My two daughters (ages 5 and 2) were the luckiest girls in the world when a friend of mine gave them her original My Little Pony videotapes from the 80s. They watched them over and over again, and to keep my sanity, I let my husband buy some cheap DVDs with My Little Pony Tales, for variation.<br /><br />That variation I could have done without. Much like other people here, I was disgusted by the superficial and petty characters (even though at first glance the story lines appear to offer some good values). Stripping the beloved horses of all their horse qualities and making them over like some cartoon 90210 for 12-year-olds is a crime.<br /><br />My girls don't really understand much of the Tales, but they watch them anyway, since they recognize the ponies. So, I let them watch the DVD's anyway and tried to hide how much I hated them.<br /><br />Until today, that is. Today I forced myself to sit and really watch an episode. It didn't take more than two minutes for one of the horses to say (while eating a carrot, perfectly normal food for a PONY) that she couldn't wait until their synchronized swimming competition was over, so they could all go back to eating "normal food" again!!! No, the storyline of this episode was not about dieting, this was just said to fill out some time. To my dismay I found that every episode of the horrible Tales contain such sneaky comments, creeping into the minds of my precious little girls. I don't' CARE if there's another Tales episode that shows the dangers of dieting, my girls shouldn't even THINK or KNOW about dieting.<br /><br />Long story short: I'm chucking those DVDs today. And I want to advise everyone reading this to stay FAR away from My Little Pony Tales. We only get one childhood. Fantasy adventures with kind and magical horses give children the escape from reality they need. Don't throw them into the adult world too early.