To be fair, quite a few things changed with the fourth generation of MLP, Friendship is Magic. For one, Lauren Faust turned it from a toyline with advertising cartoons into an animated show with toys as merch. Most people don’t know and still see the show and the movie as advertising, but I guess it works in certain countries (it didn’t in Germany where Filly had shown up just when MLP was in the sucky G3.5, so especially younger mothers believe that MLP is a Filly knock-off). The bronies do know and love the show for it, although they dislike most of the official Hasbro toys for not being “show-accurate” enough.
The MLP fandom itself is split in two. For one, there’s the traditional MLP fandom, the collectors, mostly Gen-X-ers, a few Millennials, almost exclusively female. They’re only in it for the official toys and collecting them, largely regardless of generation (although there’s a preference for G1 and the general dislike for G3.5). They have their own conventions called PonyCons which are nothing like your typical pop culture convention; they’re mostly about displaying collections.
The bronies are fully separate from that and basically a second fandom. They’re only interested in G4 and there only in the animated material, i.e. the show Friendship is Magic, the 2017 movie, more or less also the Equestria Girls films and animated specials. Toy-wise, only few things that Hasbro made caught their interest. They’d rather buy more show-accurate licensed products like the Funko vinyls or the 4DE plushies, and they’re even more likely to spend their money on hand-crafted fanmerch, shelling out hundreds of dollars for one single commissioned one-off plushie.
In the earlier years, there has been some animosity between collectors and bronies. The collectors thought the bronies were G4 collectors and wondered why they started a new fandom instead of joining the collectors’ ranks. Many bronies, in turn, openly said that any and all MLP generation before G4 sucks, thereby dismissing FiM’s own legacy and insulting those many collectors who had grown up with G1.
Over the years, the bronydom has matured, the differences were put aside, and we’ve gotten to a point at which the older collector scene is partly piggybacking on the newer bronydom: PonyCons are now co-organized by bronies who have gathered more experience with fan conventions in less than ten years than the collectors have in decades. They’ve also got larger attendances than ever because they’re one half brony conventions now. Vice versa, some brony conventions have welcomed the collector scene, but except for a few merchants, nothing much had come out of this AFAIK.
Now let me go back to the early Disney Afternoon shows.
One reason why they’ve largely faded into obscurity is because they’ve never had such big fandoms. The reason for that, in turn, is because these shows were on air before the World Wide Web showed up, even before the Usenet was opened to the general public. By the time online fandoms became a thing, DuckTales and Gummy Bears fans had largely moved on (including to Don Rosa comics in the case of DuckTales fans).
Still, these two titles seem to be remembered more fondly. Especially DuckTales was lucky that its memory was somewhat kindled by on-going comic releases in the Disney Ducks Universe. The 30th anniversary reboot is basically fan animation with partly the same target audience as the original, DuckTales for grown-ups while still being sincere.
CDRR and TaleSpin were kind of on the edge. CDRR was taken off syndication and therefore North American free TV just when AOL opened the Usenet to everyone, so it didn’t have that much of a chance to fade away. As for the number of fans, I dare say that many Rangerphiles remained in the closet. And I can see the reason: If you say you love CDRR, and someone asks you why, would you speak out the truth, namely that you’ve got a crush on Gadget?
Also, CDRR was the first time Disney took legacy characters and retooled them whereas Gummi Bears was 100% original, and DuckTales stuck to Carl Barks’ proven recipe. I think many weren’t happy about that which cost the show a number of viewers.
That said, if I look at the early days of Disney Afternoon fandom, it’s interesting to see how it was actually driven by Rangerphiles. The editor of the W.T.F.B. zine? A Rangerphile. The founder of the DAFT mailing list? A Rangerphile. I think CDRR even accounted for most of the threads on alt.fan.disney.afternoon. The CDRR fanbase may have been smaller than those of DuckTales, Gummi Bears, Darkwing Duck and maybe even TaleSpin, but it was more active.
Still, a lot of time has passed since then, and these shows are nothing but a distant childhood or youth memory for everyone but the most dedicated fans. This, I guess, is why the Rangerdom hasn’t died out: We had quite a number of them. And we had the fan creativity to sustain the fandom in times when the show wasn’t available anymore except to those who paid for it. We’re lucky to have had that string of now-classic fanfics to keep the fandom alive, Rhyme & Reason, Chip Noir Dale’s Rescue Rangers, the Nowakverse, Of Mice and Mayhem etc., even though some say that those typical 90s’ and 2000s’ dark fics which were especially wide-spread in the Rangerdom didn’t age well.
And it also helps that the earlier days of the Rangerdom are well-preserved while they’ve gone completely forgotten in most other fandoms. How many cartoon fandoms can still cite a fic that was completed 27 years ago as one of their best? How many fandoms in general have a Rangerillion? This is why the Rangerdom still exists: We’ve got something to look back at, and we’ve got something good to still entertain us with, even if hardly any new fanfic is being written.
Now, the Disney cartoons fandoms that really got big right away were different ones. Gargoyles and Kim Possible were two of the first shows which hit the screens when bulletin boards had become a thing, thereby facilitating the creation of online fan communities. Unlike Fox, Disney didn’t have them bulldozed by their legal departments for the tiniest IP breach. The Gargoyles fandom died out quickly, but not due to fading away. It was because Disney let the fans down and ended the show with an unresolved cliffhanger. That’s fanfic fuel, but it was clear that Disney didn’t care for that franchise. Also, Kim Possible had appeared, and I guess many Gargoyles fans jumped bandwagons. Kim Possible was Disney’s first and only show to be un-canceled due to fan demands, and unlike Gargoyles, that was when the show had actually been concluded.
Kim Possible lost a lot of fans, too, sure. Some moved on from cartoons, some jumped bandwagons again, probably especially when Codename: KND was hit by the Cerebus Syndrome. But even the one who ended up a horse-famous pegasister on YouTube never lost touch with her past. And Kim Possible managed to stay relevant. It had a long enough run, it aged well, and now we’ve got a live-action movie.
CDRR has always had its problems here. As active as the Rangerdom used to be, it was never big enough to really be recognized from outside, especially when the other Disney Afternoon fandoms didn’t have to piggyback on it anymore because they either faded away or managed to stand on their own feet with the arrival of the Web 2.0. As the Acorn Café hides from Google, the Rangerdom is hard to find, so many believe that the CDRR fandom equals Gaykoslavie, that Russian Gadget cult. Ain’t worth making a sincere CDRR reboot for them.
Those who do dig deeper and manage to find the Café are convinced that the Rangerphiles are a tiny bunch of ultra-conservative, ultra-religious homophobes because that’s the impression the Café gives. Ain’t worth making a sincere CDRR reboot for these either, right? I mean, if there were people who aren’t like this, they’d rebel against the Café’s rules, now, wouldn’t they? Nope. No, they wouldn’t. Not only do they have friends at the Café, including supporters of the Café’s strict rules, but for as long as CnD Online wasn’t around, the inevitable ban from the Café would have meant bye-bye to the Rangerdom as a whole because there was nowhere else to go. You could either speak out for homosexuals or be an active member of the CDRR fandom. Pick one.
For one, many aspiring Rangerphiles are repelled from the Café’s outward appearance as ultra-religious and openly homophobic. Others who manage to see that not everyone there is like that are repelled by the rules. This is also why the Rangerdom is so tiny and insignificant: It didn’t have much of a chance to grow since 2005 because it drove away so many new potential members. The lack of fresh blood is also why the Rangerdom’s fansite infrastructure is crumbling.
And again, the Rangerdom as it looks like now isn’t worth making a sincere CDRR reboot for, and that’s not because the Rangerphiles expect something at the scale of Rhyme & Reason. It’s a wonder we got the Boom! comics with all their fan-pandering. And I’m not sure if I’d be surprised if the movie flipped a proverbial bird at the fandom, although I rather expect it to ignore it altogether.
Lastly, it’s sad to say that, but the most cringeworthy members of a fandom are always those whom the general public sees first and foremost, no matter which fandom it may be. And it’s them whom the general public takes for what all fans are like. This is nothing new. Those unkempt übernerds commonly known as “Trekkies” are generally seen as representative for all Trekkers. The Böhse Onkelz fanbase is still 100% neo-Nazis (truth be told, most of them are neo-Nazis because hardly anyone else would admit being an Onkelz fan for fear of being lumped together with the Nazis). If you like any kind of anime or even manga, you’re a weeaboo. And As We All Know™, all Rolling Stones fans are one-percenters who regularly demolish concert venues.