STRAWBERRY SHORTCAKE
© AMERICAN GREETINGS CORP
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Strawberry Shortcake
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Strawberry Shortcake
Created by: Muriel Fahrion
Country of origin: United States
Number of seasons: 3
Number of episodes: 50
Production Running time: 25 minutes
Release Original release: March 1, 1980 - September 11, 2008

Strawberry Shortcake is a licensed character owned by Iconix Brand Group, originally used in greeting cards and expanded to include dolls, posters, and other products. The Strawberry Shortcake properties also include a toy line of the character's friends and pets.

History
The original design of Strawberry Shortcake and her cat, Custard was done in 1977 by Muriel Fahrion during her time as a greeting card illustrator at American Greetings' Juvenile & Humorous card department. Fahrion then designed a subsequent 32 characters for Those Characters From Cleveland (American Greetings' toy & licensing design division).

In 1979, toy manufacturer, Kenner Products, licensed the character and released the first Strawberry Shortcake doll. At the time, Strawberry Shortcake resembled a typical rag doll, complete with freckles, a mop of red yarn curls, and a bonnet with strawberry prints on it. Cindy Mayer Patton and Janet Jones designed the other later characters of the classic Strawberry Shortcake line. Lynn Edwards was the editor of the line and developed the personality profiles as well as the story line and philosophy. The first doll was a rag doll designed by Muriel Fahrion and created by Susan Trentel, Fahrion's sister.

The Strawberry Shortcake line of characters each had their own fruit or dessert themed name with clothing to match, and they each had a dessert or fruit named pet. Like the Strawberry Shortcake doll, all the other characters' dolls had hair scented to match their dessert theme. The characters lived and played in a magical world known as Strawberryland.

During the 1980s, Strawberry Shortcake became a huge fad for young girls throughout the United States. At the time, there were many related products, such as sticker albums, clothing, a video game by Parker Brothers entitled Strawberry Shortcake Musical Match Ups for the Atari 2600, and numerous other products. Several TV specials were made featuring the characters, one each year between 1980 and 1985, when the fad had waned. Kenner produced no new dolls or toys thereafter.

In 2002, the franchise was revived again, this time with a revamped look by a different designer. Many strong licensing deals were made. A television series with new DVDs and VHSs (and in some markets, particularly those in Asia, Video CDs) were released. Soundtracks for the episodes were also released on CD at various intervals. DiC Entertainment was granted rights for producing the TV series. The company sub licensed the production of videos, DVDs and Video CDs of the Strawberry Shortcake series to 20th Century Fox Home Videos. 20th Century Fox subsequently licensed the production of these videos outside of the U.S. to various other licensees.

Bandai (along with KellyToy) was granted the manufacturing rights of the Strawberry Shortcake dolls and toys. For the first time in almost two decades, new video games were launched, produced by The Game Factory for Nintendo's Game Boy Advance and Nintendo DS. Educational CD-ROMs for the PC were also produced.

In 2006, Playmates Toys picked up the rights to manufacture and sell Strawberry Shortcake figurines. The line they produced was named ''A World of Friends'' and the doll ''Frosty Puff'' debuted in this new product line. Although a good deal of shuffling and redistribution took place concerning the pets of the re-launched Strawberry Shortcake characters, very few of the new dolls were actually merchandised with their respective pets.

A full length feature film, Strawberry Shortcake: The Sweet Dreams Movie, premiered in 2006 and was released on DVD in February 2007. The Playmates' new product line was met with mixed reactions from the series' fans; however, the line's public reception was generally negative. As a result, Playmates Toys lost the manufacturing rights to Hasbro, who began releasing new Strawberry Shortcake themed toys beginning in the fall of 2009, after American Greetings rebooted the franchise. Hasbro eventually lost the manufacturing rights to The Bridge Direct in early 2014. In February 2015, Iconix Brand Group acquired the rights to Strawberry Shortcake from American Greetings for $105 million.

1980s
Friends
List of Strawberry Shortcake characters
There is a bit of ''wiggle room'' in a few cases, between the introduction of a character, and their release as a doll. For instance, Raspberry Tart (the character) was introduced in 1980, with the first Strawberry Shortcake TV Special, alongside Huckleberry Pie, Apple Dumplin', etc., but was not released as a doll until the next year. The same is true of Strawberry Shortcake's nemesis, The Peculiar Purple Pie Man. Plum Puddin' also debuted in 1980, but would not get a doll until 1984, by which time the character had switched genders, and was now a girl. Moreover, with the exception of Apple Dumplin', Apricot, and The Purple Pie Man, none of the other characters would come packaged with pets (nor would most of them even be known to have pets) until the 1982 releases, when all the earlier released characters were re-issued with their animal friends. A couple of the characters weren't produced as dolls at all, namely T.N. Honey, Raisin Cane, and Baby Needs-a-Name, who was only made as a larger sized ''Blow-Kiss'' baby doll. Raisin Cane was introduced as the niece of villainess Sour Grapes in Issue #1 of Star Comics' (an imprint of Marvel Comics) short lived Strawberry Shortcake Comic Book, and, as far as is known, was never considered for any kind of commercial merchandising.