Thats kinda understandable. Mlp was totally crap back in those days, it didn't become good till Lauren Faust was put in charge of rebooting the series. One thing she does in cartoons she ran is realized that parents have to watch these kids shows too, so she tries to make her shows appeal to the adult parents as well as the kids. The current gen of mlp did that more than they expected and ended up getting a large adult following. Above is a clip from power puff girls (another show she created) that illustrates what i mean by appealing to adults as well as kids.