toy canon #6: the my little pony supporting cast
Welcome back to Ponyville! In Toy Canon #2, I catalogued lore for the families of ponies that I played with the most often. That’s still barely scratching the surface of the population of ponies that had distinct names, personalities, and were often featured in play sessions. While they might not have had a distinguished immediate family household, many of them were extended family members of other ponies or at least established within clear friend groups. Keeping in theme with me behaving like a director, I will refer to this grouping as The Supporting Cast.
The research for this post was made possible thanks to the G1 Pony archive by My Little Wiki.
Group 1: Fathers and Sons
Ponyville was full of fathers and sons. I’m not sure what led to me compulsively deciding it would be this way. It’s also very possible that I simply cannot remember which dads were paired up with what moms.
For example, Bouncy might have been paired with any number of my other So Soft Ponies. Lofty, in particular, looks like a possible candidate, but since I cannot say so with any certainty, I’m going to count Bouncy among the bachelors. He was friends with Applejack and Munchy—the slightly dorkier fathers (which I say with absolute affection, by the way.) True to his name, Bouncy was a lighthearted, active, beach bum kind of guy. Bouncy Jr wasn’t a carbon copy of his father, but he also was a lighter ray of sunshine in his friend group with AJ and Firefly—often the one trying to diffuse panic when they got into trouble or to suggest alternatives with the hope that they would avoid negative consequences. Either way, he was along for the ride with a smile on his… muzzle?
Also in this father-son friend group were Firefly and Firefly Jr. I remember less about these two since they weren’t my characters during play sessions. The vibe that I get when I try to remember the past is that Firefly was one of the more grounded dads in the group. He wasn’t trying overly hard to be impressive, funny, or competitive, but he also wasn’t quite as lackadaisical as Bouncy. Very Normal Guy energy. Likewise, Firefly Jr. would have been a similarly grounded character, likely playing soccer with AJ and probably skateboarding on our Digimon tech decks.
It’s not an exaggeration when I write that I am so sad I cannot remember the canonical name of Up Up and Away and his son, Up Up and Away Jr. There’s zero chance that I preserved such a mouthful of a name, especially for a pony whose color scheme and design stands out so much. UUA was one of my brother’s ponies to play with in the Munchy squad—a bit self-deprecating and aloof, closer to Applejack and Munchy than Bouncy and Firefly. His son was one of my pony kids, because I was obsessed with his design. He would have been good friends with Bouncy Jr despite being a bit more soft-spoken and quiet than the others. He wasn’t shy so much as introverted—something that I still relate to now.
Group 2: Tex and Salty’s Extended Family
For a while, if my mom bought me one of the big brother or dad ponies, they were assigned to be a sibling to Tex and Salty by default. They look similar so they must be related, right? That quickly made for an unwieldy family tree! For simplicity’s sake, I’m going to say that they were all brothers in a big family because that makes things easier to juggle in my brain, but for all I know some of them might have been cousins or even related to someone else entirely.
The first in this grouping is Chief, his wife, and daughter who belonged to the Bright Bouquet Family set. Unfortunately, I don’t recall the name of the girls at all; Chief and the mom were both played by my siblings and I only remember that the mom was maybe like a less depressed Mrs. Pataki from Hey Arnold. The daughter was a character I played with quite often, which is why the lack of a name vexes me. She was a bossy kid—not quite in line with the girls vying for the top grades or student leadership positions, but more of a tattletale and teacher’s pet trope. I think the pose with her muzzle up in the air made me think about those traits. Chief was named after a different brother pony that I did not own, but whose name I snatched and assigned to this guy. He was friends with Scoops and they had a kind of competitive rivalry between their families. Sort of like, I can mow my lawn better than you or my kid did this at school what did your kid manage to do? It didn’t cross a line, but it was something that defined their friendship. He wasn’t quite as close with Salty and Tex, but would join the family meetups to stand idly by the fence together.
I wish that I could ignore talking about Wigwam, but it would feel too much like hiding from a teachable moment. As a kid, I loved this character too much not to play with him often. Instead of being the Gallant to Salty’s Goofus, he was another Goofus. He wasn’t a class clown or the person people dunked on, he was just naturally silly. He’s also, as far as I can recall, the only sibling that didn’t have any kids. He was the least tethered to anything specific, but moved back to town to be close to family. The bright orange design and white hair were a standout combination, but the name and design… it’s really unfortunate and such a hallmark of the 80s/90s to likely consider this to be a nod toward inclusion rather than further alienation. And it also led to me playing into some unfortunate stereotyping based on what little representation I was exposed to in media at the time.
The last of the core sibling group was Barnacle whose hair was so poofy and voluminous. For some reason, we decided that he would be an all-star baseball player. When he arrived, it was like a celebrity descending into town and he wanted nothing to do with the swarm of attention that he received. All he wanted was to go to the family reunion and leave. That didn’t happen of course because he became part of the supporting cast making frequent appearances alongside his siblings and even looking after his nephew—I want to say his name was Teddy. It doesn’t even really make sense that he was a nephew since… all of his brothers live here?? So maaaybe Barnacle was a cousin himself rather than a brother? Teddy was also an athletic kid, which is part of the reason why he was living with his uncle - to have a coach nearby to take practice more seriously. It took a while for him to connect with the other kids, but eventually he found his footing with Whirly and Glory since Tex and Barnacle were so close themselves.
Group 3: The Ponies of Crystal Castle
It feels so silly to pivot from these relatively normal blurbs to “meanwhile at the She-Ra Crystal Castle,” but there were too many ponies coming and going at court for them to go unacknowledged even though they I mainly played with them by myself in the earlier canon years. Most of these characters will be featured in a later post, but there are two that stand out for this category.
First and foremost, there was Aunt Glory who looks exactly like her nephew. She was usually the one shepherding the children around and trying to teach them proper court manners and responsibilities. Translation: Rainbow loved her and Glory was always looking for reasons to dodge her company. That’s not to say she was a harsh teacher or ruled over them as a governess with an iron fist. At most she might have been a bit of a busy body, but she did care a lot about the kids and, of course, her sister. For some reason, I never really thought about Aunt Glory as being royalty herself even though she was only one step away from the throne. This is probably due to me not really knowing that much about how monarchies were structured back then.
Glory also had an older, teen cousin named Galaxy who would sometimes babysit the younger kids much to his chagrin. Naturally, Galaxy always had his head in the clouds thinking about space and how to get there one day. I loved this character’s aesthetic design a lot and it was fun to play a slightly older curmudgeonly character despite still being young himself.
Group 4: The Flutter Ponies
Tex wasn’t the only one with a large extended family; Whirly’s mom also had a host of nieces and nephews who would move into Ponyville in waves as I accumulated them. In my previous post, I talked a bit about Cloud Puff and Lily who were older cousins. Lily was bossy, kind of similar to Chief’s daughter, and tried to be chummy with Rainbow to have an in with the court. Naturally, that didn’t pan out because Rainbow wasn’t interested in having a train of courtiers. Maybe due to his height, but I associated Cloud Puff with basketball so that was his sport of choice. He always made fun of Whirly for being so short, but he was quickly put in his place by being called the wrong name. That said, they weren’t enemies; Cloud Puff did frequent their friend groups even if he would pretend that he would rather be anywhere else.
Unlike the older cousins, Buzzer, ??? and Little Flitter were much more forthcoming and fit more securely into both Whirly’s friend group and family. Buzzer was Whirly’s age and would often play soccer with him and ??? after school together. It’s funny that I decided that ponies liked soccer since I was thoroughly unfamiliar with the sport (my older brother was much more into basketball and baseball and my dad lives and dies for college football in addition to those two.) I think since ponies were so short and leggy that kicking a soccer around sounded like it made more sense than lifting a ball over their shoulder to throw into a hoop.
Little Flitter was a bit younger and hung out with Tappy, ZigZag, and Starburst more often than his cousins. True to his image, he was a yellow-bellied worrywart—very caring, but hesitant to go on adventures with the other kids in his friend group. Similar to Starburst, Whirly was very protective of Little Flitter and wouldn’t stand idly by when kids picked on him. I mentioned previously that Tappy and Starburst kind of didn’t care what other people said about them, allowing themselves to dream big about what they wanted in the world. Little Flitter lacked the confidence that helped carry them through being picked on, which made Whirly’s gestures all the more important.
Group 5: Tappy’s Friends
Speaking of which, Tappy had a surprisingly robust friend group despite other kids thinking he was odd and annoying. Since many of these characters belonged to my younger brother, we had a blast with their particular brand of hijinks. ZigZag was a pink Zebra that was My Little Pony’s take on the Care Bear Cousins. Many of their designs looked pretty uncanny, but ZigZag felt like a natural inclusion. I liked that he was on the thicker side since so many of the kid ponies were so skinny and slight. He reminded me of Mikey from Recess, but maybe a little lacking in that creative, poetic brain. Shaggy and ABC were two more baby ponies that I owned that belonged in this group. Shaggy was a bit similar to Tappy in that he didn’t really take stock in how other people talked about him; he was definitely convinced that he was one of the cool kids. I remember less about ABC, but I think he might have been ZigZag’s little brother since they were both pink. Actually, this whole friend group had a lot of pink in it! Maybe they should have worked that into a clique name..
Group 6: The Classmates
There were so many kids going to school in our various episodes that I still have heaps more that could be covered. But it gets harder to determine which ones might fall into “Supporting Cast” versus “Guest Star”—the latter being ponies who maybe had a featured role now and then, but were mostly there in the background. I’ve tried to keep this list manageable to more memorable characters, but there will definitely be at least one more My Little Pony character list forthcoming to Toy Canon.
One character that readily came to mind was Baby Toe Dancer though I doubt that was the name I used. I’m pretty sure she belonged to a proper household—like Scoops or Tex—but I cannot for the life of me picture which one it might have been. My mom thrifted an incomplete Baby Bonnet School of Dance Playset. I definitely had this ballerina twirling around on the little circle, front and center. That’s really all I can remember about her, because being a dancer was her lifeblood and main personality. I think I associate her with Scoops and his family, because I can imagine Snowflake and Cuddles wanting to take up ballet, but not being particularly good at it.
Every school needs its set of villains: the bullies, the cynics, the ones permanently in detention, the ones who want to copy your homework, etc. My younger brother thrived on playing these characters drawing from characters like Kathy from Wayside School and all of the misfits from “The Girl Was Trouble” episode of Recess (Sue Bob Murphy, Kurst the Worst, Conrad Mundy, etc.) The meanest of this group who was the terror of the school was Chuck E Cheese who especially enjoyed picking on Stockings. She didn’t care about making friends or doing well at school at all; she lived for chaos and misfortune. Gusty, Ribbon, and Fifi sometimes teamed up with her, but weren’t anywhere near as intense. Gusty was more of a troublemaker than a bully: talking in class, chewing gum, copying other people’s work, etc. Ribbon was a tagalong to her brother Gusty and just didn’t really make her own decisions.
Fifi was much less of a bully compared to the others in this category. While she looked down on goodie-two-shoes at school, she wasn’t really interested in hurting others (physically or mentally.) She just wanted to lead her own clique. One of the kids in that group was Hearthrob, often torn between wanting to hang out with the very kids Fifi thought were dumb—like Shady and Snowflake—and following Fifi’s orders. She flitted between groups without any loyalty.
That's all for this update - phew! There will be more from Ponyville in the future, but in the meantime I have plans to cover a few other toy lines that I had a soft spot for as a kid.
Thank you for reading! ʕᵔᴥᵔʔ
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