Bronies, you say? That would be adult fans of the recent reboot of Hasbro’s My Little Pony toy advertisements, which are cleverly disguised as a TV show.
There is various hilarity. The series creative lead, Lauren Faust, has defended the fans against people calling them names.
There’s more humor to this than can easily be summarized in a blog post, but I would like to point out that this is not a new phenomenon, exactly. In fact, C. S. Lewis wrote about it:
Critics who treat adult as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.
(From On Three Ways of Writing for Children, 1952.)
For what it’s worth, I have five My Little Pony dolls decorating my monitor. And yes, I see something wrong with that: Every toy store I’ve tried is completely out of Rainbow Dash.
Comments [archived]
From: Alyssa Fox
Date: 2011-08-04 00:54:35 -0500
I don’t see anything wrong with enjoying ‘childish’ things no matter one’s age. Then again, before going to bed my spouse plays with either his Veritechs, Gundams or action figures (including Iron Man figs and Transformers) while I read YA or scifi/fantasy. I’m also pretty sure there’s an action figure in my car’s center console.
I wish you luck in finding your elusive Rainbow Dash. I’ve been on treasure hunts like that before. Oh! A word of advice: if you check stores like Wal-Mart and Target later in the evening you may be able to find it restocked. That’s what my spouse and his bestie do when a new figure is released.