by Kroze Kresly, Media Editor

Hasbro Studios has had many successes in recent years reviving old franchises for their network The Hub, breathing new life into their old IPs. Most notably recently for bringing back My Little Pony with the uberly successful Friendship is Magic series, they set about trying to capture the lightning in a bottle once more with their newest franchise revival. Littlest Pet Shop became big in the 90s with a plethora of toy playsets each featuring a different miniature pet so that girls could build their own pet shop out of all the sets and animals that were available. Cats, Dogs, Hamsters, Lizards, Panda bears, and other random assortments of cute animals became available as the toy line continued on and expanded. Later on down the line an animated series was created focusing on these crazy pets to accompany the toys. Fast forward to 2012 where Hasbro Studios has rebooted the show in order to try to capture the same audience it seems that the aforementioned My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic has won over.

In this rendition of the show, it features around a little girl named Blythe Baxter who suddenly moves from the small suburbs into a big city. Upset about the move and just looking for some comfort and friends, she stumbles upon the realization that she can talk to animals! It just so happens that she moved in above a pet shop (conveniently named, you guessed it, The Littlest Pet Shop!) and befriends all of the animals living there quickly becoming involved in all of their antics and misadventures! The show has a little over half dozen man character animals right off the bat and more added as episodes continue on. Among the suspects are a spider monkey, a little giant panda, a mongoose and a hedgehog.

The show quickly throws viewers into Blythe’s current predicament and has no qualms having the animals sing and dance before the main character herself fully understands who any of them are and gets involved helping them save the Littlest Pet Shop which is set to be closed down.

Littlest Pet Shop will be quickly compared to My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic due to both the style and the feel are very similar most likely due to Hasbro wanting to quickly attach the giant fanbase that has gathered around MLP to this franchise as well. Sadly the quality that goes into MLP doesn’t fully crossover into LPS. In the first two episodes we are hardly given any time to bond any of the individual animals as all of their characters seem to be pretty cookie cutter generically designed. Blythe herself who is suppose to be the viewers anchor is a mishmash of ideas that don’t actually feel like she is a character. Normally these points could be overlooked in shows like this geared to younger kids, but after My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic raised the writing bar so high, anything else feels like a huge step backwards when it comes to the progression of shows from Hasbro Studios. While I may not be the main demographic for the show, that doesn’t mean it can’t at least try to be enjoyable to everyone.

There is one thing that has kept its quality though and that is the musical numbers. Once again Daniel Ingram and Steffan Andrews knock it out of the park providing insanely catchy musical numbers to the show that will have you whistling them for days on end afterwards. After hearing the theme song to the show once, you will be quickly hooked!

Overall:

For a kids show, Littlest Pet Shop isn’t bad. There is a whole lot worse out there that you could have kids watching but when it comes to the quality we have been getting from other Hasbro Studios shows on The Hub, Littlest Pet Shop doesn’t live up to the previous reboots and adaptations that have been coming out as of late. As this is only the first four episodes, this could still quickly change, but for now Littlest Pet Shop falls short.

ComicsOnline gives Littlest Pet Shop 3 stupidly catchy theme songs out of 5

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