You may or may not be familiar with the term, “brony”. That is the word used to describe any fan of the My Little Pony franchise that is outside the typical target group of young girls. This group includes both males and females, and is growing rapidly. In 2010 the re-envisioned television show, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic was aired, and the current fan movement began. Groups dedicated to the love of the show can now be found all over the web, and a convention, called BronyCon was held outside of New York in June of this year and had over 4,000 attendees.
Many online communities have been created to support this interest in My Little Pony, and we noticed that one group was holding a gift exchange on Elfster. We are always on the lookout for interesting groups to highlight to other users, and noticed that there was a bronies exchange taking place. Of course, we were curious to learn more about this group and their exchange.
The My Little Friends (MLF) group is a part of a massive My Little Pony group on Reddit. According to the moderator, Mitchell Sherratt, the group “Started with a simple idea, a group that would help fans of the show My Little Pony meet each other. We run activities during the week where these newfound friends can get together and do something like watch a movie or play a game.” My Little Friends currently has 357 members, and is growing daily.
The gift exchange MLF hosted was much bigger than expected. Originally, Mitchell and the other moderators were going to handle the exchange manually. However, once they had over 30 people sign up, they decided that using Elfster would make more sense. They are already planning to use Elfster to do another exchange once the group is larger.
According to Mitchell, “Elfster helped out a ton. It helped with finding what people liked, which took all stress out of gift exchange process.” There were 55 people that ultimately signed up for the swap, and they exchanged all different types of gifts. The present list included toys, plushies, clothing, art supplies and paintings.
Organizing an exchange can be difficult and time consuming. Since Mitchell and a few others also moderate their Reddit group, it was a natural fit for him to organize the exchange. Elfster allows the team to easily see all of the information regarding the exchange, and is a really great tool for the organizer. According to Mitchell, “The list of participants and their trade info was really useful. It helped the mods and I help sort out the stragglers.“
Elfster is glad that we were able to help with such a fun exchange. You can see a few of the gifts that were exchanged below. As some of the members of the exchange noted, we feel like “One lucky pony!”.
