 Faust and the production team have acknowledged some of the fandom and fan @-@ created elements of the show and incorporated them into the animation . Though Hasbro 's priority is to deliver a child @-@ friendly show , the writers and production staff , according to Linda Steiner , senior vice president of Hasbro Studios , " We will certainly , for fun , do the ' <unk> ' [ sic ] check to see if this could pass with them , but our job is to deliver to the kids first . " Margaret Loesch , president and chief executive of Hub Network , said that they have kept their nods to the fandom to subtle hints . She added , " We haven 't driven this movement , the fans have , and we don 't want to get ahead of that . We want to nourish this phenomenon , not manipulate it . " A writer for the show , Meghan McCarthy , said , " Some pop culture @-@ y things are thrown in , but we don 't want to do anything that 's too ' wink wink ' . It detracts from the story that we 're trying to tell " . Many of the nods to the older audience are drawn in by the storyboard artists and animators , who are challenged to populate scripted scenes with background ponies ; McCarthy points the example of ponies fashioned after the main characters from The Big Lebowski due to having to fill in space for scenes set in a bowling alley for the episode " The Cutie Pox " . 
