problem.

The greater problem is the media. The main culprits are cartoons, and cartoon shows more than feature films, though there are video games, books and comics (mostly parts of big franchises also focused on selling merchandise) that have the same problems. Again, I am not talking just about who the main characters, the heroes are – but all the characters in the medium overall, primary, secondary and background characters all together.

Take My Little Pony as an example: in the first and second generation, female characters vastly outnumbered the male ones, to the point that most ‘baby’ ponies had known mothers, but not fathers. The third generation, aiming at a target audience of younger girls, did away with boys completely, without a single male pony even being mentioned, let alone showing up. (Even non-pony male characters were extremely scarce in G3: there were only Spike the dragon and, mostly off-screen, Santa Claus.) On the other hand, My Little Pony Tales (the “G1.5” show) and the later G4 and G5 introduced normal amounts of male relatives, friends, colleagues and simply random male ponies in the street. The main cast of both Tales and Friendship is Magic remains all-female: we are undoubtedly following a story about girls (or mares, if you prefer), but they inhabit a world normally populated by ponies of both sexes.

I know, boys. I’m confused, too.

We see similar things on the male side of the aisle. The only action woman in the old Action Man cartoon was Natalie, and the supporting cast wasn’t exactly swimming in women, either. And I’m really regretting not having bought Natalie’s toy back in the day while she was new in stores, because she fetches quite a price on the second-hand market now. How wouldn’t she? She’s the only female toy! The same goes for male G1 ponies, and so on.

On the other hand, the team behind He-Man may have understood that there were plenty of girls who would like some sword and sorcery action as well, but instead of fully integrating the protagonist’s sister into the main storyline (where her role is secondary at best), they gave She-Ra a separate spin-off, which had the same issue (maybe even more so), just reversed: female heroine, female allies, female villain, with an occasional man here and there.

Don’t even get me started on the heels. :)

What’s the problem with such settings? They don’t feel natural. They don’t feel like living worlds – places where, beyond our heroes running to save the world every week, some people (or whatever creatures) live, work, fall in love, raise families and grow old. Whether or not we have issues with a dominantly male or female main cast (some people find it fine, some are militantly in favour of at least relative gender equality in this respect), we can, at the very least, understand that sometimes the story is such that focusing on characters of a single sex makes sense. Perhaps the story is set in the army or in a maternity ward, or in a sex-segregated school. Perhaps it’s not that extreme, but a tightly-knit group of boys or girls is simply in the focus. But if everyone or almost everyone else is of that same sex, it will feel fake. Like a play set in a sex-segregated school, where simply not enough girls were willing to play male parts, and we’re left wondering why almost nobody has a father, brother or boyfriend.

To be fair, modern media is improving in that respect. Mixed-sex casts are getting more frequent, and when the main cast is diverse, the background usually follows. However, offenders still exist. My latest pet peeve are the Enchantimals, where the male Enchantimal characters can be counted on the fingers (it’s slightly better with their besties, i.e. animals – but even those are mostly female), and even most of those were issued as toy-only. You can’t help but gaze at the lovely Enchantimal villages and towns and wonder where have all the good men gone… And that in a universe that has no hostility and no actual villains, just misunderstandings or accidents, so they can’t just all be off fighting in a war somewhere. It almost feels like the producers said “let’s not bother designing a character if we’re not going to sell a toy of them” – returning us to the toy problem – but that can’t be all. Even the existing male toy characters are underused in the show. Could they really believe that girls would watch less if they showed a boy on screen more often than once every leap-year?

Take a good look. You won’t see too much of him!

To circle back to the toy issue, there are examples of the opposite – shows that do feature characters of the opposite sex, even in important roles, but sadly pass them over when it comes to toys and other merchandise. For example, Shimmer and Shine, while it does have some writing problems, does feature male characters on every level of its female-focused cast: we have Zac and Kaz, who are very prominent secondary (borderline primary) characters, interesting episodic male characters (such as the lightning genie Shaya), as well as a number of background characters – e.g. ordinary boys in the playgrounds on Earth, genie vendors in Zahramay Falls etc. But the main toy line reflects the usual stereotypes. While Zac and Kaz do appear among the (fairly simple and cheap) plastic minifigures, the line of larger, dressable dolls that accompanied the show consisted of female characters only. That means that tertiary female genies who only appeared in one or two episodes got dolls - but not Zac, who was there prominently for half the show. Surely, my daughter can't be the only little fan disappointed by this? To be fair, I found her a bootleg plastic Zac. He has many flaws - he's of different proportions, his limbs don't move, all his clothes are moulded and his colours are a bit off - but at least he's roughly of the same height as the female dolls and has Zac's recognisable features. Not a perfect alternative, but it works. Only… if bootleg manufacturers are making one of the 5-6 main characters of your show instead of you… don't you think you're doing something wrong?

Well, Zac would at least know what to say to that: “It happens. It happens a lot!”

My Little Pony: cutie marks (symbols) and names

 

I have been generally intending to make a post regarding pony marks and names throughout the generations for some time now, but it wasn’t high on my priority list. However, an Instagram post by Fakie Spaceman from a few days ago inspired me to make it the subject of this week’s post! (Disclaimer: I wanted to take pony toy photos from my own collection, but I’m having a strong cold and that would be really straining at the moment, so I hope photos from the internet will suffice.)

If you’re reading this article, you likely know what a “cutie mark” is: the symbol on a pony's flank. It usually bears some relation to the pony's name and powers, and fits well with its colour scheme. But let’s look at how the details changed throughout the generations!

 

G1: setting the outlines (but it’s more about the toys than logic)

The original My Pretty Pony ("G0"), Romper, was a fairly normal-looking horsie who had no mark and was in realistic brown colours – but then Hasbro also made a pinkish one with hearts on it, who later got its G1 incarnation, Peachy. And the rest is history. :) G1 proper made the toys much smaller and softer, retaining the overall aesthetic, but going for cute yet unnatural cartoony colours every shade of the rainbow, and, unmistakably, always an interesting symbol on the pony’s side. The symbols were depicted, mirror imaged, on the pony's both flanks, both on the toys and in media. In later years of G1, Hasbro introduced Twice as Fancy (“TAF”) ponies, who had extensive symbols all over their main body: this was, again, primarily a toy gimmick – and it definitely does look pretty! 

Pony toy photos from MyLittleWiki, unless stated otherwise.

 Yes, I am saying “symbol”, not cutie mark: that was the term that G1 used. That might surprise some people, and not only those who started getting into MLP from later generations. Namely, the term was used relatively seldom. While G1 ponies were arguably the most magical generation (even earth ponies often had some very obviously magical power associated with their symbol, like Lickety Split creating ice-cream out of thin air), the symbols themselves were very rarely explicitly mentioned.

But how and when does a pony gain their symbol? Well, I did just say that the symbols were rarely directly discussed. Unfortunately, no solid lore explanation was given to how ponies get them, and even what was implied changed several times. Either way, let us look at young ponies, because those should let us see when a symbol appears and what meaning is attached to it.

Hasbro initially released four baby pony toys of different colours, but with no symbols: one of them appears in the very first video special, Rescue at Midnight Castle, as Baby Ember. (Disclaimer: though called babies, they are more similar to toddlers in human terms. Throughout the media, these so-called baby ponies normally walk and talk, although they are still small, have much to learn and need their afternoon naps. But then again – foals can walk right after being born in real life, so maybe it’s not too far off.) From the initial baby pony appearance, we could assume that baby ponies are born without symbols and gain them at some later point in life. At the start of the special, Ember even has a conversation with Twilight (who might or might not be her mother or other close relative – she acts obviously motherly, but Ember addresses her by name) where she wistfully complains about the fact that, being an earth pony, she'll never be able to fly like Firefly (a pegasus, and the most acrobatic flyer of them all), or teleport like Twilight herself (a unicorn). Twilight reassures her that everyone is special in some way and that, she, too, will find something she is special about. That could, particularly given later G4 lore (see below) be taken as a subtle reference to her gaining a symbol/cutie mark and powers associated with it – but nothing along the lines is mentioned explicitly. 

 But Ember was one of a kind. (Or four of a kind, if you count all the versions, I guess, but they’re all referred to as “Baby Ember.”) In the first years of G1, all other babies were literal mini copies of their mothers. By colours, by symbol and even by name. Applejack’s daughter was Baby Applejack, Surprise’s – Baby Surprise, and so on. What did this mean? Did they want to imply that the genetic repetition was so strong that there would always be an Applejack, Firefly etc, one after the other, daughter always inheriting her mother’s looks and powers – and thus bearing the same name? Or were we supposed to reckon that they only looked like that while they were very young, and that later their appearance and their marks would change – at which point they would gain a new, “adult” name? We do not know. Statistically, Hasbro probably only thought that toys of a very similar looking mom and baby would sell well, and kept the same name to keep things simple… in the toy department, at least. It made them so complicated in the lore!

You’ll never guess where this one’s from. :)

By the way, none of this accounts for the baby ponies’ fathers, for they were strangely absent. We don’t know the father of a single core G1 baby. (More on Tales below.) At first, pony society was purely female: then, one day, Majesty magically conjured (yup, didn’t give birth to) the first male baby pony – Baby Lucky – to help Spike the dragon gain a best friend. Lucky had his own unique symbol – a horseshoe. Later on, more males appeared. There were more male babies who weren’t implied to be magically created, but still weren’t connected to any parents. There were adult ponies as well: the Mountain Boys (who only appeared in printed media) and Big Brothers (who made it into one double episode of the show, “Somnambula”.) But none of them were ever designated as the fathers of any of the babies. Thus we remain at a loss regarding pony genetics of this period: do female children inherit their mothers’ traits, and, maybe, male children their fathers’? What happens if a couple has several children of the same sex? Would Firefly’s daughters all be Baby Fireflies (forever, or until they grow up and change?), or would the inheritance only pass to the eldest? Alas, we have no idea – and thus there is ample ground for fan theories and headcanons.

But that is not all. In the later G1 era, Hasbro began issuing babies who had their own, specific names and cutie marks (still thematically tied), including a number of sets of twins (officially “Newborn Twins”, somewhat smaller than the old babies, but still pretty big), who always shared some similarity in their colours and marks. Those babies weren’t assigned to any mother: even when they appear in the show, the adult ponies and older babies are just collectively taking care of them. Again, this was likely motivated by toy sale reasons – that way, children could assign the babies to any adult pony they wanted. But that way we don’t know if they’d inherited anything from their parents or not.

Additionally, a range of really small ponies, actual babies, called Teeny Tiny Baby Ponies, was issued, and they also had symbols, strengthening the impression that ponies now have them since birth. The only possible proof of the contrary is the Surprise Twins Pony – a pregnant mom pony toy, designed with an opening belly that two very, very small plastic babies come out of. They don’t have any symbols, and they at least have a mention of some unnamed father: when asked by Nurse Sweetheart how she’ll name them, their mom answers: “I'm not sure. Daddy Pony and I haven't decided yet.” We could construct the idea that ponies were implied to be born without symbols, but to gain them very early in their life, still as babies. However, most baby ponies had very thematically babyish symbols: teddy bears, blocks, diapers and so on. That fits well onto a baby pony toy, right? But what does it mean in-universe? Would they really keep those for the rest of their lives – or would we expect their marks to change as they grew up?

The final years of G1 finally brought some ponies who had both parents: three toy sets of Loving Family ponies, consisting of a mother, father and one or two children. All of them were designed like TAF ponies, and the children’s symbols were combinations of the parents. For example, in the Apple Delight Family, the mother’s symbol consists of apples, the father’s of trees, and both the son and daughter have a combination of both. In the Bright Bouquet family, it’s hearts and flowers, and in the Sweet Celebrations, balloons and gifts. But, once again, we cannot treat this as the final canon, as entire families are too obviously thematically connected, and moms and dads just have too conveniently compatible cutie marks. If Buttons and Slugger (who were shown as a budding couple in the show) were to have a child, would it really have a cutie mark of buttons and baseball bats? (And who is the father of Baby Buttons, then, as she appears before that courtship?) I guess we’ll never know.

Finally, it is relatively safe to assume that only land pony breeds had symbols in G1: sea ponies had none, and all the more goes for other breeds of creatures. However, this can be somewhat put into question by another line of toys, the Pony Friends, which consisted of twelve animals of other breeds (one of them is even a dinosaur named Cutesaurus!) who also have colourful markings on their bodies. While the ones on Zig Zag the zebra could be taken just for zebra stripes, and Creamsicle the giraffe’s pattern for stylized giraffe spots, the others are very obviously meaningful symbols along the lines of those that ponies have. While these friends made some appearances in the comics, I don’t think their markings were ever explained – despite there being many other animal characters friendly to ponies in various media who didn’t have any symbols. In the TV show, there was one prominent antagonist relatively close to ponies, Zeb the zebra (yes, zebras were all given names starting with Z – we had a post on that), but, alas, he wore trousers the whole time, so we’ll never know if he had a symbol on his flank.

 

Tales, G2 and G3: unique marks for everyone (and term change)

My Little Pony Tales was technically part of G1 (the toys were designed exactly the same and the art style was similar), but it had a completely different premise: no longer a fantasy show, it was now a slice of life in a fairly modern, urban setting, populated solely by earth ponies, with no magic whatsoever (with the possible exception of one tantalising episode). Just like in late G1 proper, everyone, even very small ponies, had their own unique symbols. Tales did make one improvement, however – as it focused on family life, there were plenty of male characters around, and we get to see the mothers and fathers of the main characters, who are schoolgirls (though their toys are, somewhat annoyingly, of adult pony size). Overall, while there’s occasionally some similarity, we can’t see any prevailing theme of either colour or symbol inheritance inside families. Also, names (particularly of side characters) don’t necessarily match their marks: for example, one of the main characters, Bon Bon, has a wrapped candy as her symbol, but her younger sister, whose symbol is a lollipop (aha, some similarity – but not within the whole family) is named Amber.

Still, it is implied that ponies aren’t born with their symbols: in the episode “Princess Problems”, when the pony King and Queen are looking for their long-lost daughter, who went missing at sea as a very small baby, the search notice provides us with her birthday, hair and eye colour, as well as the fact that she has a red birthmark on her front hoof. No symbol is mentioned – and it surely would have been had she had one, for it would have been almost unique (similar symbols can exist, but we don’t run into exact duplicates) and made the search much easier.

While, sadly, none of the prominent characters from Tales apart from the Core 7 were ever issued (none of their families, no boys from their class, etc), the Tales era did coincide with the issuing of three more families (with one child each), some of whom appeared as side characters in the show. This time, the toys all had the same body and hair colours (again, obviously so they’d sell well and motivate buyers to complete the set – for why would, logically speaking, a husband and wife look almost exactly the same?), but the children had distinct symbols that might have followed the family theme in broad terms, but were not combinations of their parents’ marks.

This photo is an older one of mine: the only one of them I have, Baby Sunbright (named Ikki in the show).

G2 returned to the fantasy premise, as well as to the idea of babies having a mother or no attached parent, but never a father, despite there being a number of male ponies. (One of them, Clever Clover, was even borderline prominent enough to be considered a part of the main/core cast.) All babies had their own symbols and names, but those whose toys were sold in sets with their moms had a very similar colouring, name and symbol, again strengthening the idea of at least some genetic connection. (Though, funnily enough, babies were only earth ponies, even if mums were unicorns. I guess they wanted to save on the molds.) A number of sets of twin baby ponies was again issued, and, just like in G1, those had similar or complementary colour schemes and symbols, but weren’t specifically anybody’s children, so it remains for us to guess if they bore any semblance to their parents.

Silver Swirl and her daughter Swirly. The semblance is obvious.

G3 was the one that changed the name from “symbol” to “cutie mark”. We can only guess that it went with the increasedly fluffy, cute and sweet aesthetic of the generation – but also, from a practical point of view, it’s likely that Hasbro wanted a term original enough to be copyrighted, and the generic term “symbol” was definitely unsuitable for that. Also, cutie marks were no longer on both sides of the pony, but just on one: the side varied, but no importance seemed to be attached to that. Some of the G3 toys also had bigger cutie marks (some all over the body, like G1 TAF, and some cascading down the rear leg), and some had sculpted 3D marks, but, once again, it was only a way of making the toys more special, and those ponies’ marks weren’t in any way different than others in the media. Breezies had cutie marks, too, but I guess they were seen as miniature ponies, being a miniaturized reworking of the flutterponies from G1.

However, regarding the gaining of cutie marks, the original G3 gives us the least material. To begin with, the problem of the lack of male characters in girls’ media is the most prominent here: neither the show, the printed media nor the toys contained even a single male pony. Furthermore, while baby ponies do appear (though, really, I’d call them fillies, as they are bigger than G1 babies), none of them has a mother mentioned. Who cares that children are running around without parents, it’s a show for smaller children (G3 definitely aimed for the lowest age target audience of all generations), and there are no villains in this happy pony world, so I guess it should be safe – but it would be nice at least to know of their parents. We do have two sets of sisters, though – one being Ti-Ra-Mi-Su and Mochanut, and the other Dance Slippers and Dance Around. Both pairs have the same colour schemes and similar cutie marks, so I guess we could say genetic similarity was implied.

Newborn Cuties and G3.5 improved this a little, by making Cheerilee Scootaloo’s older sister, and releasing toys for three moms (theirs, Pinkie Pie’s and Rainbow Dash’s). Mom Pie and Mom Dash (they were never given proper names) have the same colour schemes and similar, but not same, cutie marks as their daughters. Cheerilee’s and Scootaloo’s mom may be the most interesting, as the two don’t look much alike, not having been initially designed as sisters: thus, the designers opted for a different, but compatible colour scheme of purple and pink for their mother, alongside a butterfly-and-heart cutie mark that resembles Scootaloo’s mark more. I guess we can presume Cheerilee takes more after her hypothetical, never-mentioned father?

One last thing about older generation names and cutie marks: they were very human-centric in nature. We mentioned Baby Lucky and his horseshoe mark – well, why would ponies consider horseshoes lucky? Newborn twins Tuggles and Toddles (or Sticky and Sniffles, depending on whether you got them in the UK or USA) have hobby horses as their symbols. You know, the sticks with a horse’s head on one end that human children ‘ride’. Would ponies really play with those? Gingerbread’s symbol consists of five gingerbread men, obviously human silhouettes, not pony-shaped. While there were humans and other humanoid creatures in G1 Ponyland, this doesn’t explain why they’d influence ponies in such a way. G3 may be the worst culprit, as it has a pony named Finger Paints. I understand it was meant to refer to a fun activity for small children… but, by the name of Star Catcher, what fingers?? :)

Yes, you. What do you have to say in your defence? :)

 

G4 and G5: find yourself and find your mark!

Friendship is Magic finally made a deep delve into the subject of cutie marks. According to G4 lore, a cutie mark represents a pony’s most special talent or affinity, and is manifested at some point during adolescence, when the pony discovers that special talent. One of the longest on-and-off arcs in G4 is that of the Cutie Mark Crusaders – the fillies Apple Bloom, Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo, who are distressed that almost everyone else in their class already got cutie marks, and so they make it their mission to try doing anything and everything in order to discover their talents and earn their marks. Of course, this leads to all sorts of funny situations, but also to sensible lessons from older ponies that some things should not be rushed, and will happen on their own when the time comes – a sensible message for someone growing up, even if they aren’t a pony. (How they finally earned their marks and which… is pretty much a big spoiler if you haven’t watched the show, so let’s skip that one – but it’s surely worth checking out.) At different points throughout the show and comics, we also find out how many other ponies got their cutie marks: some of the stories are pretty down-to-earth and expected, while some are appropriately epic and dramatic. Speaking of dramatic, a lot of magic (often harmful magic) directly connected to cutie marks appeared in G4 and G5, but as this post is already my longest one so far, perhaps we can leave that for another occasion.

G4 also was the first generation to include a statistically reasonable number of male ponies: the Mane 6 and the rulers of Equestria may be all female, but males are abundantly present among the supporting cast and background ponies. Thus, we can see both parents of many characters, and we can see that some semblance in colouring and cutie marks seems hereditary. The latter, though, may also be due to dominant family activities: do ponies from the Apple family regularly get apple-related cutie marks because it’s genetic – or is it simply because the family as a whole has been planting and harvesting apples and turning them into all sorts of food and drinks for several generations? Did Diamond Tiara, the spoiled little ‘princess’, get her shiny cutie mark because of Filthy Rich’s and Spoiled Rich’s genes, or simply because they brought her up to be an entitled brat and she knows her way around fancy stuff? It stands to reason that both things can be a factor. There definitely are exceptions to the familial themes that prove not everything is readily obvious. Pinkie Pie is the wild child in the Pie family, and that was obvious before she gained her cutie mark: when you have a family of mostly grey-shaded ponies, a bright pink baby definitely stands out! Mr and Mrs Cake’s twin children happened to be born as a pegasus and unicorn, despite both parents being earth ponies: namely, they did have distant ancestors of those pony breeds, and the recessive genes jumped in.

Speaking of twins, the theme of twins having closely related marks has been preserved. Beyond the just mentioned Pound Cake and Pumpkin Cake (for whom one could argue that they’d both be something cake-related even if they weren’t twins, for double family reasons), we have the identical twins and con-men, Flim and Flam, whose marks are an apple missing a slice and the missing slice of apple, and the sisters running the Ponyville spa, Aloe and Lotus Blossom, who have inverted pink and blue colours overall, and the same lotus cutie mark, just one in pink, and the other in blue. (Those also happen to be the colours of the G1 Surprise Twins. A coincidence – pink and blue do go well together – or a knowing nod to G1?)

G4 was also the first generation to have the same mark – not similar, but completely identical – be repeated on multiple ponies. The reason for this is that the show, for realism’s sake, introduced a large number of nameless background ponies, wandering the streets, sitting as spectators at an event, and so on. Some initially background ponies later grew to be named and even important characters, but still, a number of fairly anonymous ones remained (with fans often naming them based on appearance), and on those, cutie marks were sometimes repeated. Obviously, there was a limited pool of designed marks that animators just used to fill up the background characters. While making the marks less unique, it doesn’t really break the lore logic: if multiple ponies have the same talent, why couldn’t they have the same cutie mark? Actually… now that I’m writing this, I can’t remember if Tales had repeating symbols. It also featured many background ponies – there may have been? I’ll get back to you on this one. :)

G4 also made it a firm canon that other similar, i.e. equine species (most notably zebras, like Zecora… yes, zebra-ific name again) also had cutie marks but other, more different species (gryphons, dragons, etc.) did not. Not even Changelings, who have lots of similarity in build with ponies, but were, I guess, more insectoid than equine. Those other species could have magic or other innate supernatural powers of their own, but it came to them without any cutie marks attached. There was even an episode about Gabby the Griffon desperately wanting to have a cutie mark like the ponies: a solution was found to soothe her feelings, but there was no magical way of making her have a cutie mark.

G5 was the first generation to follow direct continuity with the preceding one, being set in the same Equestria, but centuries later. To be fair, that aspect could have been used much, much better: Hasbro was very scarce with mentioning G4 characters directly, as they had traded the copyright and now had to pay for every mention, leaving the not-quite-so distant past unexplainably blurry. However, in terms of the workings of cutie marks, there shouldn’t have been much of a difference: it was still the same world, after all. A new pony subspecies was introduced – Auroricorns (to keep things brief, crystal unicorns), who had a distinct appearance, including protruding cutie marks – perhaps inspired by G3 toys? – but exotic aesthetics aside, their cutie marks seem to follow all the conventional rules.

However, G5 did make one big difference beyond that: it gave cutie marks to some species which didn’t have them before, namely, many dragons (but not all – a certain older dragon doesn’t have one) as well as the late-G5 antagonist, Allura (no, not the Voltron one :)), who is a snow leopard. This incited mixed reactions from the audience, as no explanation was given as to why members of species who certainly didn’t have cutie marks back in the time of G4 now have them in the same world. Fan theories, of course, exist – from Equestria’s magic slowly changing over time (which is canon in some other respects) to ponies interbreeding with dragons – but, unfortunately, we weren’t given any official, canon explanation. Sorry, young fans – now you know how we felt while trying to figure out changes with baby ponies back in G1. :)

And the way the toy isn’t bigger than ponies like dragons in the show are, you might mistake Blaize for a pony from a distance.

 

The elephant in the room: cutie marks and names

Finally, for all the cutie mark lore that has been created since the start of G4, but one issue remains sadly unresolved throughout all five generations: the mix of names and cutie marks. Namely, if ponies aren’t born with their marks or don’t get them as very small babies – and at least since G4, it is canon that that is not the case – their parents, obviously, give them names without knowing what their cutie marks will be one day. It is also obvious that ponies don’t undergo a name changing ceremony upon reaching ‘adulthood’, i.e. getting their marks. That would have been logical – many tribal societies have children ‘grow out’ of their names and gain new ones with coming of age, often connected to something they are good at, an achievement they accomplish and so on. Cutie marks seem as if tailor-made for that logic, and it’s hard to think that none of the Friendship is Magic writers thought of that. More likely, they dismissed that idea fearing that it would create confusion with their young target audience if characters’ names were to change throughout the story. Or maybe it was vetted by Hasbro for that reason? Wouldn’t be the first or even 100^th thing.

But as things stand now, it seems that either pony parents are prophetic and almost always guess names that will suit their children once they grow to get their cutie marks, or Equestria is full of unbelievable coincidences. That, of course, strains credulity as much as passing through a portal and finding that everyone on the other side speaks your language. And as much as that issue is usually ignored in-universe, so is this remarkable coincidence. Young ponies don’t start thinking about their names’ meanings when they wonder about their future cutie marks. Nopony has ever said “wouldn’t you know, my mom and dad named me just right!” If there’s a chronic pony problem I’d like future generations to address… it would probably be that one. Pick any solution that’s harmonic and plausible – and I’d be happy.

What do you think? Do you prefer the term “symbol” or “cutie mark”? Do you mind the symbol-and-name issue, or does it fall under easy suspension of disbelief for you? Let me know in the comments!