Original air date: September 18th, 1992
In the girls' clubhouse, Bon Bon is trying to retrieve her diary from the others, who are callously tossing it back and forth for fun. Melody throws it to Clover, who, while successfully catching the diary, jumps backward into a shelf, smashing the tea set.
While the girls are shopping later, Clover sees a tea set, which the shop owner informs them is priced at two hundred jangles. The girls pool together their money, which comes to a total of sixty-seven jangles. Clover suggests they open a lemonade stand to raise the rest of the money, which the girls agree with.
The business is a roaring success, which attracts the attention of the boys. Teddy and Ace decide they should start a lemonade stand of their own. Lancer disagrees with the idea, but the wealthy colt is ultimately pressured into giving them the money to start the stand. When the boys' attempts at making lemonade as good as the girls' all fail, Ace comes up with a plan to find out how the girls make theirs.
Bon Bon is on her way to school when she sees a jangle on the ground. Before she can take it, Teddy places his hoof on it and yells at Bon Bon for supposedly trying to steal it from him. Ace shows up to defend Bon Bon, seemingly imtimidating Teddy into handing over the jangle and leaving. Ace then invites Bon Bon on a bike ride with him after school, much to her delight.
After Ace shows Bon Bon some tricks on his bike, they sit at the lake where Ace sweet-talks Bon Bon into telling him the secret ingredient for the girls' lemonade, which turns out to be mint leaves from Bon Bon's mother's garden. Ace makes an excuse to leave immediately after learning this.
Later, once the boys have an ostentatiously-decorated tall stand with lights and decorations, the girls can't understand why the boys' lemonade stand is stealing their success. Bon Bon tearfully confesses that she told Ace the secret formula. The girls are initally angry, but are sympathetic upon learning Ace made her think he liked her in order to get it. Starlight and Bright Eyes march over to the other side of the road and confront the boys about how low they've stooped. When the boys assert they aren't moving, Starlight declares war, in which both sides manage to one-up each other repeatedly.
The girls count up their money to find they have 172 jangles. Lancer knocks on the clubhouse door, and when let in, he apologizes to the girls for everything and gives them the recipe for the iced tea served at his house. Just like that, all of Ace and Teddy's customers are back to buying from the girls, who now have all the money they need for the new tea set. Ace and Teddy storm off, arguing over whose fault their failure is.
"The Great Lemonade Stand Wars" provides examples of:
- An Aesop: Competition should always be ethical.
- Buffy Speak: Sweetheart suggests pieceing the broken teapot back together with "stick forever glue"... that is, super glue.
- Competition Freak: Ace and Teddy aren't above underhanded tactics to get a leg up over the girls in the lemonade business.
- Denied Food as Punishment:Bon Bon: If anyone reads one single word [of my diary], I'll never bake for you again!
- Desperate Object Catch: Clover and Patch accidentally send a plate flying in the shop containing the tea set, but Patch leaps over and catches it before it can break.
- Determinator: Even after the boys have stolen their secret recipe for lemonade as well as all their customers, the girls refuse to give up.
- Engineered Heroics: Ace and Teddy fake a scenario in which Ace defends Bon Bon against Teddy's bullying and scares him off to work his way into Bon Bon's good graces and get her to tell him the secret ingredient of the lemonade.
- Food as Bribe: In a sense. When her friends are playing Keep Away with her diary, Bon Bon threatens never to cook any food for them again if they read it, so she's bribing them with food to not read her diary.
- Food Slap: When Teddy asks Lancer for another serving of iced tea, Ace smacks the cup out of Teddy's grasp, sending it and the iced tea into Teddy's face.
- Foreshadowing: The camera focuses on Lancer throwing away a paper cup and missing the garbage can after Ace and Teddy both hit it. This doesn't come up in the episode and seems just to show Lancer isn't like his friends. The Season Finale focuses on the fact the townsponies being careless with their trash and throwing it away recklessly clogs up the river and floods the town, with several ponies doing that exact thing during the episode.
- Heel–Face Turn: Lancer abandons Ace and Teddy and gives the girls the recipe for the iced tea served at his house so they can sell that instead and raise the rest of the requisite money.
- Hero vs. Villain Duet: "Think Again", where the girls and boys keep pulling out all the stops to attract customers away from the other stand.
- Honey Trap: After pretending to defend Bon Bon from Teddy's bullying, Ace takes her on a date to get her to tell him the secret ingredient for the girls' lemonade.
- "I Am Great!" Song: "Think Again", which the girls and boys sing in self-aggrandization of their respective lemonade stand.
- Jerkass Ball: The episode opens with Bon Bon trying to get her diary back from the other girls, who are tossing it back and forth to tease her.
- Keep Away: The girls besides Bon Bon and Sweetheart are playing this with Bon Bon's diary at the beginning of the episode while she tries in vain to get it off them.
- Laser-Guided Karma: Melody tosses Bon Bon's diary to Clover, who jumps backward into a shelf while catching the diary, causing the girls' teapot to fall and smash and forcing them to buy a replacement.
- Lemonade Stand Plot: The girls start a lemonade stand in order to raise the money to buy a new teapot for their clubhouse. When the boys see how much money they're making, they start their own stand, and a bitter rivalry ensues.
- Screw the Money, I Have Rules!: Lancer feels bad about the girls' lemonade stand being sabotaged, and gives them an iced tea recipe, thereby causing the boys' lemonade business to go under.
- Serial Escalation: In "Think Again", the girls and boys try everything to keep customers. They reduce the price of their lemonade, throw in extra freebies, then Ace attracts attention by juggling five soccer balls while riding a unicycle.
- Start My Own: Seeing the success of the girls' lemonade stand gives Teddy the idea to start their own.
- This Means War!: Starlight says this verbatim when confronting Ace about tricking Bon Bon into telling him the secret ingredient.
- The Tooth Hurts: One of the batches of lemonade brewed by the boys is so sweet that Teddy's teeth gets stuck together and have to be pried open again.
- Villainy-Free Villain: While the girls were the ones to set up a lemonade stand first, the boys have every right to start one of their own. "Free enterprise and competition make the economy stronger", as Ace heard from Miss Hackney. It isn't until Ace and Teddy manipulate Bon Bon into telling them the recipe that they veer into true villain territory.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Bon Bon interrupts Melody and Clover's dispute over whose fault the broken teapot is by rightly pointing out it wouldn't have happened in the first place if they hadn't been playing Keep Away with her diary.
- With Friends Like These...: The plot kicks off when the girls play Keep Away with Bon Bon's diary.
