So...
Ever since My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic got insanely popular back in the early 2010s
that popularity also extended to all of the merchandise and toys
that were made based off of the show.
(which, in of itself, was of course literally made to sell toys.)
Pony stuff was very abundant in toy isles, especially in the 2010s,
so it doesn't come as much of a surprise that, if you're a fan of MLP,
then there is a pretty likely chance that you own or have owned
some type of My Little Pony merchandise or toy.
When you think of MLP merch or toys as a whole though,
I'm willing to bet that some of the stuff that first comes to mind
are things like the various different plastic figures of the characters,
perhaps some of the toy sets,
and maybe even things like the miscellaneous official plushies
that can be of...
...questionable quality sometimes.
One thing that I believe you might not have immediately thought of, however,
are the little hundreds of official My Little Pony trading cards.
Yeah, that's right:
these do count as official merchandise, as they were licensed by Hasbro.
And I've noticed that a number of people within the MLP fandom
don't even know that they exist, which is sort of a shame
because there are some legitimately pretty interesting things about these cards
that are often overlooked.
But I think I'm getting a little ahead of myself now,
so let's start at the beginning.
I'm going to take a quick look at some of these MLP cards that I find cool
and also talk about the general history of the cards as a whole.
So, before I talk about the actual cards though,
you may be wondering who is even behind creating them in the first place.
Well, the answer to that is Enterplay,
a company that focused on making collectible merchandise.
They first started working with the My Little Pony brand in 2012
and in July of that year they released the very first set of the MLP trading cards,
appropriately named Series 1.
This first set of MLP cards of course introduced a lot of the core aspects
of the MLP trading cards in general, among other cool things.
If you have a look at some of these you will quickly see
that there are a huge variety of cards here, spanning several different topics,
with there being ones about characters, locations, and even specific moments from the show.
And along with the cards themselves
there are also other things included in the booster packs that they came in,
such as stickers and temporary tattoos.
What I personally like most about the MLP trading cards in general
are usually all of the unique descriptions specifically written for them placed on the back
that give details on what the card is about.
While some of the things here may seem like pretty obvious stuff
to anybody who has actually watched the show,
I still think the way that most of them are written is pretty charming.
And, if you take your time to look through them,
you can even find some interesting pieces of trivia
in these descriptions as well.
Like, for example,
did you know that Princess Luna, in addition to raising the Moon,
is also apparently responsible for filling the night sky
with beautiful stars, comets and constellations?
Pretty cool stuff, isn't it?
Anyways though,
after the first series of MLP trading cards were released by Enterplay,
they shortly proved to be fairly successful and popular among MLP fans,
with many people purchasing booster boxes and booster packs from stores with excitement
in order to eagerly see what cards they would pull.
And, as some of you may have already guessed,
one of the biggest reasons why the MLP cards quickly became so popular in the first place
is due to the rarity system.
As with most other trading card games of this nature,
some cards here are simply just rarer than others,
with common cards obviously being the most common
and with super rare, gold rare and convention-exclusive promo cards
being a lot less common to find.
and as you know, the more uncommon something is,
the more likely it will become increasingly sought after and expensive.
So, because of this,
an aftermarket emerged of people selling the rarer MLP cards that they managed to pull
on websites like Ebay.
And, depending on how rare it was,
the prices that these pony cards were selling for ranged from maybe 25 to 50 US Dollars
to as much as several hundred or even a thousand US Dollars.
At a glance, some of these prices may seem downright absurd to some of you,
but keep in mind that this was 2012.
the MLP fandom and G4 of MLP as a whole was already very popular at this point
and many MLP fans alike wanted to get their hands on pony merch and toys.
So, some of these fans, especially people like collectors,
were very willing to pay top dollar for things such as rare and sought-after pony cards.
Some of the most expensive MLP trading cards out there
are things like the various unique promo cards,
because these were only ever available in very limited supply
at specific My Little Pony conventions.
Probably the most notable example of this would be the BronyCon 2012 Rarity promo card.
Not many of these things were handed out during the convention
so, as a result, they are exceedingly rare and expensive to find for sale,
especially if it's been preserved and is still in good condition.
And, even then,
these promo cards still aren't the most absolute expensive MLP trading cards out there,
because that honor technically goes to the various specific cards
that have been autographed and signed by the actual voice actors from the show.
Along with a few of the promo cards,
some of these tend to be almost considered as Holy Grails among collectors
because that's just how sought-after they are.
So, if you happen to be in possession of any of these,
then good for you.
But, anyways, I think you got the point:
these pastel-colored horse trading cards quickly became fairly popular
and Hasbro and Enterplay definitely took notice of this
because, in April of 2013, Enterplay released the Series 2 set
with about one hundred and eighty-six brand new MLP trading cards being featured in it.
And, in addition to this, later in August of that same year
they also announced that they were launching a completely new line of cards
called the My Little Pony: Collectible Card Game, or MLP:CCG for short.
As the name would suggest,
in MLP:CCG you could actually use a deck of the cards to play against other people
due to the cards all having their own attributes and abilities attached to them.
The MLP Collectible Card Game in of itself is more or less its own separate rabbit hole.
because, after the first premiere set of them were released in December of 2013,
they quickly became equally (and then even more popular)
than their trading card counterparts
probably because you could actually use them to play a game instead of just...
looking at them... [chuckling] ...like with the trading cards, I guess.
Anyways,
after the premiere set was released and proved to be successful,
MLP:CCG would get an additional eleven whole new official sets of cards
throughout 2013 to 2018, with over two thousand cards in total
and with many tournaments of people playing against one another
often being hosted at places like MLP fan meet-ups or conventions during this time.
And as with the trading cards, it isn't much of a surprise
that the aftermarket value of some of the less common cards for MLP:CCG
could also get quite expensive.
Anyways though, the collectible card game put aside,
after Series 2, the third series of the MLP trading cards were released in February of 2015
and the fourth set was released a little under two years later in January 2017.
It's worth nothing that, aside from these main releases,
there were also two other spin-off sets released
that could be primarily found at stores like Dollar Tree in North America:
one with cards exclusively about the 2017 My Little Pony movie
and another one named Equestrian Friends, a smaller set with only about eighty-one cards,
which was notable for being the only set released by Enterplay
to actually feature cards with Equestria Girls stuff on some of them.
With that being said, with all these sets having been released,
that of course also means that there are quite a few interesting and unique cards to look at here.
For example, beginning with Series 2, puzzle cards were introduced
where you would need to find multiple different matching cards
in order to complete a full image.
And, in addition to this, something called "standee cards" were also introduced in Series 2.
These are pretty cool in my opinion
because, as the name may imply, the ends of the standee cards
were actually specifically designed to be bent in order to sort of stand them up on their own
once you placed them down.
(which, even though it is a gimmick, it's still is a pretty fun idea if you ask me.)
Another really cool thing about specifically the fourth set of trading cards
that I don't see brought up a lot is the fact that, from August 26th to September 12th of 2015,
Enterplay actually hosted a "Create-a-Card Contest"
where artists would submit artwork that could potentially end up featured
on an actual a card within the set.
Once the contest was over and all of the winners and artwork were selected
about forty-one total cards featuring fan-made artwork
were put into the series' fourth set.
And honestly, from a mere visual standpoint,
these forty-one fan-made cards are probably my personal favorite MLP trading cards in general;
serious props to all of the artists that contributed their art here
because the artwork featured on these cards are all very unique and charming in their own ways,
and a part of me honestly sort of wishes that the rest of the MLP trading cards
had this same aesthetic mix of throwing together various distinctive art styles into the same set,
instead of just using the same normal screenshots or vectors from the show,
but I'm nevertheless still glad that we at least got to enjoy these cards.
And, while we're on this topic,
take a quick look at this one card of Maud Pie that was submitted to the contest by a young kid;
it's honestly pretty cute and awesome that Enterplay selected it to be a part of the set.
Anyways, with that all having been said though,
I think I should now talk about what even happened to the MLP trading cards
and, by extension, the collectible card game.
What exactly caused Enterplay to eventually stop printing new sets of cards sometime after 2018?
Well, truthfully, I don't have a 100% solid answer to this question,
but I believe I do have two probably accurate theories as to why:
Firstly, it's the financials of it all.
Keep in mind that it costs money to do things like employ people to design the cards,
actually print and package the cards themselves,
and finally transport them to retailers where people can buy them.
And, due to the trading cards seemingly having reached
their peak of general popularity sometime between 2013 to 2015,
it's not too far-fetched to assume that by 2018 Enterplay probably just realized
that, despite some people still buying them,
it was no longer a financially viable option to continue printing new MLP cards,
as they were simply not making as much money as they used to.
And the second probably accurate theory as to why they stopped
is simply due to Generation 4 of MLP as a whole beginning to come to an end.
It was pretty clear at this point back in 2018
that MLP:FIM was going to end within about the next year.
So I can imagine that from the perspective of Enterplay
it wouldn't make much sense to invest more time and money into making cards
if the thing that those cards are based off of is going to end relatively soon anyways.
What's even more interesting about the conclusion of these cards
is that later, in October of 2019, Enterplay actually made a post on Facebook
revealing they had already designed the entirety of a fifth set of MLP trading cards
that were approved by Hasbro ages ago, however they just simply never printed them.
But luckily, in the same post,
they were also generous enough to share images of all of the cards,
so at least we know what a fifth set would have looked like.
It's honestly sort of odd looking at these cards
knowing that they never actually got to see the light of day on store shelves,
especially when you consider they are all fully finished and ready to be printed.
But, well... Yeah... that's it.
After Enterplay released the series's first set of MLP trading cards in January 2017
and the Friends Forever collectible card game set in December of 2018,
There were no further MLP cards of any type officially printed or sold by them.
It was, admittedly, kind of an underwhelming end to such a popular piece of merchandise
within the MLP fandom.
So, as for what happened to Enterplay the company though,
well, they haven't had much activity ever since 2020
and I legitimately couldn't find anything as to if they had potentially closed down or something,
so who knows what exactly is going on with them right now.
And ever since G4 ended Hasbro, so far at least,
hasn't dabbled much into future MLP trading cards of any sort with Generation 5 or anything,
so it seems as though an era truly well has mostly ended
in terms of this type of MLP merchandise.
But there is one notable exception to this:
in early 2022 Renegade Game Studios, a company that usually makes tabletop and card games,
announced that they had gotten a license from Hasbro
to make an official My Little Pony RPG deck-building game
and, later that year, they officially released it
and have been steadily releasing several expansions for it ever since.
So it seems as though,
despite it being quite different from something like MLP:CCG
in terms of how the cards look and how it's played,
it's still doing a good job at filling in the market of modern-day MLP-related card games,
which is certainly nice to see.
However, with that all being said,
Enterplay's impact on MLP G4 definitely shouldn't be understated:
they provided two legitimately very fun and interesting pieces of MLP merchandise
that were enjoyed by tens of thousands of pony fans alike.
And it's worth noting
that, even though the communities are now considerably smaller than they once were,
both the trading cards and collectible card game still have many dedicated fans to this very day.
I think it's great that, even though they've been officially discontinued,
these cards still receive love from a fair amount of people;
and all the unforgettable memories that these cards helped create for these people
is truly a big part of what I think makes them so special.
So, if you have any cool experiences or memories
with either the MLP trading cards and/or the collectible card game that you want to share,
then I would definitely love to hear about them in the comments down below.
Anyways though, with all of that finally having been said,
that has been this retrospective about the My Little Pony trading cards.
So...
if you enjoyed this video then consider doing all of the normal stuff,
such as leaving a like and/or sharing it around with your friends.
Doing those things are the best way to support me because it can show my videos to more people.
While you're at it, you can also check out my socials, such as my Twitter and Discord server.
Anyways, I want to say that I had a lot of fun
looking into the stuff about the MLP trading cards and whatnot for this video,
so I hope you also had fun watching me ramble on about it for a little while.
Well, anyways, I don't really have anything else to say here in this outro now,
so, I will see you...
...whenever I see you.