@Vinyl Fluff  
IIRC, retailers also get a say in what the toys look like. When stuff gets shown off at toy fairs they can go: “Okay, I’ll buy 5 as it is, but 10 if you make it pink” and companies can adjust accordingly. A lot of the prototype toys for Celestia were white-ish/pink at the 2010 Toy fair. I believe it was Lauren Faust who said that was the reason Celestia was pink early on. But that was a long time ago, I could be wrong.

@Itsthinking  

 
Yeah, they want to get their cost-to-profit ratio as high as possible, so extra expense in getting super-accurate and detailed doesn’t happen.
 
They also want the mainstream (read: target audience) toys to “appeal” to girls, so lots of soft lines and brushable hair, which also decreases show-accuracy. This is also how we ended up with Pinklestia and Purple Luna, because they figured girls would rather have them in those colors rather than their actual ones.
 
They wised up on Pinklestia, now I wish they’d do the same for Luna.

The two would totally do a hairstyling sleepover together.

Lyra and Rarara!

@Background Pony #5DBC  
Hasbro has to make them on an industrial scale.

Why is it that most of Hasbro’s MLP toys look nothing like from the show, but the stuff the fandom makes looks a lot more spot on?