‘My Little Pony”s Meghan McCarthy Will Head Storytelling at Hasbro

My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic executive producer Meghan McCarthy has been upped to a new executive position—head of storytelling—for Hasbro Studios’ Girl brands.

This will come as a surprise to few, given the broad demographic reach and geek credibility of the rebooted My Little Pony cartoon series, now in its fifth season on Discovery Family network, which has proven to be a success with toy-buying kids and in-joke adults.

McCarthy will execute a multi-year strategy developing stories and characters from Hasbro’s portfolio, and shepherd the latest My Little Pony animated feature film arriving in 2017. She’s already on record as writing and producing the hot property’s other films from 2013-2015 — including My Little Pony: Equestria Girls, Equestria Girls: Rainbow Rocks, and Equestria Girls: Friendship Games — which variously struggled to replicate the cheeky, cross-demographic charm of the television series.

But McCarthy’s magic touch on television, which also includes scripting episodes for Cartoon Network’s Foster’s Home For Imaginary Friends and Disney’s Fish Hooks, is creating positive returns on investment.

“Having worked closely with Meghan during the past four years and seen first-hand what an adept storyteller she is—clearly one of the best in our business—words cannot express how thrilled we are that she will be joining our organization,” said Stephen Davis, executive v-p, chief content officer, in a written statement. Hasbro will rely on McCarthy’s “ability to create expansive worlds and characters across our entire portfolio of brands” including digital, television, and live-action and animated films.

With this promotion to the management ranks, McCarthy now becomes the only animation exec popular enough to be recreated as an avatar in WWE 2K14: