mlp:fim = ftw.

First things first, I feel no shame in what I am about to write. That's right, Dad. And don't try to tell me that it's a complete shock.

I love the My Little Pony reboot.

There, I said it. Now for some gloriously cutsie images.

My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic has been created by Lauren Faust, the brains behind The Powerpuff Girls. Faust has successfully managed to break away from making the cartoon a twenty minute toy commercial filled with overly delicate pink ponies. What we now have is a proper cartoon with well written multi-dimensional characters. Faust explains her motivation on Ms Magazine Blog:

I have been a lifelong feminist, and as an artist working in the animation industry for more than 16 years I have striven to do right by women and girls in the animated projects I have been part of. I try to bring sincerity and depth to the female characters I’ve animated and have fought in development and story meetings to make female characters more than just the typical girlfriend, Mom or sex symbol. I’ve even fought to see that there was more than just one girl character in whatever project I was working on. Sometimes I swayed my coworkers (often it was easy, to their credit) and sometimes I lost. My goal, as an artist and as a storyteller, was to one day have a show of my own for and about girls.

...

There are lots of different ways to be a girl. You can be sweet and shy, or bold and physical. You can be silly and friendly, or reserved and studious. You can be strong and hard working, or artistic and beautiful. This show is wonderfully free of “token girl” syndrome, so there is no pressure to shove all the ideals of what we want our daughters to be into one package. There is a diversity of personalities, ambitions, talents, strengths and even flaws in our characters–it’s not an army of cookie-cutter nice-girls or cookie-cutter beauty queens like you see in most shows for girls.

The result is a cartoon that has a large online following, even among adult men (hilarious and awesome at the same time). There are ponies with character flaws. There is peril, albeit mild. But most of all there is a product that those 90s children like me can look at and say 'yeah, they did that proud'.

And of course there is Derpy Hooves.

I rest my case.