In the last part of the LittleshyFiM interview, we talked about his improvement as a brony creator. We also talked about his opinion on the My Little Pony TV Show series and his favorite fan creations and games. Today, we’re going to talk about another interesting part of the fandom, which is their relationship with Hasbro. The company responsible for the TV Show existing in the first place.
Continuing on #MLPMonth’s discussion, we’ll also be talking about the current state of YouTube. With the way Content Creators are seeing some rough treatment as of late, what could this lighthearted creator think of the system? Let’s find out about this and more:
The strange relationship between Bronies and Hasbro.
Littleshy gave a very articulate response once I asked about how Hasbro treats the people in the fandom. Considering the fact that he has been involved with some problematic situations with them, it’s a very interesting viewpoint. We’ll start at what he thinks about the representatives of the fandom.
It’s a very strange relationship to be sure. On one hand bronies love to buy merchandise, and being a toy company this benefits Hasbro greatly. On the other hand, a bunch of adult males who probably spend too much time on the internet is not what Hasbro wants associated with their leading 5-to-7-year-old girls’ toy brand.
Generally, Hasbro doesn’t have anything to do with bronies. The people who work on the show (DHX Media) are just the opposite and will regularly attend conventions and talk to us on social media, but officially Hasbro’s public relations for fans is virtually non-existent.
He then moves onto talking about the times where Hasbro does get involved into bronies’ state of affairs. And this is where things get a little bit messy.
The only exception to the above is when Hasbro decides to come after us for infringing their intellectual property rights. This results in scary-looking legal demands and threats of suing, but I don’t think it has even gone beyond that. It also only happens a couple times a year but it usually targets the larger brony projects.
When Bronies get the C&D Seal of Approval.
Once Littleshy made clear that there have been times where bronies have gotten into legal issues with Hasbro. He elaborated about a couple of projects that have bitten the dust, with some examples as well.
A couple examples would include the time we tried to make a fighting game with pony characters (Fighting is Magic). The time a talented animator wanted to start his own YouTube series with pony characters (The Adventures of Button Mash).
Not to mention, the time a brony registered a pony-related .com domain name years before Hasbro sought to acquire it (Equestriagirls.com). All of which resulted in the aforementioned scary-looking legal letters and the brony in question’s compliance.
He briefly mentioned that, while these are the harshest Hasbro has been on bronies. They don’t actively try to do this too often, mostly because they don’t want the obvious customers to turn on them.
While the studios which create the show are loved by fans, Hasbro is often viewed as a looming authoritarian figure ready to swoop down from their monolithic office building to shut down an individual’s innocent passion project of multiple years or interfere with the show we know and love to sell a few more toys.
In case it’s not obvious, that depiction is often exaggerated to poke fun at the matter, but the fact remains that Hasbro’s track record of interaction with the fandom is mostly unpleasant. We can’t exactly bite the hand that feeds us but at the same time we don’t have to be happy about being fed cease & desist letters from their legal department.
YouTube Content Creators in Recent Years According to Littleshy
It’s fair to say that YouTube and Content Creators have had a very troublesome relationship with one another. And even though the dreaded C&D hasn’t hit Littleshy yet, there’s another problem that happens on his channel.
The ongoing copyright-related problems on YouTube include a lot of Hasbro’s involvement. I have had issues including full-on takedowns in the past but ever since fully utilizing the dispute system on YouTube I haven’t seen much trouble recently.
He then briefly talked about his viewpoint about the current situation with other YouTubers. He doesn’t think that this is a huge problem for Brony Creators in the big scale.
Most of the recent drama on YouTube involves ad revenue. While many bronies including myself appreciate making some money back, the focus is to enjoy a cartoon and participate in the fandom by contributing something. As bothersome as the monetization issues are for all YouTubers, this matter probably affects bronies the least.
Conclusion: A bright future for the brony kind.
Finally, I decided to close the interview by asking Littleshy what he thinks of the bronies in the future. Whether or not the fandom will continue to be as strong as its always been or not. Littleshy took a few moments to talk and then talked about very important things regarding future developments.
Bronies recently celebrated the show’s 7th birthday. Many of us have been here for four or five of those years and some even longer. The fandom will no doubt change over time as it has already, but I’m confident it will stick around for a very, very long time. I predict bronies will be making pony content long after the show ends and I say that because I’m pretty sure I will be.
We’ve already experienced what happens to a fandom after a few years pass. The number of the people in the community will decline and has already, but we’re still going strong due to the core message and appeal of the fandom. As bronies continue to become less of a passing trend and return to its roots of being a tightly-knit community, we have only more good to look forward to!
LittleshyFiM will continue to make videos for the MLP Community in years to come. You can subscribe to his YouTube channel and check out his website that explains bronies at length!
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