It's not just Hasbro, it's pretty much media in general these days.

Used to be in order for a movie/book/game/etc to sell very well, it had to be good. So the idea was to make a high quality product.

Nowadays though, they've found that Hype, Fandom stupidity, Brand-name, and good marketing alone will sell a product, no matter how god-awful it actually is. As long as you can convince the more simple minded people that "it's good because it's (insert franchize here)" it will sell.

So now the name of the game is crank out shit as fast as possible and market them as heavily as possible rather than spending time on the actual product itself.

It's a phenomenon we gamers like to call "EAification"

Or M Night Shy.

Or whoever did DBZ:Evolution.

Thank you for unintentionally proving my point.

I know, the simple fact that if you are not part of the solution or standing off to the side by not giving enough of a shit either way, then you are part of the problem is a hard pill for many a person to swallow, and they rail and yell and scream about being insulted and the like, but I'm sorry but that's the simple truth of the matter and there really is no two ways around it. As long as there are mindless drones there will be cash being made, and as long as there is cash being made there will be an incentive to make low effort contrived lowest denominator crap. And it really is as simple as that.

To further prove my point, I direct you to the case of the Avatar The Last Airbender franchise and the live action movie. Like EQG it was a peice of shit (in fact, it was actually less of a piece of shit than EQG), and like EQG it made a shit ton of money too, but whereas EQG is getting a sequel not a year later, with avatar so far they've not dared to make a sequel. Why is that, might I ask? What is the difference between EQG and the Avatar Movie?
Let me answer that for you: The Avatar fandom didn't have its collective head up its ass. There hasn't been an avatar sequel because the Avatar fandom knew better than to simply let that atrocity slide. They didn't just say "oh hey it's avatar its good lolol." Unlike this fandom they knew quality from crap, they rightly criticized it so much that while yes it made lots of money, it got very low ratings on review sites the world over and it lost its popularity very quickly. The fandom hated it, and even Shyamalan knew he wouldn't make the same cash twice.
He could fool them once, but he knew he wasn't going to do it twice.
Whereas here we got blind hasdrones giving the stamp of approval to basically anything that has the MLP logo on it and coming up with the most banal excuses when called out on it rather than coming to terms with the simple fact that opinions have consequences and effects.

I'm sorry if that makes you buttmad, but the proof is in the pudding.

And better than an elitist jack off (sad that you can't even spell that right) than trying to sound like an internet tough guy. Besides you really are one to talk, being in the same camp as I am and all.

There's a huge difference between plot contrivance and chekhov's gun.

The Ruby Slippers (or Silver Shoes if you prefer the book) are an example of the latter: A device which appears right from the outset of the movie yet is completely, utterly, and totally useless in that the character has it but doesn't know how to operate it or is completely unable to operate it for some reason until the final act where it finally works. This works because it was established right at the beginning that the slippers had an unknown function and at the end we find out. This was part of the story from the beginning.

Although it does make the witch of the north to be a huge c**t, it's an acceptable part of literature when done right. Which it was.

What is happening here is not Chekhov's Gun, but simple plot contrivance: literally pulling an explanation out of thin air (or in this case, the crack between your ass) putting the previous conflict into redundancy for the sake of a new plot. It's a problem a lot of sequels suffer.

Not to mention:

I assume people mean *besides* the statue out front with the magic portal to the land of unicorns and whatnot.
It's never implied that the statue is in any magical or whatnot. Just that the portal is in front of it. After all, when you make a portal, there's going to be another one SOMEWHERE even if the other side is not capable of making the portal.

This argument would only work if it were the humans that made the portal to Equestria instead of the other way around. It's like saying that because a two-way portal from a world full of high tech engineers and builders leads to a world that has and never did have any sentient creatures let alone anything capable of making one, that world must somehow contain advanced technology and magic.

Or the whole demon student thing, or the girls who spontaneously grow wings and such. Obviously magic can work there.
The fact that this was a huge bullshit plot in of itself aside, that was pretty clearly the result of EOH, which came from Equestria.

Making magic from another world work there, and having things already there that are magical in nature are two completely different things.
This argument is like saying that because laser guns can work there, the world is therefore capable of producing laser guns and abundant with them. This is a logical fallacy known as Affirming the Consequent, and is the sort of thing they make fun of in Monty Python the Holy Grail (the Witch and the Duck ring any bells?)

The TL;DR version:

It's easy to overcome the 30 moons limitation as a writer: Just pull shit right out of your ass. Throw in some shit about the tree (which has nothing to do with anything but fuck it), lasting links, etc. And you have an explanation. I mean it's not like you have to try, this is a kid's movie. Kids (and people on this site) are dumb, yo!

Care Bears was STDVD and it had less contrivance than this garbage.

Quite so...

And while they're at it they should smash the mirror into little bits after they come back so those among us with half a brain to work with don't have to put up with this shlock anymore.

Accurate description of most of the posters on this site.

Has it ever occurred to you that otherwise good authors are indeed capable of producing crap?

Stanley Kubrick and A.I. Artificial Intelligence and its craptacular ending. Enough said.