@Background Pony #C7A3  
Grown-ups don’t have to recommend it though, kids can find it on their own. My nieces and nephews love the show, but their parents aren’t into it, or cartoons at all.

But bronies or pegasisters who have daughters or even sons have the power to help their children decide as well. They have power to give feedback wether they’ll recommend the show or toys to their children or not, especially if they see the show is creative enough and good for their mental, social, and physical development.
 
I’ve seen lots of children in the convention, and I even saw a little girl brought a black bag with “BRONY” written on it, but whatever.  
So, if it wasn’t for adults at all, MLP wouldn’t be recommended by adults to children like it currently is happening.  
I think Hasbro has learned a lot from brony fandom as well, about how adults can impact children’s interest in their toys as well.

@Twilestia  
Sales of merchandise to bronies would account for less than 1% of revenue, like I demonstrated earlier.
 
Hasbro benefited greatly by continuing the series past season 2-3. I’m sure most people have heard of the sought-after syndication figure of 100 episodes. That by itself guaranteed at least until season 5. After that number of produced episodes, a series can be entered into off-network syndication, which allows it to be exposed to a much wider audience over a much longer time.
 
The MLP animated series serves as advertising for their toy lines and also by itself is a popular show which is broadcast on children’s channels around the world. They’re definitely making a profit on producing the cartoon since it’s being distributed worldwide on a lot of different channels and streaming services.
 
Companies only tend to stop making episodes when it stops being profitable.
 
Bronies are not a useful vehicle for Hasbro to advertise their bread-and-butter products - toys. We are insignificant as far as sales, advertising, and awareness are concerned. We live in a separate bubble where we mainly interact with each other. You say that we help with publicity and new sources of sales, but do you actually know anyone who’s caused a significant number of additional sales to Hasbro’s target demographic? To even make a dent in their sales figures they’d need to be driving tens of thousands of additional sales.

@Whatsapokemon  
You are talking about sales and profits and such, i dont dispute that (but would say that this is obviously a case of expanding your target demographic done in a right way, even if unintentional, so maybe why it worked). Would find your assumption that the majority of US females (not even going into outside the US where it is and was even less well known in most parts of the world) own MLP merch highly sketchy but meh, my point isnt about that.
 
 
Im talking about the trend for MLP to have a season or two, some movies and the generation is dead and moves on to a new a few years later. We have a decade of this generation, 9 seasons, spinoffs in the form of EQG and 1 movie, plus maybe another one i think? Toys you can keep making and selling from just reruns like they did before.
 
Thats certainly more then the previous generations had lived (“actively” at least). If not direct profit, i would say that the “fandom” certainly helped with publicity, new sources of sales of toys (where you seem to look at it from a standpoint of them being at odds with each other instead of whatever income they make from adults just being a addition to what they make).

@Twilestia
 
You doubt wrong. We are a small, commercially insignificant portion of the market.
 
The only saving grace is that we communicate with the show production staff more than children typically do, and so our appreciation (and criticisms) are made known to them at a much greater rate. We are the definition of a vocal minority.
 
See this comment for more information.

Eh, i doubt that without Bronies FIM would have lasted more then the initially planned, what was is 2 or 3 seasons.

@Whatsapokemon  
Perhaps, but the fanbase has fragmented a bit, as well, so it’s not always peaceful, but that’s true of every fandom.

@Beau Skunky
 
On a more hopeful note, while the ‘craze’ around MLP has died down, I still do think the fandom is just as large, or even larger than it ever has been. I just think the ‘hype’ around it has died down.
 
The fandom has stabilised to a sustainable level. People within the fandom retain their interest, but balance their interest with all the other interests they have. Back in the early days, ponies were new and exciting and everyone wanted everything pony all the time. Now people seem to be a lot more calm about it. The fandom has, I guess, matured, which is good for its long-term sustainability and reputation.

@Mildgyth  
Understandable, have a good day

@Whatsapokemon  
Not to mention, after 8 years/seasons the whole brony thing has died down, and after the show took some controversial directions, (Twilicorn, EqGirls, the writing style, Starlight Glimmer joining the cast, ect.)  
Half the people on this site actually admitted they no longer even watch the show, (some haven’t sense Season 3 or 4) nor buy the merch’/comics/ect. (Some only like the fan-content) so we probably aren’t as huge of the MLP market share as some fans think. Seems like even the more hardcore bronies no longer support the series.
 
At this point, the brony fandom has gotten more niche, and even casual bronies won’t admit they’re a fan anymore like they used to. So some are already dismissing it as a passing fad.  
Admittedly, I do kinda miss the fandom’s happier earlier days, but nothing lasts forever, and the show is already almost finished. Still, I’m impressed the series lasted as long as it did, even outlasting the new TMNT, and such.

@Sandbag
 
Because i’m posting the whole blog here, and the original was so poorly tagged i couldn’t find it.

@NostalgiaSchmaltz
 
Most of the merch “aimed at us” isn’t produced by Hasbro. It’s produced by third-party companies who license the MLP brand from Hasbro to sell to the brony market, producing small or limited runs of products. Examples: the WeLoveFine T-Shirts, the IDW Comics, and the Funko vinyl collectibles, all made by non-Hasbro companies.
 
Hasbro proper produces toys for kids because that’s what they’ve always done, and it’s what’s profitable for them.
 
You can assume that the target marked for Hasbro My Litte Pony products is half of all children. IE, mainly they’re marketing primarily towards females between the age of 4-12. In the USA alone that makes a population of something like 15-18 million people. A huge percentage of that population will be purchasing (or rather, have purchased for them) MLP products. On the other hand, while adults are a larger percentage of the population, the number of adults interested in the brand is miniscule by comparison.
 
There are approximately 65 million adult males in the USA between the ages of 19-50. To be equivalent to the 15 million (female 4-12) demographic you’d need more than 1 in 5 adult males to be interested in MLP. We all know that’s not the case.
 
 
@kolhell  

 
Definitely not, this is entirely innacurate, see above. Bronies are a very very very niche market, we are few but we use the power of the internet to remain connected.
 
Even generous estimates of the Furry fandom puts them at no more than 5 million worldwide. It’s very obvious that the Furry fandom is more populated than the Brony fandom because of convention attendance, larger dedicated websites like e621 and Fur Affinity, as well as the sheer number of artists and viewers. The worldwide brony population must be smaller than the Furry population, and so there’s no way we’d even make a dent in Hasbro’s worldwide sales figures.
 
I’m not saying this to diss the fandom, I’m saying this to be realistic. We’re not really important to Hasbro compared to their target market - if you extrapolate their 15 million USA target market demographic globally, then worldwide there’s roughly 350,000,000 females age 4-12 in the world. We survive because of our connection with each other, not because of Hasbro catering to us.

This was posted on tumblr in 2013
 
I don’t know about now, but back then MLP and Bronies were literally inescapable, to the point 4chan had to make a containment board for it. The fact this was an argument being made in 2013 is laughable.
 
Why was this even reuploaded?

@CallMeAl  
“shitload of scratch to burn”? Please. Parents with a girl can spend much more money than barely out-of-teenage years nerds that declare 90% of the figures bad, sometimes only because coat is a touch too light . “Hasbro keep pumping out more and more merch aimed at us” - like what? Farming adult t-shirts to side company and pretty much forgetting about it? Yeah, that’s “pumping”.

There are no entirely reliable statistics but even Hasbro’s own rather conservative estimates the adult male fanbase to be 26%, some estimates even but it as high as around 50%.

>You’re an insignificant portion of Hasbro’s merchandise sales
 
[Citation Needed]
 
And if we’re so “insignificant”, why does Hasbro keep pumping out more and more merch aimed at us?

>>Implying that the vast majority aren’t aware that we are along for the ride, and have no real say where it goes.

Y’know, I kinda doubt that bronies are a small market, because they tend to have a shitload of scratch to burn. The problem is that they demand quality…as well as some other things sometimes. They turn to custom-made merchandise because Hasbro’s toys are crap. They may not be the desired show audience, or even a majority of the audience, but there’s a ton of money to be made there if you’re willing to meet the demand.

@Itsthinking  
but its kinda pointless to criticize it, dont you think?
 
it doesnt affect you, and its not like you are investing anything on it, RIGHT?

@paluzna  
Just because “it isn’t for you” doesn’t mean it’s exempt from criticism.

its quite simple realy…  
they made FIM, whose audience, as of now, is adults.  
and then they did EQG, whose audience wil be young girls.
 
EQG is not aimed at us people!
 
(hmmm half baked thoughs are the best because they are free.)

Anyone else disappointed at the complete lack of puns?

@Beau Skunky  
There’s a middle ground between this comic and that guy. It’s just that the loudest people in this fandom are so black/white in their worldviews that it drowns out any realistic portrayal of what the show’s audience really is.

Y’know, there was some odd dude on DA, who acted like only bronies watch the show, and no little kids did. He claimed bronies were all that mattered, and he was saying stuff like he was going to gather people to march, and protest Hasbro for making Twilight an alicorn/princess… (Yeah sure, psycho.)  
Which is funny, ‘cause my niece watches it, I even watched it with her before. (She laughed when her favorite pony Fluttershy was “attacking” that bear. She loves cartoon violence.) In fact, even her li’l brother likes the show to. (He likes Rainbow Dash, ‘cause he thinks she’s a boy.)
 
Believe it, or not LITTLE GIRLS do like MLP to. So this thing has a point. My only problem with bronies are the ones who think they’re the only ones who like MLP, or that Hasbro should cater only to them.