My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic: Season 2

When it came to My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, I begun to check it out late August 2011 after noticing how popular it was on some web sites (and finally putting some effort into watching The Hub). While it was slow, I eventually became a fan of the show in time for the show's second season, and that season definitely gave me a good reason to get up early on Saturdays.This season, the world of My Little Pony started to expand a lot more thanks to the show dropping the requirement of having Twilight Sparkle be in every episode just for the sake of having her write a Friendship Report, and there's definitely a lot of fun moments to be have. Among the highlights: a Halloween episode that marks the return of Princess Luna; an episode that focuses on Rarity's sisterly relationship with Sweetie Belle; a Christmas episode that tells about the founding of Equestria; a pair of excellent episodes involving mousy pony Fluttershy (the first involves her trying to be more assertive, while the other has her being concerned with her "performance issues" when Rainbow Dash wants her to take part in making a cyclone that will carry water to Cloudsdale for the rain season); and a number of memorable songs (a couple of which were nominated for a Daytime Emmy last year).As for bonus features, while there may not be any audio commentaries this go-round, there's at least a couple of them that will interest older viewers. The first one is a live reading of "Hearth's Warming Eve" by the show's cast (and an audience member filling in for the absent Tabitha St. Germain) that was performed at the Silent Movie Theater in Los Angeles last May. It's worth checking out not only for the "live" feel (especially as there's a few flubs during the reading), but also to see what was changed from the original script for Hearth's Warming Eve to the final project. The other bonus is the My Little Pony panel at Comic Con 2012, with the panelist consisting of some of the show's cast members and its current story editor, Meghan McCarthy.In short: if you're a fan of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, then this DVD is a must buy.P. S. For those wondering: the version of "The Last Roundup" on this set is the censored version, so you may want to keep your copy of "The Friendship Express" (if you have it) if you want the original version of said episode.

OK, season II.. Some of the best moments of the series (So far, anyway. Hear that Season IV writers??) Anyway, we had two of the best episodes EVER in "Lesson Zero" and "Luna Eclipsed" plus the super-popular unofficial brony anthem "Smile, Smile, Smile" Of course we can't forget that finally, in Season 2, DERPY SPEAKS!! At least until she didn't. But everyone knows that story. So let's get to the reason for the title of this review; "A mite confused.'When SHOUT! released Season I to DVD, I thought; "Yay!, I can't wait to go buy one!" then I heard that it was going to be sold exclusively on Amazon. It was still yay, and I still bought it. "But why," I wondered; "Sell it exclusively online, when selling it at stores like Wal-Mart, Target, etc, would generate tons more sales?" It wasn't as if other MLP DVD products weren't already available at these places, because they were."OK", I thought; "Since Hasbro/Hub/DHX/SHOUT! are obviously for-profit companies, and putting the boxed set in general distribution would probably generate ADDITIONAL profit, there must be another motive." So what was that motive? After quite a bit of thought, I came up with this;"Ever since the brony phenomenon exploded out of 4Chan, Hasbro, (and to a lesser extent, Hub), have been at sort of a loss about what to do with all us bronies, and how to handle us. In Season II we began to see nods to the fandom in things like more frequent appearances of Derpy, the actual mentioning of Bronies in the extended version of the "Equestria Girls" song, and so on. Then Derpy-Gate happened. Derpy was suddenly persona-non-grata, and her appearances were drastically reduced in Season III. From this we can deduce that Hasbro is very image-conscious in relating to the public, and anything that casts them in a negative light (such as being "insensitive" to those with certain disabilities,) will cause them to retreat and/or retract the perceived offensive material. No surprise here, I imagine most corporations do that.However, most corporations don't have a huge, obsessed, definitely NOT the target audience fandom surrounding a "product" like Hasbro has been blessed with. And here once again we come to the subject of money. Hasbro and hub I am CERTAIN keep an eye on the brony community. They know we spend an amazing amount of money on pony-related swag. Just look in at a typical brony convention. young girls are not usually the ones buying the $200.00+ plushies. However, most of that expensive merch. isn't licensed by Hasbro. What Hasbro DOES have is the ability to create licensed DVD boxes sets of the series. And I am sure they know bronies will buy thousands of them. In fact, the Season I DVD set broke several sales records.But why sell it ONLY on Amazon? I think the Big Brains at Hasbro wanted to separate the sales to bronies from the sales to parents of the target demographic. if the Set was sold everywhere instead of just Amazon, you would never know how many were sold to bronies who came to the store LOOKING for the DVD, and how many were sold to families who happened to come across the DVD while shopping.Selling it on Amazon, however, would pretty much guarantee that whoever bought it there was there because they knew about it, and was willing to buy it online, if that was the only way they could get it. And while I have no doubt some purchasers were the parents of young kids, they would compose a much smaller percentage then if it was sold at Wal-Mart. So, Hasbro wanted to know how many they could sell to mainly bronies. Why? well, Since Hasbro is aware of the extensive amount of merchandise bronies buy, and the amounts of money we are willing to pay for it (See above), and the less than stellar quality, shall we say, of many MLP products sold in stores (not counting, of course, the excellent vinyls sold through Hot Topic), Hasbro is looking into launching a new high-quality, animation-correct toy line.But to do this they wanted a fairly accurate estimate of how many bronies would spend the extra money to buy such items. Selling S.1 exclusively online would give such a number. And while it might hurt profits in the short-term, it WOULD generate enough money later on, if the merchandising were done correctly. And of course launching a new semi-exclusive, fairly expensive toy line is a gamble, and Hasbro wanted to make sure the numbers would be there to justify the expense.'Proud of my powers of deduction, I confidently expected, if S.1 sold well on Amazon, Season II would, when released, be available everywhere. And S. 1 would be re-released at the same time to general distribution. Apparently, this is incorrect. S. 2 will be sold only on Amazon, just like S.1. So I am a mite confused. Why do this when selling it everywhere would net them a LOT more money? I don't know yet. I'll try to find out. Anyone who has an alternate idea or theory is welcome to comment on this post, and I'll be glad to read them.