(I didn’t, largely since I’ve never watched a single episode, but the psychic damage and whiplash of Wholesome Pony Show having said this line was too fuckn much for me)
EDIT: More replies than upbears now. It’s probably an official struggle session now (although most of it is that one person). One must imagine SisyFEWs happy.
My hypothesis is that Japan just figured out how to turn fandom into an obsessive toy-buying culture earlier than America did. If you go back to something like, for example, the early days of the Star Trek fandom, there was a lot of friction between the creators of that show and its consumers. They were trying to ban fanfiction and conventions and shit.
Meanwhile Japan figured out that you could capture the fandom pretty easily, sell them infinite low quality figurines and posters, and turn them into a massive army of free advertisement and hype. Nowadays it’s standard practice to do this stuff, although the American version of it ups the ante from the Japanese version, with fandoms developing not just for specific shows and characters but franchises and entire companies.