

My Little Pony: Puzzle Party is a match-3 style game (though you can match 2 and still progress) where you must clear adjacent blocks of the same color to gather specific collections, such as blocks of certain colors or falling apples or cupcakes. Today’s ponies are sharp and sassy (unlike the doughy and demure ponies of my youth) and now have a brand new free-to-play game to add to the franchise product roster. My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, a licensed television series which began in 2010, found a new generation of pony lovers among young girls, while also attracting older audiences check out the documentary on “Bronies” for more on this strange phenomenon. Although the “modern” design and the attitudes of the newest ponies have never felt authentic to me, they have been massively successful. However, my age betrays me now as over 30 years later I’ve never quite been able to saddle up with the most recent version of the MLP franchise.

The castle, the stables, the bright colors, whimsical characterizations, and doe-eyed expressions were undeniably attractive to young girls of the era. When the original My Little Ponies made their debut in the early 1980s, I was just old enough to covet and then eventually collect them.
