“My Little Pony Tales” is a separate series from the 1980s series that brought the franchise to screens the first time. It is the second generation of characters – these are different from the ones we are used to from the first series who were retooled for the current series. In many ways this is the pure definition of a “stop-gap” entry in the franchise. For one season of 13 episodes (we have something designed to keep the franchise alive. Yes, the DVD says 26 advetures, that’s because each episode was split into two different stand-alone segments.
Here we get the adventures of Starlight, Melody, Bon Bon and their friends. They attend school, hang out at the ice cream parlor, have crushes on some of hte boy ponies, and essentially are your ordinary young girls, only they are ponies. That’s where this series comes in. In a break from the previous series where the ponies inhabited a world similar to ours with humans to interact with, this was a clean break with the ponies being the sole residents. The relationships and interactions are all designed to model friendship for girls and to a large extent the series succeeds.
Interestingly it seems as if this series in more ways was an inspiration for the current “My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic” series. the template is here only the writing couldn’t quite make it because audiences and television executives weren’t ready for such a commitment to treating the audience with as much respect. This isn’t to say “My Little Pony Tales” is bad, but it is so obviously geared towards girls and not a general, broader audience. Still it is a fairly positive series for girls.
Each segment features a new song and while there is a bonus feature for a sing-along to four of the songs (the only bonus feature) I think I would have preferred an MP3 copy of the songs available as a soundtrack. It could have easily been done by instering the DVD into your computer and accessing a file. While the songs may not have aged as well as some might hope they aren’t too bad, all things considered.
Franky you can live without “My Little Pony Tales” but if you’re a fan of the franchise just go ahead and pick this up. The price is cheap (between $10 and $15 depending on where you get it) and it’s a decent entry in the franchise that is enjoyable enough to watch.