The topic of friendship is central to the universe of My Little Pony. In fact, the narrative of the series My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic is built around this topic, promoting the values of respect, tolerance, cooperation, and prejudice resilience (Licari-Guillaume, 2019).
The series portrays Twilight Sparkle and her friends in the town of Equestria, Ponyville, who try to resolve their conflicts and challenges, learning valuable friendship lessons. Each episode ends with a specific message in the form of a letter from each of the main characters to Princess Celestia, an Alicorn pony and the ruler of Equestria, in which characters share what they have learned in terms of the friendship. By doing so, each of the episodes emphasises different aspects of friendship - from never judging someone by their appearance to being generous and loyal. In line with this narrative, the characters themselves are different in their characters and personalities, which is one of the main reasons for conflict between them. Most importantly, the moral of the story is that friendship is not about being uniform or similar to each other, but rather about valuing differences and embracing them.
In this sense, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic is considered to be one of the educational cartoons that “focus […] on the pre-social behaviours of children, […] providing lessons to children on appropriate relations with peers and adults” (Lapierre, 2018, p. 100). We see this pattern of lesson-learning reproduced in later media products, such as the Netflix shows My Little Pony: A New Generation and My Little Pony: Make your Mark. MLP has consistently since its 2010 show educated children on the value in appreciating each other’s differences and abilities.