The waiting game

Big Jim's tweet today, debunking a bunch of "Season 9" pictures as fakes, made me wonder once again of how long it may be before we get some real news on S9. There are two things to watch out for: the date of the season premiere and confirmation or otherwise of whether S9 will be the final year of FiM. It's possible we could get both those pieces of news at the same time, but I wouldn't be entirely surprised if that wasn't the case.

As to when Hasbro might actually say something... the New York Toy Fair is in February, and Hasbro is bound to have a presence there. Let's say, for the sake of argument, that S9 will begin in April. I'd have thought a NYTF statement would fit quite well with that, in terms of having time for trailers and hype and all the rest of it. In all honesty, I'd like to know – especially about S9 being the end – as soon as possible. It'll take away one source of pointless arguments!

So, Equestria Girls S2 is upon us

At least, by the time this post goes up it should be. As I write, it's not available yet, but apparently 11th January is the ETA. I must admit that I've been a bit inconsistent with the first season of these shorts. If they'd been FiM I'd have been all over them, but as much as I've warmed to EqG over the last few years it's still not quite at the same level. I mostly just watch the specials, with a few exceptions (like "So Much More to Me"!)

Kudos to Hasbro for making things easy by publishing direct to YouTube, though. That damn "Discovery Go app first" approach they used last year was a real pain in the rump, especially for the CYOA shorts. The app isn't available to those of us in the UK, so we had to wait until some kind soul uploaded the videos and hope they didn't get blocked before we got to see them. I'm glad this isn't going to be an issue any more, and it might even get me watching them all!

New FiM shorts?

Well, this is interesting indeed. As mentioned on Equestria Daily, three new shorts have popped up over in China. They're currently only available in Chinese, so I haven't seen anything of them beyond the screenshots on EqD, but I believe it's the first time we'll have had shorts that aren't Equestria Girls and feature ponies, ponies and more ponies.

Edit: actually not. As OilyValves points out in the comments, there were the Hot Minute shorts back in 2013. Published by Hot Topic rather than by Hasbro directly, but they count, I think.

I'm not going to spoil anything (not that I know much anyway!) but apparently these will be written by a mixture of newcomers and existing show writers. I shall wait and see with interest!