This decline started in 2017 really, with the reboot ponies, but poor G5 had to bear the brunt of these careless brand decisions. G4 just had the luck of beginning at the tail end of MLP’s best toy years, and so we got a ton of great playsets in G4’s first four years that helped carry its success through the decade.
I believe it was around the Rainbow Power line that I started clocking the decline in quality, and I was still a kid. Playsets were made of thinner, flimsier plastic but set at higher prices, and it seems even the cool rare ponies were given thin, frizzy, polypropylene tails even if they had luscious nylon manes.
G5 definitely still offers some lovely quality brushables, if you look for the styling sizes. They have thick, full manes of nylon— though I’ve noticed some of even these ponies will come with the dreaded crusty dry polypropelyne tails. Still, they’re leagues better than the mainline 3” brushables. I mean, the regular brushable pegasus ponies all have closed wings! All of them! I believe this is because the sculpted-hair pegasi have wings on ball joints, to enable articulation, and due to the way they’re designed, they would be too fragile if moulded out of hard plastic on a pony’s back. In which case I ask… why not just follow what G4 and G3.5 did and make the wings a bendy plastic? That was the most fun as a kid! The wings are just bendy enough to “flap” manually, but sturdy and strong enough to never come off with even more rough play.
With the way things are going, I don’t have faith in the brand that they’ll start producing toys worth buying again anytime soon. Lots of blind bag figures and statuette collectibles of the mane six, sure, but… just your regular kid’s toy pony? Good luck.
