My initial experience with the show was... slightly different than most others.
Technically, the first that I heard of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic was from the VG Cats comic about it, which included some stuff from the VG Cats writer basically saying that the show is actually pretty good (the comic, ironically, was taken down due to backlash from bronies).
I ignored it, mostly because I didn't get the comic, and I mostly skimmed the thing written about how the show was good. The show really grabbed my attention when almost every single new thread on The Escapist was about it, and how it was actually really, really good.
At this point, most stories like this have a "I thought there was NO WAY a show about My Little Pony could be watchable yadda yadda yadda babby show yadda yadda yadda meant for little girls", you know the drill.
My response was actually more like, "Wow, a community full of geeky gamer nerds are excited about this new MLP... I'M a geeky gamer nerd! If the reaction is this huge, from The Escapist community no-less, there's probably something to this show".
So I watched the first episode, making sure not to let anyone know I was watching it (it was still My Little Pony), and... it was pretty darn good, which, at the time, was all it needed to be for me to get hooked. It was a show that, as "SEVERAL" individuals have pointed out to me in the past, was meant for younger girls, but the humor, characters, environments, art style, and the clever deconstruction and reconstruction of its own genre really made it work. For me to like it, it did not need to be any more revolutionary than "this is a show about a girly thing, but it is actually good".