Hasbro was unbelievably retarded in the 90s, that's why.
They created My Little Pony Tales, but for some stupid reason they released the cartoon only in the US and completely skipped on the toys there, while they released the toys only in the UK and completely skipped on the cartoon there, while allowing dubbing of the show only to be made if it was on DVD (that's how it got a mexican and a danish dub, but the mexicans didn't give a fuck and aired it on TV)
Hasbro later released they were fucking retarded after seeing how Tales was doing really well in America, but since there were no toys to sell they got fucked, so the franchise got stuck in a financial limbo until the late 90s with G2 where, for another weird reason, they believed it was the cartoons the ones that made the toys sold poorly and that they would do well on their own (since that's what happened in Europe, and that's why most of the G2 you can see for sale are in spanish, greek, and other european languages), so they released G2 with 0 advertising and 0 marketing in America, and it almost ended killing the franchise here.
G3 sucks and all of that, but they had the genius idea to create the cartoon exclusive to DVDs and include it alongside the toys since at the time everyone loved DVD players and it was the new huge thing, so it made the toys sell like crazy and the generation became even more profitable than G1 ever was.