by Elisto Dragonwings on November 5th, 2011, 6:20 pm
Well, first off, the picture you posted is from the previous generation of the toys/series, so you can safely ignore that!
I can't speak for new fans (since I never outgrew the 80's version), but I can give my perspective. It's not (currently) "Barbie with Ponies"; it started out in the 80s as a fairly typical fantasy story for little kids: magical creatures, witches and sorcerers, that sort of thing, but with the main cast being mostly all female ponies. It got more and more overtly girly and had less and less substance to the stories as the series and toy lines went on. The current generation went back to the original idea of a fantasy-type story, and with likeable, relateable characters, believable situations, and well thought out stories and overall world. I think overall, it's a well-made cartoon, and I don't think there have been a lot of those recently. I also suspect a lot of people came into it with you're attitude that it's "for girls", implying that that means it's not good, and were surprised once they gave it a chance.
If there's any connection between being a fan of MLP and a fan of Sonic, I don't know what it is. There do seem to be a decent number of Sonic fans on the MLP Arena, especially interesting since they're mostly female collectors of the original toys, not new male fans, but I don't know. Maybe it's just because they're both good and both involve non-human characters.