My Little Pony
One of the most infamous toy franchises out there, My Little Pony is hard to sum up in a sentence or two. Starting in the early 1980s, My Little Pony is an utterly massive, generally girl-oriented franchise (though don't tell that to some of its fans) that consists of TV shows, films, comic books, manga, stage productions, video games, novels, and basically everything you can think of a franchise of this scale consisting of, and most of it stars cute little ponies doing daring deeds, though some stars humans too!
History
Early brand history
Bonnie Zacherle is often considered the creator of the My Little Pony brand. Alongside Charles Muenchinger, she created My Pretty Pony, the 'zeroth generation' of the franchise. Zacherle made the series to appeal to both girls and boys, but by Generation 1 rolled around, the brand became much more female oreinated in contrast to Hasbro's 'male-centric' brands like G.I. Joe and Transformers.