My Little Pony: Adventures in Ponyland

My Little Pony: Adventures in Ponyland is a American animated series based on Hasbro's My Little Pony toy line, developed by Bonnie Zacherle. This series emerged from a television film entitled The Dragon Awakens, shown on December 24, 1993, Christmas Eve, as part of Disney Channel's programming that day. Dragon Awakens served as a gauge to pave the way for the launch of the series then, in March 1994, as the public was pleased, the series was actually released.

This series featured a new model for TV animations, an episodic format, divided into 7 parts, parts of which were shown twice a week. This format required production agility to deliver at least two episodes of a story arc in time for the end of the previous arc, although it was not the first series to adopt this format, it was the one that most popularized it. In the 8th season, in 2001, the format of the series was changed, and the arcs had been abandoned, and the series began to be produced in singular episodes, which had different stories.

The expenses were worth it, and Adventures in Ponyland was an advertising, commercial and audience hit, making Hasbro and the other companies involved profit around US$270 million at the end of each month and more than US$3 billion at the end of the year, that's only counting sales in the US, if one were to count the global market, My Little Pony could be considered the most profitable and valuable toy in the world for those seeking to obtain its brand during 1990s and early 2000s, with US$25 billion in sales worldwide and a price of US$40 billion, if any businessman sought to acquire the brand license.

The series ended in 2002, at the will of developer Brenda Appleyard herself, as she decided not to renew her contract as series developer. Later, Brenda would state that she withdrew because she was looking for new productions and was already fed up with the series.

History
My Little Pony G2 began in 1992, following the success of the G1 series. That same year, Hasbro Entertainment, Hasbro's television productions subsidiary, underwent a variety of reformulations in its group of developers, removing some names present in the old series, and new scriptwriters, producers and directors came in, in this wave of renewal, Brenda Appleyard and Howard "Howy" Parkins came, Brenda was 30 years old and Howy 25 years old, Brenda had arrived from DIC Entertainment, where she was already a strong figure in the company, unlike Howy, who had not done so much work. influence until then, Hasbro, knowing Brenda's potential, gave her carte blanche for a series, which would seek to increase or preserve the popularity of one of the company's brands, Brenda then asked Parkins for advice, about which of the toy lines to series should be inspired, that's where Parkins decided to give his opinion in favor of My Little Pony, which was very much stuck in children's memories due to the success of the G1 series, and was the one with a more immersive world open to fantastic adventures. Brenda was convinced of the idea, and invited Parkins to direct a pilot for which she would develop the script.

Pilot production
In November 1992, production began on the pilot episode of the series, with the provisional title Revisiting the Ponies, a team of 70 animators was brought together to produce this, which would be a TV film, and had a preview of release on June 13, 1993, Children's Day, the initial story differed from what was seen, according to archives that Hasbro itself published in celebration of the series' 20th anniversary, in 2014.

In February 1993, a new member joined the production team, Russian screenwriter Sergey Andrenov, who considered the premise weak, and created a second script, which Hasbro and Brenda accepted without many, this would end the plot of the final version, Already titled The Dragon Awakens, in this plot, Sergey abandoned the encounter between the three races plot, with the main plot revolving around the hunt for the mythical Sleeping Dragon, in addition, new characters were brought in, and Darkwing Flyby would no longer be the villain, and would also be related to Sky Brightness.

Although Sergey created the script, Brenda was still credited as writer of the pilot episode for improving and adapting it to the format that the series would have, in addition to making a few changes. With the sudden change of script, the release was postponed until the New Year festivities, after an agreement reached with Disney Channel to show the TV movie, it was also agreed that the pilot would be longer than 60 minutes, which made the team animation increase and race against time.

The film reached its final stage of production in October 1993, which required a heavy workload, as well as ready-made scripts with no risk of alteration, in November it was the voice actors' turn to enter the scene, with 8 dialogues dubbed per day, and in December the final adjustments ended, with the pilot episode being shown on Disney Channel on December 24, Christmas Eve, at 8:30 pm.

Pilot
My Little Pony: The Dragon Awakens is a 1993 TV film produced by Hasbro Entertainment and aired in Disney Channel on 1993 Christmas Eve. This film served as the pilot episode for the series My Little Pony: Adventures in Ponyland, was written by Brenda Appleyard in its original plot, with changes by Sergey Andrenov, and directed by Howard Parkins.

Plot
In Ponyland, there are a multitude of mystical beings, Griffons, Breezies, Unicorns, Pegasus, among others, who live in communion with common Earth ponies. Cheerful Clover, a very curious and fearless Earth pony, hears from her grandmother the story of the Sleeping Dragon, this myth says that almost 1000 years ago, a dragon sleeps underground in the land of Ponyland, he is huge, with scaled skin like a fish, with a back with several spines, sharp as a pin, making any rear attack impossible.