Bug report

Bug summary

• pyplot.subplots from matplotlib version 2.0.0 is returning ax as a matplotlib.axes._subplots.AxesSubplot object instead of an Axes objects specified in the documentation (see http://matplotlib.org/).
• Note: matplotlib.axes.Axes objects are much more useful to work with than matplotlib.axes._subplots.AxesSubplot objects.

Code for reproduction

• A minimum code snippet:

# Paste your code here
from matplotlib import pyplot as plt
f, ax = plt.subplots()
type(ax)
print type(ax)

Actual outcome

# The console output:
<class 'matplotlib.axes._subplots.AxesSubplot'>

Expected outcome

• According to the documentation, the returned ax should be a matplotlib.axes.Axes object.

Matplotlib version

• Matplotlib version: 2.0.0
• Python version: 2.7.12
• Platform OSX (10.11.6)
• Matplotlib and Python installed via anaconda