How familiar are you with the first generation of My Little Pony? You may know that there was a line among G1 pony toys called “Twinkle-Eyed ponies”, the ponies in which have faceted gems inset in or instead of the painted eyes other ponies have. Some people find them very beautiful, some find them a little unsettling, or simply think the painted eyes look better, but either way, for many, it's just a toy gimmick.
Image from Ponyology (no longer active)
If you watched the show, you know that many of the twinkle-eyed ponies did appear in it, and they were faithfully represented: they were drawn with protruding faceted gems in the place of eyes. No explanation was given in the show, leading some viewers to wonder why some ponies had such unusual eyes.
But if you've read the comics… ah, then you know the dark truth. In some ways, it's creepier even than what Lord Tirac managed to achieve.
And let's be fair, outdoing him in creepiness is no small feat.
The origin story of these ponies can be found in the comic “Applejack’s Amazing Adventure”, published in issue #11 of the My Little Pony magazine, in 1986. (I’ve also seen some of the comics, including this one, printed as picture books, at least in German, with every image sized up to a full-page illustration.) It wasn’t even the cover story of the issue: that honour belonged to a much more casual comic, “Fun in the Snow”. In fact, AAA was a story request from readers… and then someone came up with this? (We just have a note on the correspondence page that the story is “especially for” three girls whose names and cities are given. We don’t know what each of them wrote and requested. Maybe someone asked how twinkle-eyed ponies got their eyes, while another asked for a story with Applejack as the hero.)
The beginning is fairly light-hearted: Applejack has one of her bouts of clumsiness and messes up several (minor) things for her pony and non-pony friends, who get upset over it. She decides to go into the woods to find a friendly witch, aptly named Witch Know-a-Lot, who might know a spell to help her stop being clumsy. (Just like later, G4 ponies might go to Zecora in the Everfree Forest to look for help with various problems. And even the name isn’t much less of a symbol.)
All comic scans taken from heckyeahponyscans.tumblr.com
However, Applejack takes a wrong turn in the forest and gets lost, eventually coming to a mysterious cavern full of shining jewels, where she is captured by an evil wizard – those apparently abound in G1 Ponyland, just as in any good old-fashioned fairytale setting. He only refers to himself as the Jewel Wizard, and promptly sets her to work with digging up the jewels for him. And she is by no means the first pony he has captured this way: in fact, he leaves it to the other ponies to instruct her what to do… and those ponies all seem to be squinting in a very strange way.
When they’re left alone, the ponies whisper to Applejack that they have been captured in the dark cave for so long that their eyes “won’t work in the daylight” anymore, and that she should try to escape while she still has her eyesight. Credit where credit is due – while Applejack may be clumsy, she is no coward, and she decides to run not only to save herself, but to get help for the others. In doing so, she smashes into the wizard’s throne. (It is subject to interpretation whether she does so on purpose, or it is once again an accident - but this time, a fortunate one.) Shards of jewels fly all over the place, as a crack opens in the floor of the cave where the throne used to be, swallowing the evil wizard in a fitting end. Applejack proceeds to lead the rest of the prisoners outside, expecting to need to lead a group of blind ponies to safety, but as they go into the light, she notices that they now have jewels from the broken throne in their eyes, and that they can see normally that way!
That's it. Happy end! A comic with a
total of four pages, like most in this era. The villain is dead, all the good
ponies are safe and sound, they can see, and it's explained how they got their
twinkle eyes. What more do you need? Twinkle-eyed ponies appear in numerous
comics, stories and books later on, but, just like in the show, their ordeal in
the mines is never again mentioned: they seem to be just ponies like all
others. (Well, except for Mimic, whom you can't find for under $200 nowadays
who has her own problem regarding a set of magic golden horseshoes, but that
is, again, unrelated to her eyes.) But are they really?
When we look at the story of this comic with adult eyes, what these ponies went through sounds terrifying and heavily traumatising. They were enslaved and forced to perform heavy labour, probably living in very poor conditions, perhaps punished if they tried to escape. They were slowly losing their eyesight, noticing how their eyes can’t handle the bright light when they do approach the exit, and were likely gradually losing the hope of, very literally, ever seeing the light of day again – even if they did somehow regain their freedom. Even if things did end well for them – that ending itself must have been traumatising as well! Just imagining sharp pieces of crystal driving themselves into one’s eye sockets might make some people very uneasy, let alone living through it. It must have hurt terribly, we think. We can imagine those poor ponies remaining mentally scarred by the ordeal – having nightmares of gloomy jewel mines, shuddering whenever they see themselves in the mirror. We could easily envision the whole thing as the plot of a horror book or movie! No wonder this meme appears on Reddit:
Yet it seems that no hordes of angry and concerned parents wrote to Hasbro to complain of their children being traumatised by this comic, and that should come as no surprise. After all, classical fairytales contain many elements that also would be terrifying to live through, but don’t seem to be problematic for children to read. Just think about it – all those children, grandmas and little goats eaten by big bad wolves (but emerging from their stomachs unharmed), children abandoned by their parents, captured by evil witches, abused by evil stepmothers, turned into animals, and so on… yet it doesn’t seem to cause more than fleeting fear in our children, if even that much. And that is mainly for two reasons.
Firstly, because children, obviously, aren’t looking at the story with adult eyes. The things that come to our minds because the story seems to imply them (or, rather, because we would expect them there in real life) don’t and can’t naturally come to the mind of someone who doesn’t have any experience with such discourse. The average small child, thankfully, knows nothing (from first-hand experience or detailed accounts) of the horrors of slavery, severe illness or injury, and so on. They would not think of the consequences beyond what the comic explicitly shows and tells.
And, of course, the second reason is precisely that: the comic doesn’t explicitly show or describe much that is overly troublesome. The images are simple and cute (even the evil wizard looks rather adorable), the text isn’t too heavy on unsettling details. Yes, we see the captured ponies being in a hard spot – but only a few panels later, the evil wizard is justly punished, and the ponies are freed and can see again! Nobody mentions them being in pain due to the jewels: for all we know, children may imagine those jewels just magically attaching to them, all sparkly and shiny. Maybe it even felt good and right? Everybody is smiling in the last panel; all problems are solved. Thus, the ending is happy – and fully and truly so.
In both of these factors, the fact that the story is short also helps: we don’t get to dwell on the unpleasantness or hopelessness of the ponies’ situation. Unless prompted to think about what it must have felt for Whizzer, Gingerbread and the others to be trapped in the darkness and slowly lose their eyesight (a prompt not many parents are likely to make!), most children won’t give it much thought as the story moves on right away, and soon comes to a satisfying conclusion. Just like in fairytales: no rendition of the story spends two pages describing what Little Red Riding Hood felt like inside the wolf’s stomach. In most editions, you probably won’t find a single sentence about it. And that is just fine.
Thus, from a child’s point of view, there is nothing overly disturbing in this story: it is just another adventure in Ponyland. If you’re an older fan who feels like writing fanfiction or running a roleplaying game where the dark aspects of the story are played out – there’s nothing wrong with that! Mature stories dealing with serious subjects can be both entertaining and educational for everyone involved. Then, to get that horror or survival feeling, you will focus on all that is potentially grim and unsettling, both inside the caves and after the ponies’ liberation.
But if you generally prefer the feel of happy, careless ponies – don’t feel pressured to view the story as very dark, because it doesn’t have to be. View it as a story of adversity overcome, of an unlikely hero, a clumsy mare with a brave heart, thwarting a villain’s evil plans – and of wounds and scars being healed in a magical and symbolical way. Because the jewels in their eyes don’t have to be ominous sharp foreign objects causing pain, yet being the only way for the ponies to see. They can be a sign of how Ponyland’s magic intervened to not only provide a cure, but also to show how, no matter what devious actions a villain undertakes, their plans can be brought to nought, and what they tried to cause harm with be turned to good. And then, when the twinkle-eyed ponies look themselves in the mirror, they will look upon their faces and their sparkling eyes with a feeling of pride, victory and hope.
If you like My Little Pony, check out our other MLP posts, such as the one on their cutie marks and names, or the one about later-generation Applejacks! Or just click the “My Little Pony” tag and explore everything we have!
