Well, I have snorted, as MercilessOne put it, the rainbow-colored crack. And, unlike most other people, I found it quite unattractive. OK, that's an understatement. It was terrible. It's like Pokemon meets slapstick comedy, which isn't a good thing in my opinion. In fact, I only watched a few minutes of the first ep, becuase I couldn't take any more. My thoughts after watching 6min or so are the same as they were before I started. They go something like "Why am I watching this?"
The first thing I noticed was the storyline as described in the intro. I was pleasently surprised, having expected it to have no more substance than a generic fairy tale. It's closer to the Pokemon level of maturity and area of content (X is supposed to happen on Y day of Z year/festival/period). But it still has a high immaturity factor, unfortunately.
Another thing I expected was simplistic dialogue, dumbed down for kids raised on "Frank had a dog. His name was spot." That's not entirely true, it's closer to the "Pokemon anime" level of complexity. Which is still somewhat simple.
The next problem is the characters. I've really seen Twilight, Spike (Might as well be Spyro), and Pinkie Pie. You have Spike's "clumsy guy" role. Twilight's "overworked, flustered administrative assistant/secretary/grad student?/whatever else you can think of" routine (actually, I'm not sure what she is). But Pinkie Pie takes the cake. All I saw of her was when Twilight tried to say hi and she ran. Fast. Justin and T-12 are right, she's definitely on something.
A typical character issue with children's stories is purposeless evil and causeless good. You've seen it before - the villain who's evil because... they are, or because they want to take over the world and... well... rule it, again for no reason except perhaps childish mean-spiritedness. The producers of MLP have made little effort to avoid this problem. If the dialogue hasn't been excessively simplified, the plot complexity certainly has, with Le Evil Pony attempting to take over and impose the Equestria equivalent of a totalitarian dystopia because that's destiny or something similarly cliche. Meanwhile, those ponies destined to align themselves with the "good side" live in inexplicable harmony normally impossible to achieve, running under a simplistic socialist monarchy with little mention of any authority except a highly cliche "princess". (Yeah, there are probably inaccuracies here, but like I said I couldn't watch more than about six minutes of it)
The environment is another turn-off. Castles in the clouds, idyllic children's book farm scenes, etc etc. It's so generic, and so immature.
I guess it's a testament to the increasing immaturity and dysfunctional public education system of our society that grown men can not only watch, but like, let alone make a meme out of, a TV show aimed at small children with a tagline like "friendship is magic".
