Undiscovered, stolen, missing and hidden cutie marks there’s a lot of cutie mark craziness going on in My Little Pony – Friendship Is Magic: Cutie Mark Quests, the latest collection of My Little Pony – Friendship Is Magic episodes from Shout! Factory Kids in collaboration with Hasbro Studios.

This five episode DVD includes:

• “The Show Stoppers” – Season 1, Episode 18
  The Cutie Mark Crusaiders are given a hand-me-down clubhouse by Applejack and while at first disappointed, the trio get to work fixing it up and get back to their never-ending quest to discover their special talents. When they learn that their teacher Cheerilee is putting on a talent show, the girls are convinced that winning the show is the key getting their cutie marks. Their accidentally hilarious performance doesn’t go quite as planned.
• “The Return of Harmony,  Parts 1 and 2” – Season 2, Episodes 1 and 2
  These two episodes are the second season opener.  Discord, the spirit of chaos and disharmony, has escaped his prison and now the Princess Celestia has tasked the ponies with retrieving the Elements of Harmony and re-capturing Discord.  This is a pivotal episode in the series, introducing the character of Discord and the origins of the Elements of Harmony.
• “The Cutie Map,  Parts 1 and 2” – Season 5, Episodes 1 and 2
  These episodes are the season opener for the 5th (latest) season of the series. Princess Twilight has just settled into her new castle when she and her friends unlock a magical map, leading the Mane Six to a mysterious village where all of the ponies appear to have the exact same equals sign cutie mark.  They learn that in this commune, all of the ponies have voluntarily given up their cutie marks to promote peace and equality. But things may not be a peaceful and loving as they first appeared, and the ponies soon find themselves in trouble as the village’s spiritual leader Starlight Glimmer is harboring a dark secret.

My Little Pony – Friendship Is Magic: Cutie Mark Quests is a nice collection of episodes including two different season openers. They introduce important themes and characters which are influential on the events that follow. My girls (ages 5 and ~8) enjoyed re-visiting these episodes, especially seeing the origins of Discord. The character has had an interesting arc over the series of the show so it’s fun to go back and see him when he was his big bad self. The fact that the other two episodes where big, two-part season openers, “The Show Stoppers” felt a little out of place in this collection, but the girls still really enjoyed it and were giggling at the cutie mark crusaders’ performance.

As always, the presentation of the episodes is excellent, even though it is not in HD, the animation is sharp and the Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack feels cinematic.

As far as extras go, there is just one, a “In Our Town” Sing Along. Sung by Starlight Glimmer in the Season 5 opener. Series songwriter Daniel Ingram based it on propaganda music from World War II. The song is actually fairly catchy. Unfortunately there were no coloring sheets or wallpapers this time around.

What’s Included:

Episodes: (110 min)

• 5 episodes of the series:
  “The Show Stoppers”, “The Return of Harmony – Part 1”, “The Return of Harmony – Part 2”, “The Cutie Map – Part 1”, “The Cutie Map – Part 2”
• 480p / Anamorphic Widescreen 1.78:1
• Audio: English Dolby Digital 5.1
• Closed Captions

Extras:

• “In Our Town” Sing-Along

Final Thoughts:

My Little Pony – Friendship Is Magic: Cutie Mark Quest offers viewers a nice collection of 5 episodes, two of which are double-length season openers. Inexpensively priced at only $9.83 on Amazon, these are some great episodes to have in your My Little Pony collection as they are pivotal in the longer narrative arcs of the series. My daughters really enjoyed all of these episodes and have watched them numerous times.