Operation P.R.I.N.C.E.S.S.

Introduction:

Welcome to our new reality television show everyone!

This is The Corporate Scoop where each week we take a look inside each of the different companies around the world and discover what makes them tick. Today we are looking inside what goes on inside the walls of Hasbro Studios. Ah yes, Hasbro. The studio responsible for My Little Pony, The Littlest Pet Shop, The Transformers, and eh whatever else plays on Discovery Family these days.

Here in a nondescript location you will find a secret base of sorts which is the official headquarters of Hasbro Studios board of supervisors and the acting company president. The board consists almost entirely of the 1980s G.I. Joes, with the exception of a single pony from generation one. We will talk more about this V.I. Pony later. As for the rest of the board members being highly trained military men, it really shouldn’t come as that big of a surprise. Just look at the war theme that all of the modern day Hasbro TV shows seem to possess. The characters in Friendship Is Magic are constantly doing battle against power-wielding bad guys. Even the characters of The Littlest Pet Shop are usually found confronting evil pet owners and the like. Let’s just say that the G.I. Joes are all about facing off against the forcing of evil. And strangely, pretty princesses. That’s how we ended up with Princess Twilight Sparkle, in case you were wondering.

The company president is Minty from generation 3 of My Little Pony. Minty is usually found sleeping at the board meetings as the G.I. Joes and the V.I. Pony carry on with their meeting around her. Just be grateful that she is asleep the majority of the time, because whenever she’s awake we get episodes like Appaloosa’s Most wanted, Party Pooped, and Princess Spike. Much like Derpy, she never quite understands just what went wrong with her episode script choices before shrugging it off and going back to sleep, sporting a nice pair of one of the many socks in her collection, of course. So now you know where all of the bad episodes of Friendship Is Magic or, eh, any Discovery Family shows in general come from, my friends. And knowing is half the battle.

And now we come to the only other pony of the group and the acting vice president of Hasbro Studios; Gusty from generation one of My Little Pony. You might say she is the official brains behind the operation. If Minty actually has a good idea for once, you can bet that it was Gusty who gently nudged her in the right direction. Gusty has perhaps one of most difficult jobs at Hasbro as she has to keep Minty under control by drugging her at the start of every meeting, and also has to keep the G.I. Joes from making every single character in the show into a princess. Both of these tasks are harder than you might think.

Today the G.I. Joes and Gusty are discussing various ways that they can bring in more princesses to the show without going over the top. Gusty is doing her best to keep the princess discussion under control. This is her most important function in the board of supervisors after all, besides making sure that Minty stays asleep during board meetings.

The Joes’ primary mission is to make sure that princesses remain a staple in the show. They find that princesses can give them more excuses to write action packed episodes that center on facing off against the forces of evil. Oh, and the princesses are some of their bestselling lines of toys. If it is one thing the G.I. Joes like more than pretty princesses and fight scenes, it is making lots of cold hard cash. Being G.I. Joes, they like to earn their money the honest American way: by selling lots of stuff people don’t need but will buy anyway because it looks cool! This is how we ended up with a princess themed Transformers line by the way. Those were some dark times for Hasbro. It was the days before Gusty became the acting vice president and could keep the G.I. Joes or Minty under control.

As you might of guessed, Minty was the leading voice behind this decision, resulting in an ultimate recall of every princess Transformers unit ever made save for the ones the G.I. Joes secretly saved for themselves as it contained two of their favorite themes, war and princesses, all in one doll. But the G.I. Joe won’t admit this, despite having one of each of these said dolls displayed in each of their offices.

Since that event, the board of supervisors made the executive decision to keep Minty asleep during the board meetings, using high grade sleeping pills that they slip into her cup of coffee before the start of every major decision making conference. They voted Gusty as the acting vice present, charged with the sacred task of keeping Minty down for the count since she is the smartest pony out of any of the generations and also is conveniently good at making coffee. So Minty sits at the head of the board meeting, like usual, her face on the table, snoring away loudly as the G.I. Joes and Gusty prep their notes. Ah, it seems that the board meeting has just begun so now we will now turn our attention to the group around the table.

The Board Meeting:

Gusty walked up to the front of the conference room and pointed toward a graph that had the words “Princess Toy Line Sales” scrawled along the top in some kind of obscure font. She’d have to have a little chat with the graphic design team about this later. If there is one thing that is worse than the Comic Sans font, it is pretty much any other font that isn’t Calibri. Gusty tried to ignore her disgust for the font choice and pointed toward the graph.

“Alright Joes, here’s the deal. Our princesses sales are way down because the fan base raided the studio a few years back and stole the episode where all of the mane six become princesses. So we kind of had to improvise with Magical Mystery Cure and only turn one of them into an Alicorn.”

One of the Joes at the table busted out into tears as another comforted him by patting him on the back.

“That was my greatest masterpiece,” he managed to choke out between sobs.

Gusty let out a heavy sigh. It was going to be another long meeting and she wasn’t sure she had enough headache medication to last her through it.

“Yes Bazooka, it was a very great loss for the studio. And it pretty much made it impossible for us to turn any of the other mane six into princesses as Magical Mystery Cure made it pretty clear that Twilight could be the only one. So since then our princess sales have hit an all-time low. I called you all here today so we can brainstorm ideas to fix this little problem. Does anyone have a proposal they’d like to share?”

One of the Joes sporting a neatly trimmed mustache sprung up from his seat and gave Gusty a salute.

“Permission to speak, sir!”

Gusty rolled her eyes.

“Alpine, you don’t have to salute me. We’ve been through this before. Just carry on with your presentation.”

“Sir, yes Sir!” Alpine said, ending his salute and walking to the head of the room to address the board.

As Alpine walked to the front of the room, Gusty took her usual seat at the boardroom table and downed three headache medication pills. This meeting was another train wreck just waiting to happen and she wanted to be prepared for the inevitable craziness that was certain to take place.

When Alpine stood at the front he addressed everyone with a large smile and said, “Alright everyone, here’s what I think we should do. We are doing to raise these princess sales out of the gutter with a three point attack plan. I call our marketing approach Operation P.R.I.N.C.E.S.S. That stands for Princess Revival In Nearby Cities Ending Sucky Sales.”

The Joes around the table clapped at the clever mission title. Alpine waited for the applause to die down and then carried on.

“Step one of the mission is to turn Big Mac into a princess!”

More applause broke out around the table. Gusty stood up from her chair and slammed her hooves on the table, bringing everyone else in the meeting to order.

“What did I tell you Joes? We can’t go around turning every character into a princesses! Have you already forgotten about the Transformers princess line?”

The Joes around the table winced at the memory of their most unsuccessful toy line in the Hasbro Studios history and settled down a bit.

Alpine waved one of his hands dismissively.

“That’s all in the past, team. You see, we can get away with making Big Mac into a princess because it will all be in a dream!”

The Joes gave a victory chant around the table as Gusty’s frown grew deeper. She shot a nervous glance over at Minty, when she thought about all of the noise that the Joes had made. She let out a sigh of relief when she realized that Minty was still sound asleep at her place at the table.

She then tapped the table with one of her hooves to bring everyone to order again. When the room grew silent she said, “I guess something like that could work. So…I suppose you can go on with the rest of your plan.”

Alpine jumped for joy. Then cleared his throat when he realized that jumping for joy didn’t make him appear manly. He spit in a nearby gold plated pot to make himself look a little tougher, and was met with much approval from his comrades who also shot their own wads of spit into it. Gusty shook her head solemnly, trying her best to ignore their behavior of the Joes seated around her.

Alpine took out a Big Mac princess toy and sat it on the board room table. Then he continued on.

“After the episode airs we can sell these things at all big box stores as limited edition figurines. But it doesn’t stop there. Princess Big Mac is just the beginning.”

Alpine paused for dramatic effect as the rest of the Joes eagerly waited to hear what he had to say next.

He then placed a toy set of Rarity’s boutique on the table and a figurine of Rarity wearing a new dress out in front of it.

Gusty raised an eye brow, skeptical about the idea her board member had just presented.

“Alpine, I don’t really see how this relates to our princess sales. It is just the playset we were going to release at the end of the year anyway.”

Alpine let out a small chortle and pointed at the Rarity figurine.

“There’s more to this doll that meets the eye.”

Gusty shot Alpine a disapproving glance.

“What did I tell you Joes about using bad 80s television puns?”

Alpine gave a sheepish grin.

“Oh yeah, I forgot about that one. Sorry Mrs. Vice president. Anyway, if you look at the figurine you will notice that Rarity isn’t just wearing any kind of dress. She’s wearing a princess dress. And when the kiddies buy the dresses and stick them on their dolls, it will make all of the toys into princesses!”

One of the Joes with a buzz cut stood up from the table and said, “Brilliant, simply brilliant!” Before foaming at the mouth and falling onto the floor, twitching intermittently.

“Do you think we should help him up or something,” asked Gusty, glancing down at the board member concerned.

One of the Joes to the left of her shook his head and winked in her direction.

“Naw, Footloose always does that when he’s excited about things. He should be okay in ten minutes or so.”

Gusty shrugged and gestured for Alpine to continue.

Alpine nodded and carried on with his presentation.

“Now we come to stage three, maggots. The most important stage of operation P.R.I.N.C.E.S.S. This will ensure that we have a princess line to sell for the next hundred seasons and beyond!”

The Joes sat at the edge of their seats, waiting for Alpine to deliver the final marketing strategy. Even Gusty was curious to know what Alpine’s plan might be.

After letting the tension in the room build up for a bit, Alpine pulled out a box containing prototypes for all of the new princess and slammed it down on the table. When he lifted it up it revealed a toy for every major species; the deer, the buffalo, the horses, the goats, the sheep, the zebra…if you can think of an animal, there was a princess for it. The Joes around the table cheered. Even Gusty let out a small yell of victory.

At that moment, Minty woke up from her nap and looked around the table confused. Alpine let out a girly scream and yelled, “We’ve got a Code Coffee everyone! Duck and cover!”

He then dived behind a group of nearby office plants. The other Joes dove under the table and Gusty rushed to the head of the room to take down the Princess sales chart. She shoved the sales chart along with the boxes of toys and play sets that Alpine had set out before under the table. This left the room to appear empty, save Minty and Gusty.

Gusty carefully adjusted the office plants around Alpine to make sure his hiding place would not be given away and went to sit next to Minty, who glanced around the room confused.

“Eh…what happened Gusty? Is it time for the meeting yet?”

Gusty let out a nervous laugh and answered, “You are so funny, Mrs. President. The meeting already took place of course! You decided to launch a Princess Big Mac special edition toy line, a Rarity boutique play set with princess dresses, and make a princess toy line of all of the major animal species of the world, including the horses. The toy lines will be launching soon thanks to your brilliant Operation P.R.I.N.C.E.S.S. marketing strategy.”

Minty let out a giggle and then said, “I always do seem to come up with the best ideas. At least…that’s what everyone tells me. I have one more thing to add though. Since we are launching a Rarity toy line we might as well make an episode to go along with it.”

Gusty frowned. It looks like one bad episode would have to get through despite everyone’s best efforts.

“Yes, Mrs. President. I’ll see what I can do.”

Minty nodded.

“I know that I can’t count on you to take care of things, my trusty Vice President. Well, I guess since the meeting is over I can go home now. I want to take out my socks and have a sock party. You and the Joes can come over later if you like. My socks and I will be waiting!”

Gusty winced at the thought of another one of Minty’s infamously bad sock parties but she knew she really had no choice in the matter. It was company policy that all Hasbro employees had to attend social events. She suspected that it had something to so with building bonds with other company employees, although the reasons for these parties was never made entirely clear.

She nodded and said, “Oh yes, the Joes and I will be over later. Make sure to serve the cider you put out last time. I have a feeling I’m going to need a lot of it…I mean everyone seemed to love it.”

Minty grinned,

“Oh I will. I bought all sorts of cider. And Pinkie Pie decided to help me out with the games and stuff this time. It’s going to be great!”

Gusty let out a sigh of relief as Minty stood up from her chair at the head of the board room. At least Pinkie Pie would be there to spice things up this time. Things might turn out alright after all.

Minty walked towards the front entrance of the room. She opened the door a crack and then turned back to Gusty to say, Well, I’m heading over there now. I will see you all later!” before opening the door the rest of the way and walking through. She closed it behind her, unaware that Gusty was letting out a huge sigh of relief from her place inside the room.

Then Minty skipped down the hallway towards the company apartment complex, excited that she got to pull out all of her socks for her party and hang them up around her house for all to see.

When Minty was safely out of sight, Gusty signaled for the Joes to come out of their hiding places, and placed the graph back in its place at the head of the room. She placed all of the toys and play sets back on the table as Alpine crawled out from his place behind the office plants. She faced the Joes as they came out from underneath the table one by one.

When everyone was sitting back in their board meeting chairs she said, “Alright everyone, that brings this month’s company meeting to a close. I think we’ve made some real progress on the princess issue. We might have a little bit of a challenge with the bad episode Minty requested, but I think if we add a song we can help cover up some of the damage. I’ll talk to Vinyl Scratch about writing the music for the episode. I expect the princess sales to go way up if we follow Operation P.R.I.N.C.E.S.S. You did a good job, Alpine. I see a bonus in your future!”

Alpine did a little dance and then said, “Oh yeah! I’m going to spend my bonus on a ticket to Disneyland so I can meet all of the Disney Princesses!”

Everyone around the table cheered and the monthly meeting at Hasbro came to an official close.

Epilogue:

So this ends out little look into what goes on behind the scenes at Hasbro studios. Join us next week when we take a look at the monkeys who took over Nickelodeon studious at the end of 2012 and since then have been creating some rather….interesting television programs. This has been Blondie Locks from Ever After High with The Corporate Scoop reminding you to Stay Savvy.

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