>>6252
>From my understanding the show's creator was once involved in the fandom if I recall correctly and perhaps a little nuts...
>Why horse all of the sudden? Could it really have some connection to FiM after so long?

I mean, look at the premise of that comic series:
<Her most highly coveted power though is her “Shield of Boringness” spell, which causes humans to view her as nothing out of the ordinary and allows her to interact with them on a daily basis.

this part of its premise fits nicely for the argument that I am going to use here. Perhaps, you are not all that far off from the Friendship is Magic influence. I mean, MLP established that ponies were aimed for little girls and that imagery has been kept for decades (associated within the society) and you wouldn´t take them so seriously in the animation industry because anyone would associate unicorns for that audience.

Maybe I am giving the community too much credit (or FiM) for this but the ""autism" that drove to insane levels of popularity for a franchise like MLP, making it mainstream, might have changed the standards (to an extent) of what one would tend to associate unicorns. Think about it, you saw a unicorn in the past and people would go like:"Oh, girls like those" and nowadays, certain people have changed tend to associate it with: "Hey look a unicorn! Bronies´wet dream, folks! This is the next MLP!" and believe it or not, fans have accidentally served as an icebreaker for that stereotypical association that has remained the rule in the general sense.

In addition to that, Nick must have taken notes that there is an audience (and market) to exploit because the 4th gen has proven to stay popular throughout the entire decade so other companies jump in so they test the waters and see what they can get.

That premise of viewing that unicorn as mundane in that world kind of applies here. They don´t hold that girly all that much because the 4th gen has shown that you can find success among other audiences who weren´t supposed to be there (for industry´s standards). Ponies (a unicorn in this case) are no longer impressive and thus, the impact doesn´t work in the same way as it did back in the 80s.

>In fact it was theorized that Hasbro was considering Nick as a backup option do to uncertainty with The Hub/Discovery Kids.
a really understandable plan honestly. They were going through muddy waters around that time when The Hub died so they were assuring a plan B just in case Discovery didn´t work out.