Thursday, November 12, 2009

The many faces of Strawberry Shortcake

When I was 5 Strawberry Shortcake looked like this, and I loved her.

She was cute and friendly and smelled like syrupy fake strawberries. My Mom bought me a box of Strawberry Shortcake cereal and I remember it was all mine and I ate it in like 3 sittings. The cereal tasted just like she smells. It was Yummy!

20 years later when Strawberry reappeared with the tag line make your best friend your daughter's best friend - which I bought hook, line & sinker - she looked like this.

They kept the same feel of her hat but I didn't like her tomboy clothes. I always thought she was more girly than that. When she reappeared she also had movies and the DVD's smelled just like that cereal, it was awesome!

Today I got paid to hem some pants and I bought George McD's for lunch and Strawberry Shortcake looked like this on the notepad in her Happy Meal.

I like that they have gone back to the dress and the diamonds and the green stripey tights. I'm not sure about the hat, long hair and big green eyes. She's looking more grown up and I don't know how I feel about that. The stamp that came with the notepad ... smells just like the cereal.

The moral of this story seems to be while they think they can "improve" on her image they can't improve on her syrupy fake strawberry smell and that is good enough for me.

4 comments:

Kathy said...

The original is still the best. At least they left her flat-chested!

An Wanna said...

Yeah but I bet that the new plastic dolls have to be made by new safety standards that don't keep them smelling good as long as the original one did. She smelled good for a really long time!

Zanne said...

I had Butterscotch, and she smelled good too! The new Shortcake does look a little too old, like a pre-teen. Maybe it's because girls are always trying to grow up too fast (pre-teens want to be teens, and little kids want to be pre-teens) and the marketers are trying to cash in on that. Meanwhile, we just want them to have a childhood!

Beki said...

I'm with Kathy that it's good they left her flat. And I don't like that she looks like a teenager, or the precious moments/anime/littlest petshop eyes, but I do think that the hat is good. Better than the second one, in fact!