Well this is certainly a big week for My Little Pony!Yesterday we had an announcement for a brand new cartoon series airing on Discovery Family in 2020. On Friday the Documentary series the Toys that Made Us will release its third season.As part of that season, they dedicated an episode to My Little Pony!To help celebrate the occasion, Equestria Daily had the distinct honor to interview the creator, director, and show runner of the series Brian Volk Weiss.After the break you'll be able to find the full interview were we go into quite a bit of detail about his creative process for the series, and what really surprised him about the toys of My Little Pony.Without being cheesy, man, the honor is certainly all mine. The fact that anybody cares at all, about what I have to say is still somewhat surprising.Well, you're very kind, man, and we certainly don't take it for granted. You know that people seem to dig the show.Stoked isn't a strong enough word. I mean, I produced a lot of first season shows. I've produced very few third season and second season shows. This is certainly my first series ever that got a third season. So I couldn't be happier. The whole thing for three years after the show was initially greenlit, I was saying, "This is surreal, this is surreal. Everything is surreal."But then we were at the San Diego Comic-Con this year, and they put us in the big room and there's like thousands and thousands of people and I literally was looking at this and this is like “I’m living in a movie.” It's not even surreal anymore. I feel like I'm living in a movie. I never thought I'd be on a panel at Comic-Con, let alone in front of thousands of people.So yeah, that's the best way I can describe it. I feel like I'm living in a movie.No, I don't know how great that would be, but I think maybe if it was a short film. Like real short.That's true, but don't forget Mattel, LEGO, and everybody else. But the fact that they even return our phone calls is certainly, a word I don't use often, blessing.No. This show got greenlit about three years ago. I absolutely cannot believe this show was even greenlit at all. It is literally just amazing to me that this has happened. Like, yeah, cannot believe it. And it's been three years.Yes, I hope people like it because there ain't going to be a season four it if they don't.I hope so. From your lips to God's ears as they say.I got these three kind of quasi rules in my brain. The first rule I call it the Mount Rushmore of toys rule. My theory is this: When we're considering doing a toy line, does that line have one or more characters that could be on a theoretical Mount Rushmore of toys.So for an example, my wife doesn't know anything about. But she can recognize Optimus Prime. She can recognize Bumblebee. And that means those characters could be on a Mount Rushmore of toys. Same thing with, if there was a pink pony on the Mount Rushmore, everybody would be like, "Oh, that's." So that's the first box that got checked.The second box it's very important that we do toys that are multi-generational. A lot of people are like, "You got to do Mask. You got to do Mask." and I'm like, "no, I don't because it was on the air for two years." They only made the line for technically three but really two, and nobody, not ages 38 to 48 is going to even know what the hell Mask is. These episodes are not cheap. So to spend all this money on an episode about a toy that only 10 years of humans who are alive are aware of, that's not a good use of Netflix's money.My Little Pony, arguably is going into at least its third, almost its fourth generation of fans. So there's people older than me that like it, I like it, and two of my three kids like it. So that's box number two thatchecked.In box number three, every episode, the toy in question has to have a good story. We need a good story. There's some toys that are massive hits that are icons, but basically somebody had an idea, it got greenlit and then it got put on store shelves, and it was a huge hit. That's not very exciting. You need to have ups and downs, and twists and turns, and My Little Pony got very similar in many ways to the He-Man episode. She has a lot of twists and turns.Yep. Oh it is.Well we had to leave a lot on the cutting room floor, as we always do. The good news is, we put a Blu-ray out a month ago that has sold super duper well. So that all but guarantees we will be putting another one out next year. The Blu-ray that came out just has seasons one and two. Due to it doing as well as it has, we're almost definitely going to do season three next year and we'll include a lot of the stuff that we cut out.I'm going to be very honest with you, I typically do not talk about stuff we cut out before a premiere, and usually not within six to 12 months of a premiere. I tend to ease up a bit a year later and start saying stuff I wouldn't say now. So pardon me for dodging your question a little bit.Yeah, but I also, and I'm just thinking out loud right now, sometimes you have an instinct. You have an instinct, but you don't really know what's the foundation of that instinct. In this case, I think it's like I want people watching the show. I don't want them thinking about what's not in the show. I want them to think about what's in the show, and not be like, "Oh, I wish this was there." That's what I'm saying.A year from now, when most people who are going to watch it have already seen it, yeah then I'm going to hit it up hard. It'll also be on the Blu-ray I predict, if there's another one. Which I think I there will be.Yes, they definitely surprised me, because one of the things that's interesting aboutthat is obvious when you think about it, but it's not that obvious until you really see it.There's certain things in life that theoretically makes sense in your head, but until you actually are standing there or seeing something, you just can't really get it until you're there. And the thing to me that I did not realize aboutuntil I was in a room with a collection of it is almost every single other toy is some degree of dark. GI Joe is dark. Transformers even. Optimus Prime is a dark red and a dark blue. Soundwave, dark blue. Star Scream, gray. Snake Eyes, all black. Even Lady Jaye, darker green. The Wolverine, dark green., it's all super duper, bright.So when you walk into a room of only GI Joe, it's a dark room. When you walk into a room of every, it's a bright, beautiful rainbow and it's, in a good way, overwhelming. It's like sensory overload, because it's just this bright explosion of colors. It's very cool and warm, and in many ways soothing.I've met with the crazy collectors, and I mean that is compliment. I am a crazy collector too. I was in a room that was only GI Joe and I'm like, "Dude, what is that? A 20 Watt light bulb?" And he's like, "No, that's actually a 100 Watt light bulb." But because the toys are so dark, it's dark. Butis the opposite. Like a 100 Watt light bulb, you'd probably go blind. It's good if it's a 20 Watt light bulb.So that's what I found very different and unique to. These collections are just beautiful, warm, bright colors. That is very soothing. And I don't think there's any other toy like that. Even Hello Kitty, it's not the same bright, bright colors.Right.The majority of what we covered are the actual ponies themselves or they experiment every now and then with different kind oftype toys. Like they did mermaid My Little Ponies once. So we go a lot into that stuff. A lot of what Hasbro and Mattel and everybody licenses out, they're not the actual toys.It's more of the consumer products. And I made a very deliberate choice when the show was greenlit, before season one started shooting, to not really get into consumer products. It's so easy when you make a documentary about almost any topic to just meander into little crevices of niche aspects of the topic at hand. So I always worked very hard to establish rules so that the shows that we produce don't do that. And consumer products, LEGO does the same thing, Barbie does the same thing, is a real tributary to the main river that I don't really like going down because that's another show. I really try to keep the topic on the main product that's being sold.Yes, we did.We get into a fair amount because as with GI Joe and Transformers, and unlike Barbie, and unlike Hello Kitty, and in certain ways, unlike Star Trek, the cartoon really is what made it work. You know the toy itself did well, but it was the cartoon that really gave the characters a voice. So yeah, you really can't dowithout getting into the cartoon. Like Star Trek had a cartoon, but it had nothing to do with the success of the toy line or the show in general. So, butjust like Transformers, I don't know if there's a success without the cartoons. So it's a big part of the show.Good. I'm happy to hear that.Yeah, I was, because I had seen John de Lancie's doc. And again, I'm not a Brony. I mean I don't go to conventions. I don't dress up like anything, but I get it. My daughter was really into it, still is.The thing about Bronies that I don't think a lot of people understand is, if you don't know anything about, it's like, "why are these old dudes into these little colored ponies?" But if you watch the cartoon, very quickly, you start to realize, "well, these ponies all have different personalities, just like the. Like there's a pony version of Optimus Prime, there's a pony version of Bumblebee, there's a pony version of Megatron in the later series. So why?"It's all about the writing, and it's all about the characters. So why would it be okay that men are into trucks that transform into robots, that have good personalities and good plots, who wouldn't be into ponies that have good personalities and good plots? And the majority of the Bronies that we talked to, that's really what they say. They're like, I watched the show because my sister was into it, and then I fell in love with it. And I mean that's basically what happened.By the way, I had the same thing with, what do you call it on Amazon, what is it called? [, you know, that show. That's the antithesis of a show that I would watch. I say that because I'm really not into stuff about behind the scenes of show business. I don't like stuff, especially that's behind the scenes of comedy, because I do a lot of comedy. I'm really not into a show like that.I'm also not into a period piece from like the 30s, but my wife was watching it, and I'm sitting there in bed reading or whatever, and I can tell by listening to the dialogue that it's a great show. And of course now I'm the bigger fan of Maisel than my wife is. And that's similar to what happens with Pony, where you basically have a great show, with great writing, and great characters. It's going to rub off and that's why those Bronies.Now we don't dedicate a lot of time to the episode about this. Partly because John de Lancie's doc was so good. I understand it and I get it. Like I said, I have a whole collection ofnow.So I am a Brony? I don't think so, but as of season three, I am way more intothan I am into wrestling and also Power Rangers, easily.I surprised that there is a very similar dynamic between the creators with each other. That is very similar to the He-Man [episode] of it all. You have a lot of people taking credit for a lot of things. And one of the core things about making a show like this is unlike the people that are claiming credit that in many cases don't talk to each other, we talk to everybody. We kind of can figure out, oh this guy did this, this gal did that.So we're very good at putting pieces together, and very often, and this did happen with the He-Man episode as well, we can say to these people after the cameras stopped, "Hey just so you know, you think that guy hates you. He doesn't. He actually feels bad you guys aren't friends."In many cases, and this actually happened withas well, two people incorrectly thought the other hated the other. We were able to tell them after the cameras had stopped—by the way, we never say this ahead of time—we're like, "Maybe you should text so and so, because she feels bad about what went down. And I bet if you guys talked you'd feel pretty good about your relationship." So that's a part of it as well.So to quote the great show Quantum Leap: "to make right where once went wrong."That's very kind of you to say.You know, we have a spin off ofcoming out also this month on November 29th,. It's premiering. So if you're a fan of, please check out, because I hope you'll dig it. If you'd like toys, I'm pretty sure you'll likeThank you, and vice versa. I feel the same way.