Recap / My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic S2 E15 "The Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 6000"

You got trouble, right here in Ponyville!
With a capital T, and that rhymes with C
And that stands for cider!

Flim: Well, lookie what we got here, brother of mine
It's the same in every town.
Ponies with thirsty throats, dry tongues
And not a drop of cider to be found!
Maybe they're not aware
that there's really no need for this teary despair?

Flam: That the key that they need
To solve the sad cider shortage you and I will share!

Written by M.A. Larson

Sweet Apple Cider Season is starting! Rainbow Dash has been waiting all year for this, and she's determined to get some cider before they run out, as happens every cider season going back for years - and especially to beat Pinkie to the punch, as she's always the first in line, and buys multiple mugs full. Despite Rainbow arriving at dawn, Pinkie is at the head of a long line of ponies who camped out, so it plays out the same as every year: Pinkie gets her several mugs, and the Apples sell the last barrel just before Rainbow reaches the counter, with other ponies still in line who are none too pleased about the situation. Rainbow Dash riles up the crowd to berate the Apples for never having enough cider.

Cue the Flim Flam brothers rolling into Ponyville. They charm and schmooze their way into the town's good graces and introduce The Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 6000, which they claim can make enough cider to satisfy all of Ponyville in a fraction of the time the Apples can even make their daily batch! The Apples maintain their position that quality is more important than speed, but the brothers quickly prove that their machine can make very good cider, thanks to its built-in quality check system that only uses the best apples and automatically discards the rotten or bruised ones. The brothers offer a "partnership," but when the Apples refuse their blatantly lopsided deal, the two groups make a bet: Whoever can make the most barrels of cider in one hour gets exclusive selling rights in Ponyville! This means if the Apples lose, they'll lose the right to sell cider in Ponyville, and without that money to tide them over in the winter, they won't be able to afford to run Sweet Apple Acres!

Once the contest starts, the Apples aren't doing too well, but Twilight and the others join the Apples and help them get a lead on the Flim Flam brothers. Fearing that they will lose, the Flim Flam brothers double the speed of their machine, which causes the machine to suck in an entire apple tree at a time. This makes nearly all of the apples pass as "bad" in the machine's quality control, so to increase productivity, they turn the quality control off.

The hour is up, and the Mayor counts the barrels...and the Flim Flam brothers have won by a considerable margin.

Having lost their rights to sell in Ponyville, the Apples are despondent. The Flim Flam Brothers openly mock them for their loss and decide to rename the farm Flim Flam Fields, much to the visible upset of Rainbow and Ponyville. The brothers then celebrate by letting everypony try the cider. Since the quality control was turned off, no one likes the brothers' rotten-apple- and twig-infested cider, and they refuse to pay for it! Seeing that their product isn't wanted, and also fearing an angry mob, the Flim Flam brothers promptly skip town. Sweet Apple Acres is returned to the Apples... who discover, to everypony's delight, that in the process of trying to beat the Brothers' machine, they've made enough high-quality Apple Family cider for the entire town!

As the episode draws to a close^note and as Rainbow Dash finally gets a mug of cider, Applejack writes her letter...

Dear Princess Celestia, I wanted to share my thoughts with you... *ahem* I didn't learn anything! Ha, I was right all along! If you take yer time to do things the right way, yer work'll speak fer itself. Sure, I could tell you I learned somethin' about how my friends are always there ta help me, and I can count on them no matter what, but, truth is, I knew that already too.

---

Tropes:

• Absurdly High-Stakes Game: The Apples literally stake their farm in their contest against the Flim Flam brothers' machine.
• AcCENT upon the Wrong SylLABle: "In this ve-RY community."
• Added Alliterative Appeal: The titular cider press.
  • The Twins plan to rename "Sweet Apple Acres" to "Flim Flam Fields".
• Advanced Tech 2000: The eponymous cider maker.
• An Aesop: A threefer for this episode:
  • First, don't sacrifice long-term quality to meet a short-term goal. Played with in that Applejack already knew this moral, as she states in the end, but it's the the Flim Flam Brothers who learn it the hard way when they shut off their quality control system to win the contest, which leads to their machine producing undrinkable sludge that costs them their business in Ponyville.
  • Second, in the face of a task you feel you can't accomplish or have gotten in over your head with, don't be too proud to accept the help you need. Also played with in that Applejack had already learned this one, too, but the rest of the Apples realize partway through the cider-making contest just how outclassed they are, and wise up before it's too late. Even if they still lose the contest, it still pays off in the end, since aside from the above-mentioned Meaningless Villain Victory, they find that they've made enough high-quality cider to serve to everypony in town.
  • Finally, we get a lesson that isn't openly stated: Don't make a wager on something you can't afford to lose, especially on impulse. Simply put, had Granny Smith kept a level head in the face of the Brothers' taunts and avoided making the bet the contest revolves around, the Apples' farm and livelihood wouldn't have been in jeopardy.
• And Knowing Is Half the Battle: Double Subverted at the end. Applejack begins dictating the letter, then just drops the serious tone, as she knew the moral already, but then she goes on to explain the lesson she would have learned anyway:
  Applejack: Dear Princess Celestia, I wanted to share my thoughts with you... *clears throat* I DIDN'T LEARN ANYTHING! [...] If you take yer time to do things the right way, yer work'll speak fer itself.
• As You Know: Justified:
  • Rainbow Dash explains Cider Season and how Pinkie always takes the first spot in line to Fluttershy, who honestly doesn't know about her cider rivalry with Pinkie Pie.
  • The town complains that the Apples never make enough cider each day, just like unsatisfied customers everywhere.
• Apathetic Citizens: The crowd doesn't really care whether the Apples will or won't lose their home, until they actually do.
• The Atoner: While for the first half of the episode Dash is on the side of whoever can get her some sweet sweet cider first, once Twilight calls on the rest of the Mane Six to help the Apples save their farm, Rainbow Dash is the most aggressive about helping speed up the pressing process. ^note Of course, Dash is aggressive about pretty much everything she does.
• Beergasm: A Frothy Mugs of Water version happens with everypony who gets to enjoy a mug of Apple Family Cider on the first day of cider season.
• The Bet: The Flim Flam brothers and the Apple family bet over the exclusive right to sell cider in Ponyville.
• Big "NO!": The citizens of Ponyville do it three times, each one louder than the next, to show their utter dissatisfaction with the Flim Flam Brothers' cider.
• Bowdlerize: In some foreign-language dubs of the episode, the apple cider is referred to as apple juice, due to cider being considered alcoholic outside the US.
• Butt-Monkey: Rainbow Dash until the very end of the episode.
• The Cameo: Doctor Whooves is seen a couple times, but specifically one shot with a tie, running the hourglass for the competition. Sibsy, one of the storyboard artists, affirms that this was an intentional nod to the fan-named character.
  • He is also seen earlier standing next to Derpy Hooves, fandom-recognized to be his friend/lover/adventuring companion. Coincidence?
• Characterization Marches On: Flim and Flam are portrayed here as genuine if ruthless businessmen. All their later appearances, both in the show and the comics, show them as outright con artists.
• Cheaters Never Prosper: Once the Mane Six and the rest of the Apple family start to outpace the cider machine during the cider contest, Flim and Flam skip the quality control process to get back in the lead. Though this wins them the contest, the resulting product is so terrible that they get run out of town, which would have happened anyway if they lost. At least if they had lost on even terms, it wouldn't have completely ruined their business.
  • Amusingly, had they just run the competition straight up - without allowing for the "honorary family members" to join in - they would have won handily AND had quality cider.
• Comically Missing the Point:
  Twilight: Isn't it exciting? The first day of cider season!
  Spike: Yeah! That means it's only 30 days until sapphire season! [licks chops]
  • Also, Pinkie Pie, going on a rave about how good this year's cider was to Rainbow Dash, who's already frustrated and upset at not getting any… despite Fluttershy trying to warn Pinkie.
• The Complainer Is Always Wrong: Rainbow Dash in full throttle. She is treated as wrong for complaining about the (admittedly haphazard) dispensing of the Apple's cider and pretty much spends the entire episode in Butt-Monkey mode. Deconstructed since she actually has the large majority of Ponyville on her side. Done again when she attempts to speed up the production by skipping quality check (though this would end up the Flim Flam's own undoing) and is backed off from trying to deliver violent justice to the snide brothers.
• The Con: Near the end, the Flim Flam Brothers reveal their intention to bankrupt the Apple family, force them off their land, and construct "Flim Flam Fields".
• Continuity Nod:
  • Applejack is perfectly willing to accept help from the other mane cast, a clear nod to the lesson learned in "Applebuck Season".
  • Twilight again shows her organizational skills, as seen in "Winter Wrap Up".
  • Pinkie's Expressive Mane (last seen in "Best Night Ever") can reset her bed head.
  • Applejack grabbing Rainbow Dash by the tail to hold her back. It's about the sixth or seventh time she did it since episode 1.
  • "Sure, I could tell you I learned something about how my friends are always there to help me and I can count on them no matter what... but truth is, I knew that already too."
  • This wouldn't be the first time the townsponies unknowingly screwed over the Apples. This time, they're more responsible for it, realized the error of their ways, and ran the Flim-Flam brothers out of town for it.
  • Yet again, the Friendship Leitmotif from "The Return of Harmony" is played, this time when Twilight and co. prepare to help the Apple family.
  • Apple Bloom's task of catching falling apples in a basket on her head is similar to the role she played in catching bruised apples with Applejack in "Sisterhooves Social".
  • Who wants a picture of a hammer on their flank? Apparently Mjolna did, and it looks awesome!
  • Also, the scene when Twilight briefs Dash, Pinkie, Rarity, and Fluttershy on their roles in helping the Apple family is very familiar.
• Cool Train: The Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 6000 is this because it looks more like a train than a Cool Car.
• Cross-Cultural Kerfluffle: Cider is considered non-alcoholic by default in the United States, and the alcoholic variety is specifically referred to as "hard cider." In other places, however, "cider" is alcoholic. So, to the amusement and/or horror of viewers outside the US, this episode appears to be about ponies getting drunk. However, given how quickly the cider is produced, there is no way it is alcoholic - it hasn't had the time to ferment and form ethanol.
  • The Russian "official" dub does away with cider entirely, calling it simply "apple juice".
  • And so does the Latin American and German dub.
  • This episode has not aired at all in the UK, since "cider" is commonly used as a term for alcoholic drinks that contain fruit in British English.
• Crowd Song: The whole town pretty much gets in on the Flim Flam Brothers' song by the end.
• Cut His Heart Out with a Spoon: Rainbow Dash threatens to press the Flim Flam Brothers into "jerk cider" after they rub their winning the cider-making contest in the Apples' faces and (briefly) take over Sweet Apple Acres.
• Cut Lex Luthor a Check: The Flim Flam Brothers make a ridiculous number of economic blunders, though three huge missteps really take the cake:
  • If they had only been willing to split the profits with the Apple Family more fairly, the Apples' finances would stay in the black, Sweet Apple Acres would become a long-term supplier, the Flim Flam Brothers would have formed a profitable business venture, the town would finally get a decent supply of cider, and everypony would have been happy. Instead, they insist on driving the Apples out of business and taking their farm. Even if they offered fairer terms, they were wrong to suddenly confront the Apples with an offer for a major piece of farm equipment, never an easy matter in family-run agriculture. If the Brothers were willing to let the Apples look over even a written rental agreement with Twilight Sparkle, they could have been able to bargain a profitable arrangement with some patience.
  • If they insisted on running the Apple Family out of business, they could have done so easily with a little patience. With the ability to produce the cider on the spot where customers were already lined up, they had possibly the best predatory pricing scheme in history. Instead they insist on a contest, a much larger and more dangerous gamble with the same payout.
  • While their machine is fast, they are at the mercy of the local supply. All the Apple Family had to do was deny them apples and they would have nothing. Applejack does indeed do this before the contest by taking their apple barrels away from them.
  • The Apple family's business practices here are puzzling as well. Since demand massively outstrips supply, the obvious thing to do would be to hire seasonal help and/or raise prices. Especially since the Cider is explicitly one of their most important products.
    • The slightly more obvious thing is to limit one mug per customer (which they clearly don't, since Pinkie buys multiple mugs) and slightly raise the prices. It would rake in more profit AND get cider to more people in Ponyville.
• Devil in Plain Sight: After the Film Flam Brothers declare themselves competitors, they steal the Apple Family's apples to make their own cider, with all of Ponyville watching.
• Disqualification-Induced Victory: The Flim Flam bros. outproduce the Apples and the Mane 6, but get run out of town because the "cider" (apple-flavoured mud with stones in it) is undrinkable.
• Expressive Hair: Not just Pinkie, but Flam's mustache droops when things start to go south for the Brothers. This may just be because he's just been soaked in cider.
• Evil Plan: The Flim Flam brothers run one of these on the Apples throughout the episode. First they offer them a blatantly lopsided deal for the family providing them apples, then they show up the next day right after the family used their supply to capitalize on all the dissatisfied customers, and finally they goad the Apples into betting the farm on a contest they had no chance of winning as well as providing them a large amount of apples for free. No matter what happened, the Flim Flam brothers would profit off of the Apple family. The Spanner in the Works is that their sheer unpleasantness steadily drives off a widening proportion of their customer base in the process, until they have nobody left to buy from them.
• Expy: The Flim Flam Brothers, of... every snake oil salesman in television history, Harold Hill in particular.
• Fainting: Rarity, at Flam's "Whadya say, sister?" swoons back with fluttering eyelashes, and Spike has to catch her.
• Faux Affably Evil: Evil might be too far for them, but the Flim-Flam brothers both are polite and charming...while not gloating and rubbing the Apples' faces in their loss.
• Finishing Each Other's Sentences: Flim and Flam do this for each other, when not speaking in unison.
• Flat Character: Played for laughs during the ending letter to Princess Celestia, where Applejack claims she didn't learn anything and that she was right all along. She then goes on to state the lesson that the Flim Flam Brothers learned (the hard way, that is).
• Foreshadowing: Flam's lyric "any horse can make a claim and any pony can do the same". He's indicating his and Flim's intention is to claim the entire cider market in Ponyville.
• Frothy Mugs of Water: Frothy Mugs of Cider (non-alcoholic!) Non-pasteurized cider actually is fairly frothy, though.
• Funny Background Event:
  • The "Jumping Lyra" gag, after being absent thus far in Season 2, finally returns. Can you spot her? ^note Just as Applejack accepts the help of Twilight and her friends. To be more exact, just as those friends "Yay!"ed after that answer.
  • Also, Rainbow Dash flies around making hilarious expressions during the song.
  • Derpy appears several times during the song, including one shot where she's even more wall-eyed than usual.
• Graceful Losers: The Apples surrender the field with a fair amount of grace, though Applejack may have suspected that the crowd would reject their competitors' low-quality cider.
• Gratuitous French: During the Flim Flam Brothers' musical number, they refer to themselves as "nonpareil", or "without equal" in French.
• Half-Dressed Cartoon Animal: Lampshaded, as Fluttershy blushes and appears to try to cover herself up when Rainbow Dash barges into her bedroom and removes the covers from her bed.
• Heel–Face Turn: Rainbow Dash initially supports the Flim Flam brothers, until she sees what jerks they are. At that point, she is willing to kick their flanks, but Applejack restrains her.
• Homage: The first act is a loving nod to Meredith Willson's The Music Man. Not only do we have the barbershop quartet-style outfits, red-and-white striped manes, and the use of the song to lure the rest of the town into the confidence scheme; the song itself shares many similar musical elements with "Ya Got Trouble" from the musical, including the eloquent vocabulary and the backing beat of the crowd shouting "Cider! Cider!"
  • The episode's plot itself is an homage to the American folk tale of John Henry; a railroad worker who competed against a steam engine and won. Of course, he didn't get any help from his friends, and died immediately after his victory.
• Hoist by Their Own Petard: The Flim Flam Brothers, first by accepting the Mane Cast's choice to help the Apples, then turning off quality control, ultimately leading to their downfall. They also made the contest explicitly about quantity over quality — claiming they could make cider faster, not better. They won on quantity but ended up with a product that wouldn't sell.
• Honor Before Reason: Granny Smith risked her farm and livelihood on a silly bet just because the Flim Flam brothers called her a chicken. The same farm that was built through years of effort, on the lands that were granted to her father by Celestia herself.
  • When Rainbow Dash demands that their team ignore quality control to speed up production time after seeing the Flim Flam Bros. do the same, Granny refuses with the classic saying, "One bad apple spoils the bunch!" In this case, though, it proves to be the right call, because the lack of quality control on the Brothers' part renders their product useless.
• Huddle Shot: The Apple family gets into one when deciding whether to work with Flim and Flam. They sneak in on them.
• Impossibly Delicious Food: The Apple family's cider makes a line up and over two hills. This is a daily occurence.
• Incredibly Long Note: How the Flim Flam Brothers' song ends.
• Innocently Insensitive: Once again, Pinkie Pie is the one behaving this way. Between her "hope they don't run out" remark in the cold opening and her gabbing about how amazing the cider was in front of Rainbow Dash (she bought at least ten cups of cider), she acts pretty insensitive. She makes up for it in the end.
• Inventional Wisdom: What led to Flim and Flam’s Meaningless Villain Victory is that their machine’s quality control can be disabled, which they do in order to defeat the Apples, but it causes their cider to taste bad.
• Jerkass Ball: Pinkie Pie holds this for a lot of this episode. She causes the line to be extremely long due to gabbing about cider season starting, then buys at least ten cups of cider instead of the one that everyone else was satisfied with, and after that essentially rubs it in Rainbow Dash's face about how good the cider was and that it was a shame that Rainbow didn't get any. She makes up for this in the end when, just as Rainbow Dash finds that the counter has run out of cider once again, she straight-up gives Rainbow one of the mugs of cider she'd purchased herself.
• Kick the Dog: The Flim Flam Brothers openly mocking the Apples for losing their livelihood, laughing in their faces. In-Universe, this not only enrages Rainbow enough that she'd have beaten the stuffing out of them if AJ hadn't stopped her, but it seems to cause the entire town to have second thoughts.
• Know When to Fold 'Em: The brothers could tell an angry mob was likely to form, with them as the targets. So they did the smart thing and left for another town.
• Ludd Was Right: Subverted in that even Granny Smith is willing to admit the Flim Flam Brothers' machine makes good cider (she never says it, but the look on her face after she tries it says enough). The problem is that the Flim Flam Brothers themselves are greedy, dishonest businessmen who offer the Apple family a "deal" that would financially ruin them, threaten to put them out of business when they sensibly refuse, and only manage to win the contest by churning out vast quantities of undrinkable product. The machine itself is never presented as being inherently malicious; only its unscrupulous creators are. It's also likely, given the technology level in the show (late 1800s-early 1900s), that automation is just around the corner anyway and may greatly change the Apples' way of life within a generation.
• Magitek: The Flim Flam Brothers' machine runs off their own magic.
• Man Versus Machine: Of the "quality vs. quantity" type. The Apples' quality wins in the end.
• Meaningful Name: "Flim Flam" being another term for a confidence scheme. Lampshaded by the Flim Flam Brothers threatening the Apple family, saying that they'll need to get jobs that aren't so perfectly suited to their names.
• Meaningless Villain Victory: The Flim Flam Brothers win the contest, but they've thoroughly alienated everyone in town, and they used so many bad apples, ( and chunks of apple trees) that no one will buy from them.
• Mickey Mousing: The Flim Flam Brothers' song starts with percussive sounds coming from their machine as they ride it into town.
• Mobile Factory: The titular cider press doubles as a vehicle. That looks like a steam locomotive for some reason...
  • Genius Bonus: it is similar in spirit to this machine, a steam locomotive powering a cider press. Also, this shows that using a steam engine for a cider press is not that far-fetched at all.
• Mundane Made Awesome: Cider, cider, cider, cider, cider, cider, cider...
• Mundanger: No scary monsters in this episode, just a couple of shady businessponies threatening the Apple family's jobs and home.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Nothing is said, but this is more or less the town's entire reaction to seeing the Apple Family lose their livelihood because they were too impatient to wait for more cider. Add to that the fact that the brothers' cider turns out to be undrinkable, and it's no wonder that they more or less run them out of town not long after.
• Mythology Gag: This isn't the first time My Little Pony has had two competing juice stands. An episode of My Little Pony Tales, "The Great Lemonade Stand Wars", did it first, including contrasting the main characters' charming little wooden stand with their competitor's sleeker, shinier, mobile one. This time, however, Bon Bon is on the other side of the counter.
• Naked Freakout: Downplayed with Fluttershy blushing at her covers being ripped away.
• Naked People Are Funny: Rainbow Dash pulls the covers off of Fluttershy's bed, causing Fluttershy to cup her hooves over her "chest" and blush with embarrassment. No real reason for it other than Rule of Funny.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Maybe not as fast as some, but if the family name is Flim Flam...
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: The citizens of Ponyville being insensitive and impatient for the Apple Family to make more cider almost costs the family their home and livelihood, though they do realize this in the end. This is Truth in Television, too — small towns often seem to want the big box stores to come in only to lament the loss of smaller local businesses, and the real reason for this practice is that there tends to be economy in scale. So despite the Quality over Quantity moral of the episode, the townsponies likely vouched for the brothers because it'd be better to have more cider for everypony rather than a limited amount of a higher quality product; note that they only turned on the brothers after learning almost too late just how slimy they really were.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: The Flim-Flam brothers allow the Apples to enlist virtually anyone they want on their side of the cider-making contest. Had they simply kept the Apples to the whole Apple family rather than brashly handing them a blank check, they would likely have won and provided a consistently high-quality product. Instead, they tempt fate and let the Apple family "staff up" with anyone who will help, only to see the Apples start winning through both a larger workforce and special abilities that they by themselves, as Earth ponies, would otherwise lack (pegasus flight abilities enabling them to harvest trees faster, and unicorn telekinesis allowing full drums to be stacked faster and apples to be sorted for quality further from the press). As a result, they practically quintuple their productivity, going from making one barrel for every three of the Flim Flam Brothers to outstripping them 5 to 3. When the brothers realize their mistake, they're forced to overclock their machine and shut off its quality control to win the contest, and the results are met with such universal disgust that they have no choice but to skip town, leaving the Apples with enough high-quality cider for all of Ponyville.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Deconstructed. The competition is over and Twilight and Applejack collapse in exhaustion. Having chosen not to cheat even in the face of temptation, Twilight compliments Applejack on how proud she is of her and how such integrity would not go unrewarded. Cue victory being handed to the Flim Flam brothers...but their victory is short lived, since they may have made more barrels of cider but the cider itself is awful. Thus Twilight was perfectly correct; it just took a little longer than expected for the Apples' honest labor to pay off.
• No Endor Holocaust: Nobody seems concerned with the massive loss of apples that were used to produce Flim and Flam's shoddy batches of cider.
• No OSHA Compliance: The Flim Flam brothers switching off the quality control of their machine along with serving the tainted cider. One must wonder if they did these sorts of things in other towns.
• Nobody Calls Me "Chicken"!: Granny Smith doesn't take kindly to being called this and ends up betting Sweet Apple Acres in a cider-making contest.
• Ocular Gushers: Pinkie Pie, yet again, when she and the townsfolk realize that their disregard for the Apples' livelihood has allowed the brothers to run them out of business. Fortunately, it doesn't last long.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • The Flim Flam Brothers have one when they realize that Applejack's friends are helping enough that they might lose the competition, complete with a spit-take.
  • In the ed, the Brothers realize in horror that not only is nopony going to pay one cent for their terrible cider, but the entire town is furious with them.
• Open Mouth, Insert Foot: Apple Bloom just doesn't know when to shut her mouth. Granny Smith certainly doesn't help any by betting the farm.
• Patter Song: The "Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 6000" song is inspired by "Ya Got Trouble" from The Music Man, and hits all the same patter song beats.
• Quality over Quantity: The moral of this episode, though it's also double-subverted. The titular machine itself is shown to make good cider, but when the Apple family, along with the Mane Six, start pulling ahead during the cider-making contest, the salesponies turn up the power and turn off the quality control, which lets them churn out far more barrels of cider but leads to the kind no one wants to drink.
• The Quiet One: Big Macintosh gets one line in this episode beyond his characteristic "Eeyup": a firm "No deal" to the Flim Flam Brothers.
• Rage Breaking Point:
  • Granny Smith weathers the brothers' provocations with relative grace (unlike Apple Bloom), until one of them calls her "chicken."
  • Rainbow Dash spends much of the episode in an agitated state just trying to get one cup of cider. When the brothers take over the farm, she finally snaps and yells, "I OUGHTA PRESS YOU INTO JERK CIDER!" before trying to jump them; it's likely she would've beaten the snot out of them if Applejack hadn't stopped her.
• Recycled In SPACE: The American folk legend of John Henry beating a track-laying machine risking to put hundreds of men out of work, as retold in the form of a cider-making competition; With ponies!
• Rule of Funny:
  • Why is Applejack sending a letter to Celestia when she hasn't learned anything? Because it's funny, that's why!
  • Fluttershy covering her naked body, even though it's already been pointed out they are naked anyway.
• Rule of Perception: Once the competition is in full-swing, the amount of cider barrels on both sides is never shown in comparison to one another until the very end to give the impression that the race between them is close.
• Rule of Symbolism: Flim and Flam are twin brothers, yes? Take a look at their cutie marks. Flim has an apple slice. Flam has an apple with a slice having been taken out of it.
• Running Gag:
  • Rainbow Dash failing to get a drink of cider.
  Rainbow Dash: [tearing up] Is this some kind of cruel joke?
  • The Flim Flam Brothers knock over Granny's fence twice.
  • This is the episode that makes it unquestionable that giving Bon Bon a different voice every time she has a line is deliberate.
• Sadistic Choice: The Flim Flam Brothers force the Apple family to either accept a deal that would ruin them, be run out of business or face angry customers. The contest was the third option.
• Screw the Money, I Have Rules!: Even when they are losing the bet (and therefore, about to lose everything they own) the Apple family refuses to use less than the finest apples to speed up the production of cider. This ends up making them lose the bet, the farm, home and livelihood to the Flim Flam Brothers. It pays off for them in the end because no one wants to drink the inferior cider made by the Flim Flam's speedy machine.
• Second Place Is for Winners: Although the Apple family loses the contest, the quality of their cider is realized, and the Flim Flam Brothers' true nature is exposed, which (combined with them stupidly serving the bad batches of Cider they made instead of the first, better batches) forces them to skip town.
• Serious Business: Sweet Apple Cider is so important that ponies line up for miles to get it and are even willing to camp out in front of the farm to make sure they get some before everypony else.
• Shout-Out:
  • During the Villain Song, there's a pony with long blond hair, with a hammer and lightning for a Cutie Mark.
  • In the scene where Flam calls Granny Smith chicken, the perspective is placed just so as to take us back...
  • Maybe next time, the Flim Flam Brothers should try selling band instruments. Ya got trouble! Right here in Ponyville! With a capital T and that rhymes with C and that stands for Cider!
  • The brothers' quality control system seems remarkably similar to another system set up to detect bad... um... apples.
• Shown Their Work: All through the episode. Cider season? A real thing in apple country, and a very short thing; a few weeks in late fall. Only selling one day's production at a time? Absolutely; cider has an extremely short shelf life before it starts to carbonate and ferment. The big stone wheel Big Mac turns? A real, and very old-fashioned, machine for cider pressing.
• Single Tear: Shed by Applejack as they abandon the field to the Flim Flams.
• Snake Oil Salesman: the Brothers definitely share traits of this from their showman marking system to their disregard of quality.
• Spit Take: Done twice: the first time when the Flim-Flam Bros. realize they're falling behind, and the second time when the townsfolk drink their "cider".
• Squashed Flat: During the contest, Big Macintosh and later Rainbow are tasked with running the treadmill powering for the cider press. When Rainbow sees the brothers shutting off their quality control and jumps off to demand that the Ponyville team do the same, Big Mac gets pulled under and stuck to the treadmill as a Funny Background Event.
• A Tankard of Moose Urine: This would be the best way to describe Flim Flams' cider when they shut off the quality control system. When it's active, the machine turns out cider even Granny Smith clearly approves of.
• Tempting Fate: As stated by Flam: "We don't care if the whole kingdom of Canterlot helps! It's a lost cause!" Cue the other Mane 5 being brought in, forcing him to eat his words...
• Theme Twin Naming: Flim and Flam, together, form part of an informal word meaning "nonsense or insincere talk".
• Ticket-Line Campout: Pulled off in the to wait in line for the Apple family's cider. As Pinkie notes, she decided to camp out and then told a few friends about her suggestion. They then decided to follow her example. In other words, people camping out overnight in line to be the first to get new apple products...
• Tim Taylor Technology: When they fall behind in the contest, the Flim Flam brothers increase the power to their machine. The hyperactive machine sucks up whole trees and mangles the apples. The only way they can produce any cider like that is to turn off their quality control sensor, and that only results in undrinkable sludge.
• Throw the Dog a Bone: Rainbow finally gets a mug of apple cider in the end.
• Villain Ball: The Flim Flam Brothers pick it up when they decide to become competitors to the Apples, as opposed to a partnership.
  • They also could have won the actual competition if they sold only from the considerable number of barrels they produced before turning off the quality control.
• Villain: Exit, Stage Left: The Flim Flam Brothers make a run for it after they realize that no one likes their cider anymore.
• Villain Song: The Flim Flam Bros. song counts, although it's rather upbeat and causes everyone else to join in singing, and isn't necessarily malicious or villainous in any way. It counts because it involves the villains outlining their Evil Plan and gloating. Also notable as the first Villain Song of the series thus far.
• Visual Pun: The Apple family's device for making cider uses actual horsepower.
• A Wizard Did It: Lauren Faust stated, in defining the technology for the show, that if there was a necessary device that needed to work automatically, instead of relying on electricity, she'd claim that one could just assume that some mechanic unicorn infused it with magic. That's exactly how Flim and Flam start up their machine - their horns glow every time.
• Yank the Dog's Chain: Rainbow Dash cannot get a drop of cider. First, Fluttershy, who is in line just in front of her, gets the last mugful^note This being Fluttershy, she was perfectly willing to share, but then everypony started shouting.... The second day, the Flim Flam brothers offer her a mug, but she spills it when Applejack lassos one of the brothers' barrels of cider. You know she's desperate when she shoves the dirt it was spilled on into her mouth. She finally gets her wish in the end, after all her hard work helping the Apples during the cider-making contest.

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