Difference between revisions of "Parody and Reference"

Revision as of 22:29, 3 October 2025

Since the time My Little Pony began in the 1980s, it has kept a certain amount of popularity, and has therefore popped up in reference and parody many, many times over the years.

Transformers

With My Little Pony and Transformers both being major Hasbro properties, they have been used in connection with each other and in crossover and references many times.

See this article on the Transformers Wiki for an extensive list.

TV/Movie/Shorts References and Parodies

• Robot Chicken shorts. A TV show that uses mostly stop action animation to make very adult shorts using familiar toys to play out the stories.

• Apocalypse Pony (warning: around the level of zombie ponies)
• Pegasus Abuse (warning: maybe past the level of zombie ponies plus actual pony abuse)

• Robot Chicken did a skit called "Apocalypse Ponies" which featured Pestilence Pony, War Pony, Famine Pony, and Death Pony.

• Another Robot Chicken short involved the mythical winged horse Pegasus having his wings severed and turned into a My Little Pony-esque creature by a demented little girl (voiced by Cree Summer), who whipped him into accepting his fate, and his new name - "Sunny Muffins." This was a parody of a scene from the TV miniseries Roots, in which the African man Kunta Kinte is flogged into accepting his new name, "Toby".

• The Backyard Sports series has a parody called "My Precious Pony". In the series, Maria Luna says that she collects My Precious Pony dolls.

• Wizards of the Coast, a subsidiary of Hasbro, released an April Fool's joke revealing that the newest d20 RPG setting would be an adaptation of the My Little Pony setting to a role-playing game.^[1]

• Something Positive referenced My Little Pony in a similar way on May 28, 2008.^[2]

• For April Fool's Day in 2006, the front page on Slashdot.org (a popular news site) was redesigned in the fashion of My Little Ponies.^[3]

• A parody/homage of the ponies has made multiple appearances in the Cartoon Network animated series Dexter's Laboratory, as the Pony Puff Princess and the Pony Puff ponies, idolized by Dee Dee and her friends. Except for the unicorn horn, they bear remarkable resemblance to the ponies of My Little Pony.

• On Clarissa Explains It All, Clarissa in an episode rents a series called "My Little Unicorn".

• In the 2007 Transformers film, Ironhide crashes into a pool of a house. A little girl walks out of her house, thinking that it was the Tooth Fairy. She was carrying a My Little Pony stuffed animal just before Ironhide emerges from the water. The plush toy she is holding is of the character Pinkie Pie, in the Generation Three line. This is an allusion to Hasbro, because My Little Pony was created by Hasbro, and the Transformers franchise is licensed by Hasbro.

• In the Walt Disney Pictures Movie Meet the Robinsons, My Little Pony is referenced two times. In a few scenes, the Bowler Hat Guy has a unicorn binder. In another scene, The Bowler Hat Guy is drinking from a cup with a pegasus top on it that looks like it has the My Little Pony Pegasus named Firefly. She has a pink body and blue mane and tail with lightning bolts on her rump.

• On G4's show Action Blast! during intervals is a segment called The Cobra Commander Show where G.I Joes arch-enemy Cobra Commander discusses his view on the world. One episode reveals that he likes to play with My little Pony dolls and watch the My Little Pony cartoon series.

• Cartoon Network's The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy had a parody of My Little Pony in "Ecto Cooler / Schlubs" as My Troubled Pony. The series was canceled before the ending was made, so Grim hunts Schlubs for gold bars to make an ending. The credits show Grim watching television, with the ending of My Troubled Pony on, drawn crudely with crayons, by Billy.

• A Perry Bible Fellowship comic strip by Nicholas Gurewitch, titled "Gamblin Man", features a My Little Pony look-alike named fancy-dancy magic-prancy running in a real-world horse race, but flying away in mid-race.^[4]

• In Boy Meets World, Cory's Little sister holds a Glow 'n Show pony in one of the earlier episodes

• A parody of "My Little Pony", known as "My Little Pwny" has appeared on many gaming forums, including Bungie.

• On The OC the character of Summer Roberts has a plastic pony named Princess Sparkle who appears to be a My Little Pony.

• On Nickelodeon (TV network)|Nickelodeon's original movie Spectacular!, a scene shows the character Nikko Alexander passing his ex-band mates while in a "flashy" cowboy outfit. Nikko's ex-girlfriend says in response to his outfit, "I always wondered who wrangled My Little Ponies!" As a matter of fact, Venus Terzo who plays Marion Lane on Spectacular! also does voice-overs on the My Little Pony TV series.

Veronica Mars "Mars, Bars" episode: 'Thug Life' My Little Pony tattoo

• In "Mars, Bars," (season 3 episode 14) of the television show Veronica Mars, there is a jail cell scene where Veronica has a drawn-on tattoo of a My Little Pony with the words "Thug Life" written over it.

Looks like the Dream Castle (title needed)

• In one of the Cyanide and Happiness (adult animated comedy) shorts, a girl can be seen playing with dolls and a playset that looks a bit like the G1 Dream Castle.

Screenshot from the Teen Titans Go! season 1 episode "Nose Mouth"

• In the show Teen Titans Go! (2013), the character Raven loves a show about colorful pegasi called Pretty Pretty Pegasus. Raven herself, and some of the pegasus characters at times, are voiced by Tara Strong, the voice actor for G4's Twilight Sparkle.

"Bro, this is MY little pony."

• In a 2016 Studio C short called "A Friend's Dying Secrets," two characters are standing over their friend's open casket and find that he has a lot of things that are going to be buried with him, including, as one of the two says, "MY little pony," a G4 Rarity styling size brushable. The scene was even too much for the actors to hold it together as they start laughing and comment on it in the final cut.

Briar (Tara Strong, pink) and Bramble (Andrea Libman, purple) in DuckTales

• In Disney's remake show DuckTales (2017), episode "The Missing Links of Moorshire!" (season 1 episode 12), two kelpies that appear as pink and purple ponies show up. Named Briar and Bramble, not only are they colorful ponies, but they are also voiced by Tara Strong and Andrea Libman, who voice half of the G4 Mane Six. In fact, they are voicing kelpies in the opposite colors of the ponies they voice (Twilight Sparkle and Pinkie Pie).

"Nice horsey, nice horsey!"

• In Disney's live action movie Chip 'n' Dale: Rescue Rangers (2022), during a scene where Chip and Dale are escaping through a convention hall, they get caught up in a herd of G4 my little ponies in the 2017 movie animation style.

People and Politics

• In 2005, when US President George W. Bush nominated Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court of the United States, political cartoonist Steve Sack drew a cartoon depicting Bush brushing a pony toy with false eyelashes under the title "My Little Crony," since it was recently after the dismissal of Michael D. Brown for failing to handle the Hurricane Katrina crisis.

• Radio talk-show host Laura Ingraham refers to former Senator John Edwards as "Silky Pony" and plays the My Little Pony theme music when discussing stories about Edwards.

• The CEO of Sun Microsystems, Jonathan I. Schwartz, was known for having a pony tail, and was therefore nicknamed "My Little Pony" by Dan Lyons of Newsweek. [1]

See Also

• Conventions and Culture

References

Note that the original draft of this page mentioned some or all of the references originally here as "stolen from Wikipedia." Anything added after that, was not. :) And edits have been made to the original list.

1. ↑ Here Come the Ponies
2. ↑ Something*Positive
3. ↑ Slashdot's Ponies
4. ↑ The Perry Bible Fellowship