Hi there people from Hobby Drama! I have been a long time lurker and reader, and I have finally decided to write about a piece of My Little Pony fandom history that people seldom talk about, despite it being in my opinion the precursor to one of the most infamous examples of brony depravity on the internet.
My friends, let me tell you the tale of how a fetish caused many women to leave My Little Pony toy collecting community despite being part of it for decades.
The History of My Little Pony Toy Collecting
My Little Pony, or MLP for short, is perhaps one of the most recognizable toy lines in the world. Hasbro first started this line in 1981, with a series of toys called My Pretty Pony, which was relatively unsuccessful. The following year, they tried again, and released the My Little Pony toyline, which became one of Hasbro’s biggest brands for the next few decades.
MLP was not limited to just toys of little horses and unicorns, the brand released all sorts of merchandise, and with it several animated specials and films. This first line lasted from 1982 to 1992, and is dubbed Generation One (G1) by collectors. In the current community, G1s are probably the most desired and most often sought after ponies. This was in part due to the sheer variety of different coloured horses, unicorns and pegasi that one could collect. Here is a great index that shows all the different releases and the range of colour combinations that existed.
There was a 5 year hiatus between G1 and G2. G2 would end up being the shortest of the generations, only lasting for 2 years. This line was not as successful in America, hence the short run of it compared to G1, but it was quite popular within Europe, and there are still many avid collectors of this generation.
Generation 3 is the generation most people here would recognize. Running from 2003 to 2009, G3 was targeted to a younger audience than what the previous two generations were. Accompanying media to the toy line was considerably less complex and compelling than that of G1 and G2 both, which was a major reason for the world’s collective surprise of MLP: Friendship is Magic’s stellar storytelling. Ponies from this generation are not as sought after in collector circles, due to greater market saturation.
Now, onto generation 4. The release of G4 was accompanied by a cartoon series created by Lauren Faust, famously known for her previous works The Powerpuff Girls and Fosters Home for Imaginary Friends. Unlike the other three generations, the cartoon preceded the toys in many parts of the world. Veteran collectors of MLP toys were excited by the release of a new generation of toys, and many eagerly purchased wave one of the toys, which featured brushable figures of the main six characters from the cartoon, waiting excitedly for subsequent waves and merchandise releases.
They would not see the storm that was to come.
The Birth of the Brony
A brony is defined as being a male fan of the My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic series. The popularity of the series skyrocketed during the initial run of the first season of the cartoon, primarily on the internet imageboard 4chan. What started as an ironic meme actually became a genuine community that seemed to explode almost overnight. Memes about the show spread across the internet like wildfire, and the sheer amount of ponyposting had become such a problem on 4chan that it infected all other boards, not just the board devoted to cartoons.
One of the 4chan boards that had a lot of ponyposting was /toy/, a board focusing on toy collecting. This, of course, was not as egregious as posting in other topics as MLP had a toyline, but the lack of merchandising at the start of the MLP cartoon run and popularity boost had led to the toys being quite hard to find in person, and led to posters eagerly awaiting new toy releases and other merchandise releases. People would post pictures of the toys they managed to find, both in box and out of it, and eventually this led to people engaging in what was considered to be a /toy/ tradition.
What the FUCK is hotgluing?
Hotgluing is a practice that had started back in 2005, and has become an unfortunately common occurrence in toy collecting communities (particularly anime collecting communities) since then. It is when a man ejaculates on a piece of merchandise and subsequently photographs it to share online. For many, it is an obscure fetish, for some a joke, and for others, a way to provoke people (many examples of hotgluing are of highly sought after or expensive figurines).
For the MLP toy collecting community, it soon became a rite of passage for any piece of new merchandise to go through.
By the time Wave 2 of the toys released, the popularity of the show and of the toys were at its peak. As new merchandise began to be found, and these new toys began to be released, many scrambled to be the first ones to take pictures of these toys being hotglued. By this point of time, a containment board for MLP posting had been made on 4chan (known as /mlp/, which still exists to this day.) Threads would be made of new merchandise, and if they were not hotglued, then posters would immediately ask the original poster of the thread to do it. More often than not, the OP would comply.
At this point, bronies far outnumbered the members of the MLP collectors communities. At first, the collector community held quite a positive outlook on the brony community, glad that more people were engaging with a series that these people had held in their heart for many years. After all, many of these collectors grew up with G1, and were older women. Who wouldn’t be thrilled at the concept of new, younger fans, to take the place of the old guard? They had no idea of the depravity that had been going on until they were confronted with it.
You see, in these collecting communities, collectors would seek out personal photos of the toys they wanted to purchase to see how they differed to the photo listings available on department store websites and the like. Often times, there would be no photo listings for merchandise, and so it was up to the consumer to provide them. What this led to was women innocently looking for a picture of a pony, or perhaps a blanket or some other type of merchandise they wanted to buy, finding a picture of said merchandise having been hotglued.
This led to many collectors swearing off G4 collecting at the very start of the toyline’s run, as they did not want to subject themselves to seeing such pictures, and the risk of buying a toy secondhand that may have been “used” was deemed not worth it. Many collectors left the hobby completely, not just for collecting G4s, because of how this had tainted their experience.
This fascination with hotgluing would later become the catalyst for the very very infamous Rainbow Dash cum jar experiment, which remains to be possibly the most well known example of brony depravity on the internet, whereas the history of MLP hotgluing remains relatively unknown outside of the community.
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