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weird NEWS
usa Bronies, the grown men obsessed with My Little
Pony
Most kids loved My Little Ponies when they were little –
they were pastel and they were ponies so, really, it was
inevitable. Of course, we all eventually grew out of them
and onto Take That/Little Mix/Ben from down the road.
But apparently not everyone does. A new documentary,
which was shown at the recent Tribeca Film Festival,
shines a light on the slightly unsettling subculture that
is Bronies – grown men obsessed with the toy-turnedcartoon My Little Pony.
A Brony Tale follows Ashleigh Ball, the voice of characters
Rainbow Dash and Applejack, as she meets her devoted
male followers. Ball admits a ‘pervert alarm’ went off
when she started getting emails from the cartoon’s adult
male fans, but has come to understand how important it
is to people’s lives after her friend, Canadian filmmaker
Brent Hodge, decided to make a documentary about the
phenomenon.
My Little Pony fans featured in the documentary include
Steven, who likes to go shopping for the pastel ponies
in toy stores but admits he often gets mistaken for a ‘big
old man child’ or, worse, a ‘paedophile’ by people who
jump to the ‘worst-case scenario’.
Then there’s DustyKatt (we’re honestly not making this
up) who is a handlebar-moustached welder by day, My
Little Pony fan by night. He asks what’s wrong with
preferring a child’s cartoon show to chugging beer and
riding motorcycles? It’s a rhetorical question, we think.
And US Army veteran Brian who says the little ponies
helped him through hard times when he returned home
from fighting in Iraq. His favourite character is Princess
Celestia: ‘Any adult, who has really gone through it all
and been really thoughtful and really caring and anything
like that, is going to be a Princess Celestia.’
There are now estimated to be around 3million Bronies
around the world, who all live by the My Little Pony
mantra ‘friendship is magic’ and range from 14 to 57
years old. 85 per cent are male and 84 per cent are
heterosexual.
They enjoy watching episodes of the cartoon, colle