To me, Hasbro seems to be making some really dumb business decisions. As much as I can understand that it's difficult for a huge company to follow trends for each of its toy lines, you'd think that they would have realized what the brony phenomenon means for their toys. They were already planning to make pony toys X, Y, and Z, so a few more minutes picking the right models/colors couldn't have hurt them. I can forgive them for not following the fan names, but if they were smart they would have been at least naming, if not releasing, the background ponies a long time ago. Then the fan names wouldn't have taken root and there would be less controversy.
Controversy or not, people will buy them because to us, they ARE the names/characters we've turned them into. Who cares what it says on the card? The biggest problem is that a lot of them are just colored like the bg ponies, but they didn't do a whole lot in terms of getting their manes/tails right.
HOWEVER, I think this is a little bit forgivable. Companies have budgets. It is far cheaper to recolor the same mold than to create a whole new mold. Most of these budgets are determined the previous year. Hasbro couldn't have had a clue that all this would happen when they were making up the budget for the year. They didn't have 'make more show-accurate molds' on their priority list, and so there was nothing put into the budget for it.
From this perspective, you could say 'well, they made a new mold for the male blind bags'. Yes, they did. But let's say that means they had enough in their budget for one new mold to be made. It wouldn't really make sense to use that money to replace a single existing mold. For one thing, you have no net increase in molds. For another, you'd have to pick which pony gets the more accurate mold, while the rest still remain as-is. I think putting out the male ponies was a good middle ground here.
So perhaps the budget for next year will include re-vamping their current molds to make them more show-accurate. We'll just have to wait and see. What we DO know is that they are going to make some sets of glasses and lamps and other odds and ends, but those won't come around until later next year. I wouldn't say these are
more targeted to the bronies, but they do have a bit of a wider appeal. I would consider getting a set of 6 juice glasses with the mane 6 on them. As long as they use the same sort of styling/vectors from the show.
As for the names, I'm pretty sure Carrot Top couldn't be used. And Lyra is oddly short for what seems typical of Equestrian names. Though I do like Lyra Heartstrings. That could work alright. But Berryshine and Golden Harvest... we SO got the better names on those two.
