Multiple Generations
- In order to appeal to the Bronies, Walmart released a t-shirt with a picture of six major My Little Pony characters
, captioned "I ♥ Bronies". So where did they go wrong? They used characters from the 1980s G1 cartoon instead of those from My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic. And they couldn't even get that right, as the colors and flank symbols on two of the characters are wildly inaccurate anyway; Applejack, Gusty, Glory, and Princess Sparkle look okay, but North Star has Firefly's symbol and Posey has Tic Tac Toe's symbol. - One article, written by a woman complaining that classic kids' toys and games were getting too "sexy" for kids, consistently refers to My Little Pony as "My Pretty Pony", which is the name of the original toy that My Little Pony spun off from.
- A Daily Mail article about people with pastel hair claims it to be the "Brony" style, a result of "My Little Bronies" wanting to recreate the colorful hair seen on the My Little Pony characters from the 80s. There are three problems here. First of all, "Brony" is not a hairstyle; second, these people were probably not dying their hair in order to make it look like the ponies' manes; and third, the term "brony" refers to fans of G4 and/or G5, with many bronies outright shunning earlier generations. Also, the pony shown in the article as an example is from neither of those eras, being G2 Morning Glory (released in 1997).
- The documentary series The Toys That Made Us claims that all four generations of My Little Pony have had cartoons, making the rather common mistake of assuming that My Little Pony Tales is part of G2 rather than G1. In truth, G1 has two completely different cartoons and G2 has none; G2 canon is restricted to comics, a computer game, and the short descriptions on the toys' packaging. The narrator also claims that "the G2 ponies were not a success, and were discontinued in 1999", which was true in the US... but not in Europe, where G2 lasted until G3 debuted in 2003.
Generation 1
- This Cracked article implies that Tirek from My Little Pony is a recurring villain, despite him only appearing in the pilot, Rescue at Midnight Castle, in which he is destroyed at the end. Though this may be just a case of them not changing the subheading, "Who was he constantly losing to?" that they use for the other six. A straighter example is the sentence, "The little ponies, pegasus and unicorns make their home in a valley there called Paradise Estate." The valley is called Dream Valley, the ponies live in Dream Castle - Paradise Estate is not introduced until the movie, and Unicorns and Pegasi are still considered ponies, just not Earth Ponies.
- The description on the back of the case for the complete series DVD set released by Shout! Factory claims that the ponies of My Little Pony 'n Friends "face evil witches, goblins, Stone Backs, Grundles and more". In My Little Pony: The Movie (1986), the Grundles get an entire song about how not being as cute as the ponies doesn't make them evil. And an important plot point of The End of Flutter Valley is that the Stonebacks aren't evil either, despite all appearances.
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic
- The now-infamous Ms. Magazine article "My Little Homophobic, Racist, Smarts-Shaming Pony" criticized My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic sight-unseen in early 2010, before the show had even begun airing. The research for the article was based on early artwork from the show, the first version of the official website, and the cold open of the first episode. Show runner Lauren Faust later posted a rebuttal that disputed every one of the points the article had made.note Errors in the article include:
- "Homophobic" comes from Rainbow Dash "looking" angry in posters, which the author believes, combined with her rainbow-colored mane, blue fur, and Boyish Short Hair, makes her look like a stereotypical angry butch lesbian. In the show itself, Rainbow is a Lovable Jock who can be aggressive and has a competitive streak but isn't overtly mean, and stands up to a bully in the show's first season.
- "Racist" comes from Princess Celestia being "white" while some of her guards appear to be black. While Celestia's coat is certainly pale, and many fans do mistake her as being white, she's actually an extremely light pink (as evidenced most clearly by her outline, and famously exaggerated by most of her early toys). Likewise, her guards are dark grey, not black - the only black ponies seen at the time were Nightmare Moon and a few background characters who aren't guards, and there are white guards even in the first episode. And a pony's color isn't equivalent to a human's skin color or ethnicity, anyway.
- "Smarts-Shaming" comes from Celestia ordering Twilight to get out of the library and go see the world and make friends. The writer missed that Twilight's problem isn't that she likes studying, but that she's a shut-in — she studies so much that she neglects everything else in life, including meaningful relationships with others.
- The Hub's Facebook page made a few errors:
- They called Rainbow's Shadowbolt costume a Wonderbolt costume. They look similar in broad strokes, but the biggest difference is that the Shadowbolt uniform is black and purple while the Wonderbolt one is blue and yellow.
- They initially called Discord a dragon instead of a Draconequus (or Dragonokis, as they misspell it).
- In a profile of Applejack◊, it's stated that "Big Mac" is her husband (he's her older brother) and Apple Bloom and Granny Smith are their daughters (they're her younger sister and grandmother, respectively). At least it inspired a fan comic.
- The Princess Celestia character profile video claims that Celestia is "the only pony with a unicorn horn and pegasus wings". The first two episodes introduce Princess Luna/Nightmare Moon, who is also an alicorn.
- An insert included with Madman Entertainment's Australian DVDs misidentifies toy line-exclusive pony Ploomette as Pinkie Pie.
- 80sTees.com's two versions of Mighty Fine's Wonderbolts shirt have a mistake in their product descriptions misidentifying the then-unnamed Surprise as Fleetfoot, despite both of those Wonderbolts appearing at the same time in "The Best Night Ever".
- Some ToyWiz.com listings referred to the then-unnamed Wonderbolt Surprise as Spitfire, despite both of those Wonderbolts appearing at the same time in "The Best Night Ever". Even the ones that didn't call her the wrong name improperly spelled "Wonderbolts" as two words.
- A New York slideshow misidentified Sweetie Belle as Berry Punch, and Apple Bloom as Rose.
- A local news segment called In Living Glover in St. Louis claimed that the "Bronies" are manchildren who love the show so much that they ''collect disability payments so they can stay home and watch the show all day." In general, a lot of news articles about bronies define them exclusively as male, when there are in fact a number of older female fans of the show who also call themselves bronies. It started as the male term (the female equivalent being "pegasister"), but linguistic drift meant it eventually grew to encompass female fans as well.
- A CNN article seriously underestimated the popularity of the series by opening with "If you're not 7, there's a good chance that you are unaware of the latest 'My Little Pony' re-boot".
- The Daily Mail had a pop at reporting on the Derpy controversy that sparked up surrounding "The Last Roundup". The sub-headline of the article refers to the show's Periphery Demographic as "Brownies." Possibly more a spell-check error than actual ignorance on the part of the writer.
- In this Washington Post article, a picture of the Cutie Mark Crusaders is captioned "The celebrated ponies of My Little Pony." True, they are ponies, but the description makes it seem like they're main characters, instead of supporting cast members with one or two focus episodes a season.
- According to the official My Little Pony magazine from Turkey, "Apple Bloom's friends Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle don't care much about cutie marks." Even when the Cutie Mark Crusaders trying to get their marks isn't the central plot of their episodes (prior to "Crusaders of the Lost Mark", at least), there are usually at least one or two scenes focused on it.
- A Los Angeles Times article covering the fandom and future of the program claimed the then-upcoming character Shining Armor was going to be the first male pony on the show. There were many stallions seen before then, most prominently Big Macintosh.
- The Bayerischer Rundfunk once reported on a brony meetup in Munich, during which they referred to Rainbow Dash as Rainboy Dash while trying to explain bronydom.
- The Italian TV Guide description of the show says "In Paradise Estate, the Little Ponies live their peaceful lives based on music and playtime. But not every inhabitant of Ponyland is as peaceful as them..." This better fits the original TV show; the ponies in Friendship is Magic live in Ponyville, the kingdom they live in is called Equestria, and the show's plots typically aren't quite as cutesy as the summary makes them sound.
- A couple of episode summaries provided by TV guides (such as those on Dish Network) are incorrect:
- One summary for "Mare in the Moon" says "After trying to warn Princess Celestia about the Nightmare Moon, the ponies travel to Ponyville." Only Twilight Sparkle is trying to warn Celestia, and is sent to Ponyville against her wishes with the end goal of making friends, not traveling there of her own will like the summary implies. The other ponies already live there, and they don't care or even seem to know about Nightmare Moon until she shows up in person after kidnapping the princess. Also, Nightmare Moon is a name, not a title.
- A summary for "Lesson Zero" claims that the plot of the episode is Twilight losing one of her friendship letters for her report to Princess Celestia. She doesn't lose any friendship letters; the conflict is that she can't think of anything to put in a letter, as she feels like she hasn't learned anything about friendship in a while.
- TV listings' synopses of "Suited For Success" and "The Mysterious Mare Do Well" respectively refer to Rarity and Rainbow Dash as male. Season 3's "Apple Family Reunion" synopsis gives the same gender confusion treatment to Applejack.
- The synopsis for "A Hearth's Warming Tail" describes Starlight Glimmer having the holiday blues. She's not really depressed, she just doesn't express any interest in celebrating Hearth's Warming.
- Patton Oswalt, in his special Talking for Clapping, does a routine about watching Pony with his daughter. He explains that it's her favorite show but that he's not really into it, after which he launches into a minutes-long explanation of the show's premise and characters that only a fan would know. The routine is almost entirely flawless, except that he misnames Apple Bloom as "Apple Blossom" and misidentifies Scootaloo as Rainbow Dash's little sister (they aren't biologically related, and at that point in the series they had not yet declared each other honorary sisters).
- The Croatian HRT dub has the studio-made recap for the first half of "The Return of Harmony, Part 2" erroneously claim that Applejack and Spike found the Elements of Harmony and failed to convince her friends to help her, also adding that "even Twilight lost all hope". Not only is this glaringly incorrect — it's Twilight Sparkle, not Applejack, who found the Elements — the clips used in the recap clearly focus on Twilight.
- The people behind the Ultimate Guide made some fairly glaring mistakes regarding characters, like listing Rainbow Dash's parents as "unknown"note , claiming Starlight Glimmer met Sunburst at Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns and that her worst quality is "impatience"note , and listing Princess Celestia's worst quality as "absolutely none"note . This has led to fans joking that Twilight wrote the guide, and that it is intentionally biased in favor of her friends and mentor.
- When the show first premiered on German TV, the media was caught completely off-guard, seemingly having no idea that this was the start of an all-new generation with an all-new show. Most TV schedules didn't mention it at all, and listed the completely wrong series line-up of the previous week for premiere week (if they listed the Nick Jr. block at all); the rest advertised it as being the G3 show. Only one independent TV news site got it right, and then only because they were informed by a brony.
- This article says that the show airs on Disney Channel. While the network airs the show in Spain, Germany and Japan, it's not true in case in the United States, where it airs on Discovery Family.
- In ''The Last Bronycon: a fandom autopsy'', Jenny Nicholson claims that Hasbro was pandering to bronies by making mainly toys of the The Mane Six over and over. However, this had already been done earlier with the "Core 7" retool of G3; Hasbro chose seven ponies out of the increasingly large cast to serve as the main characters of the series, and then only produced toys for them. This era was a Short-Runner, however, so this mistake is understandable. She also claims that the Blind Bag pony figures only came out during G4, and were designed to be more show-accurate with plastic hair instead of the brushable hair of the main line. Neither is entirely accurate; there were blind bag ponies and ponies with plastic hair in Generation 3. The early Blind Bag Ponies were also notoriously show-inaccurate due to the limited number of molds used (e.g. Fluttershy having short hair due to being a repaint of Rainbow Dash, Sapphire Shores being a Unicorn instead of an Earth Pony, and Trixie being a repaint of either Rarity or Twilight depending on the wave).
My Little Pony: Equestria Girls
- The website Animated Views had a news article regarding My Little Pony: Equestria Girls, saying that after watching the trailer, they couldn't understand why it wasn't about ponies and the reasoning behind turning the ponies into humans attending high school. However, not only are the pony characters present in the trailer, only Twilight Sparkle gets turned into a human, and all the others come from an alternate universe where they are already (albeit oddly colored) humans.
- One articlee about Equestria Girls and the fandom made the infamous statement that the adult males in the fandom were "looking forward to seeing the ponies in their sexy humanized forms", apparently missing the fact that the humanized character designs were one of the most common criticisms of the movies by the adult fandom. And that the humanized versions of the ponies are in high school.
- Hasbro themselves once gave the following synopsis of Equestria Girls: "Learn all about the magical parallel universe with high schools instead of castles, where six pony friends become real girls with a love for fun and fashion. First, this makes a common mistake by that the Mane Six all become human, when only Twilight Sparkle becomes human in the movie; the other main characters are alternate universe versions who have always been humans. Second, they say that the girls have "a love for fun and fashion", making it seem like the movie will make the girls into the stereotypes Lauren Faust wanted to avoid. In the movie, the girls keep their personalities from the pony universe. Third, the universe isn't magical — in fact, Twilight unable to use magic is even in the trailer. The only source of magic comes from Twilight's crown, which originated from the ponies' dimension anyway.
- A Ukrainian commercial for Rainbow Rocks stated that The Dazzlings are by Aria Blaze and are bent on destroying Canterlot High, but then goes to a shot from the show of Rainbow Dash and a shot from the first movie of Sunset Shimmer, and says that "It's up to Rainbow Dash, Sunset Shimmer and their friends to go through the mirror once more!" This ignores the fact that it's Twilight and Spike who went through the mirror in the first movie, and that the Dazzlings are led by Adagio Dazzle, not Aria Blaze. Also, they just want to take over Canterlot High, not destroy it.
- The product description on Amazon for Wondercolts Forever: The Diary of Celestia and Luna erroneously says that the eponymous girls take part in the very first Mane Event. The book actually revolves around the very first Friendship Games — a very different thingnote This detail is corrected in the Hachette Book Group listing for the book. What makes it particularly weird is that on that very same Amazon.com page the user can read the back of the book, where the correct synopsis is present.
- The description for the Equestria Girls Bookset starts fine, briefly describing the plot of Through the Mirror... then states that in the sequel film/book, the Equestria Girls create a band named the Sonic Rainboomsnote to battle against Sunset Shimmer's band, the Dazzlings. It then states that Sunset Shimmer had a change of heart afterward (in Sunset Shimmer's Time to Shine). This is very wrong: Sunset Shimmer had said change of heart after her defeat in the first book/movie, and doesn't join or attempt to join the Dazzlings at any point during the second. In fact, her attempts at redemption are the main drive of said film and its novelization.
- A relatively minor one, but at least one plot synopsis for the novelization of Friendship Games (the third film and fourth book in the series) has a line that implies that the Canterlot Wondercolts are going to use magic in order to win the Friendship Games. In the film and book itself, the girls' try to keep the magic hidden, and their vice-principal asks them to avoid using magic in order to avoid accusations of cheating.
- The eBook version of Legend of Everfree, for whatever reason, implies that Fluttershy is a primary focus of said film/book ("Can Fluttershy and her friends [...]" — nobody else is mentioned by name).
My Little Pony: The Movie
- This AMC news video talking about the 2017 film uses an image of the Mane Six as god-level alicorns like Celestia and Luna. A quick search shows that this "screenshot" is actually fanart by a deviantART user. Thankfully, they credited the original artist.
- AniMat made a handful of errors in his review of the first full trailer, such as mixing up the roles of the Big Bad and The Dragon, referring to an anthropomorphic bird as a griffon, and addressing the main characters as "the Equestria girls".
- Common Sense Media's review of the movie refers to Rarity as "Verity".
- At least one reviewer who had obviously never seen the show or the movie, mistook Rainbow Dash for a boy. The character descriptions are obviously copy/pasted from a wiki though, so it's likely that since they never actually watched it, they assumed she was male just due to her color. Rainbow may be the least feminine of the main cast by a decent margin, but she's pretty obviously female. The same review also identifies Twilight as a unicorn, even though the movie takes place long after she became an alicorn in the season 3 finale (almost five years earlier).
