Well when it comes to G4, I think everything that's come before is important.
Mainly G1's adventure, Tales's slice of life and emphasis on character conflicts, G3's return to magic and coining some terms like everypony/somepony/nopony and cutie mark, and many designs and the vast majority of G4 names.
G2's pony design was used for taller characters such as the Princesses.
The Protomen enhanced my life.Maybe! :) G2 also had ponies with unique names, like Butterfly Hunter, Miss Painter, and Flare and Flame.
The Protomen enhanced my life.
Well, the G1 pony Morning Glory stuck around at least until G3 :) She was used in G2 as well. And Cupcake was in all five gens, even 3.5!
edited 19th May '14 5:09:26 AM by lalalei2001
The Protomen enhanced my life.Well the way I was thinking about it, the original Tirac represents early-series villains who are focused on transforming the world with the power they already have, while Reboot Tirek is a later villain who has to absorb a lot of someone else's powers first, operating a lot like Arabus, just absorbing cutie marks instead of shadows at shows, but either way I don't want to think through the Fridge Logic of losing those things. (Also it is scary that Cell has been around for years doing that undetected somehow) And I was thinking the third season represents all the times in G1 when they befriended the villain through easy forgiveness (Babs Seed, Trixie, Discord, Sunset Shimmer?), while the fourth season represents the times when they befriended The Dragon over dissatisfaction with the Big Bad (Coco Pommel, Silver Shill, Discord again... maybe this is what they were trying to go for with Babs Seed?).
edited 19th May '14 3:57:45 PM by BagofMagicFood
That, and the titular glass princess.
Though on a purely pragmatic sense, it does kinda work for Bumble. Ultimately she's greedy and self interested, so the ponies are technically bribing her and her hive with easy honey.
Our heroins, ladies and gents.
Plus they were kinda dicks to Draggle.
Fizzy: Bye Draggle, see ya!
Me: Say wuh?
edited 20th Jun '14 11:32:49 AM by darkabomination
Porcina I could kinda see because the Raptorians betrayed her, and she acted nicer for the entire last part instead of at the very very end. Plus she had a pet.
Good news everyone, now that I am finally free of the demon that is summer statistics, expect two (count em, two) MLP Tales reviews to be written up/posted within the next two weeks or so, as well as a special bonus of sorts for reaching the half way point of the Tales series! Expect links sometime within the next few days.
So, went and did a rebuttal to the Let's Go Meet the Bronies song, for anyone who's interested. http://talesmania.logotypes.se/index.php?topic=13.msg598#new
@ Bobdude: I would highly agree with your point about the Princess Promenade movie being a deconstruction of the Everything Is Better With Princesses trope. At first I didn't like it because Spike annoyed me too much for being a Stuffy Brit stereotype and for putting all those rules on poor Wysteria. Then I realized that was the whole point, he's supposed to be annoying! The story could be read as a criticism of enforcing a new government system on another society from outside as well, as the ponies were fine with their egalitarian society until Spike came in and messed things up with him designating one pony as a princess who wasn't allowed to even be in charge of the one thing she was supposed to be in charge of! Meaning that he was the actual ruler and not Wysteria! And then, of course, by making EVERYONE a princess, Wysteria makes everypony equals again like they were before, by making the designation "princess" meaningless. Which ends up making it a story that proclaims an egalitarian society as superior to one with a monarchy/dictatorship (since Wysteria doesn't become a princess through hereditary lines), something that I approve of, given my own political beliefs.
Even the actual "monarchy" in G3 (in the Runaway Rainbow story) is more about the princess being responsible for sustaining the colors in the world rather than being a ruler, using the title of "Princess" but not connecting it to a law-making/enforcing position, the same with Lily Lightly being designated the Princess of All that Twinkles and Glows".
On the subject of pre-Fi M ponies, at the local flea market that comes every 3rd Sunday, in the past two months that I went there (July and August) I was able to find a LOT of G1 and G3 ponies, including Cupcake and Cherries Jubilee, two old favorites of mine from the G1 TV show.
edited 1st Sep '14 2:51:10 AM by Rainbow

I still say Beezan wins for sheer insanity of objectives. They should put him in a magic duel with someone from G4.