Story Time with Bobdude: That Time I got Blacklisted by Hasbro

Enough people were curious it seems and it’s a slow post week because of finals and EFNW, so here’s the story. It’s nothing super special but I think it’s pretty funny when you take a step back.

So way back when I wasn’t totally jaded on commissions, I actually took commissions. No one really knew who I was, so I got work from friends most of the time. One friend was a musician named Shroo, believe they go by Pearl Grey now. Anyways, he was doing a little side project with a couple other guys called the Booty Mark Crusaders, and wanted album art for their new track. Thanks to them, I was also in talks with Ponyville FM about holiday commissions of their mascot. Moving on, it was a trap/edm type song so he wanted all 3 of the CMC in, as he described it, a “thuggin pose”. I’m no stranger to the “thuggin pose” and thought it’d be fun so I made it happen. Keep in mind this was almost 3 years ago, but here’s the art I wound up making for them.



(If you want to laugh at my terrible old stuff, I keep it all up on my deviantart as a “journey through art” kind of thing.) Anyways, I sent this off to them and they loved it. They sent it to Ponyville FM who was going to promote the track with the art. As it turns out, Ponyville FM is overseen by Hasbro UK (or at least was at the time, I don’t know the ins and outs of that whole relationship), which meant it went through Hasbro UK to be approved. Hasbro saw the Scootaloo with a joint and wagged the finger at PVFM, who had to wag the finger at Shroo, who had to wag the finger at me. I simply edited out the joint and sent it back off and that’s the art they wound up using. You can see this edited art in the song video itself on youtube:

Now remember when I said I was in talks with PVFM about doing some holiday commissions of their OC? Well they dropped contact with me after this. I thought they’d simply lost interest and I was (and still try to be) just a hobbyist, so I didn’t take it personally or put much thought into it.

I went to Midwest Bronyfest something like 7 or 8 months later (shout outs to Kansas City), which was a con that had a pretty heavy PVFM presence. I was talking with Ludi, one of the PVFM heads at the time, who casually mentioned while talking to me that they could “finally commission me again”. I said “wtf do you mean?” and he told me that Hasbro UK had put me on a blacklist over the joint smoking Scootaloo from months ago. Said it meant that anyone affiliated with Hasbro, such as PVFM, was not allowed to communicate with me in any way. Turns out, it expired after 6 months, so I was off of it by the time I was at Midwest Bronyfest. I had no idea I was ever blacklisted this whole time, so it didn’t make too much of a difference. Lost out on some commissions I suppose but I don’t mind. I was never mad about it cause it never really effected me, but now I have a fun little blip in my art history.



That’s really about all there is to it, but I think it’s really funny that someone working for Hasbro saw this drawing and had to go through the effort to blacklist ya boy for it. I just find the whole thing to be totally absurd, I get why they blacklisted me and everything I just think it’s silly that that’s how it went down. Somewhere, 3ish years ago, there was a list in UK of people that Hasbro refused to work with, and bobdude0 was on that list. Moral of the story though is that Scootaloo only ever causes me trouble haha

