Comment Re:It would be just as funny with someone else... (Score 1) 496
Before I reveal the SS secret, I'd like to defend myself first (as what I know about SS is way too much for the average "I remember when" story). I am a film major in University and spent years working in a video rental store. Two of my very good friends still work at rental stores. I spent last summer working in a toy store. I also looked at the official SS website and a few fansites when I googled SS trying to find if that was how American Greetings found the PA comic.
Right, now to unveil the mystery...
Strawberry Shortcake is not as obscure as you would actually think. Despite no longer being on television, she lives a fairly healthy life in other mediums. SS has been revamped for the new millenium, although not to the extent of what the boys at PA did to her. She is now a sweet little girl who happens to live in a Strawberry Patch, as opposed to the puffy confection she was in the 1980's. There are three or four childrens videos out featuring Miss Shortcake (and yes, the box smells like Strawberries). As far as I'm aware, SS is available in the US, Canada, and possibly Great Britain. She is also incarnate in children's books, and the inevitable party favours (which is where American Greetings comes in, I assume). You can buy cards, balloons, hate, streamers, cake decorating kits, etc etc featuring SS and her friends.
I'm begining to think that the issue American Greatings has with PA is the fact that, as this site as shown in spades, the people who were first familiar with SS have grown up and forgotten her. Her existence today is only known by those who are either little girls between the ages of 3-6 who actually watch those videos, or the parents who buy them. For many of us, seeing the PA comic was a moment of "Hey, I remember her!" but many children out there still know SS, and their parents are (most likely to their very great annoyance) familiar with her as well. With SS's relative obscurity to the adutlt world, American Greeting has a valid concern that children who might be looking online for their favourite scented cartoon character might stumble upon the little S&M scene PA provided for us (and I think my costume for Rocky Horror '03 will be PA inspired. It was a fun comic) and have the shock of a lifetime. Now, I don't think this would have happened were American Greeting to have kept their mouths shut and let sleeping comics lie. But now with the wide number of mirror comics out there, loudly broadcasting their possesion of the "banned" comic for the world to see, I think the odds of a poor child saying "Mommy, what is Strawberry Shortcake doing to Plum Pudding?" have greatly improved.
I think I digress.
The mystery of why PA chose Strawberry Shortcake is they either A) remember her or B) have been in contact with a child or a parent who is familiar with her newer incarnation.
But why would they choose her, you ask? SS has something that modern childrens cartoons, and even the older fairy tales such as Little Red Riding Hood does not. SS has perfect innocence and girlishness. Fairy Tales were created as moral stories to frighten children into being good. Modern cartoons have that feminist element providing at least one strong female character in every show. SS was, in the early 1980's, free of feminism. She simpered, she smiled, she was a complete airhead and was named after something that requires both Sugar and Spice in the recipie. SS was the epitome of sweet, wholesome, Leave-It-To-Beaver, Malibu Stacy (Simpson's answer to Barbie) girlishness. She didn't have a cruel bone in her body and would never dream of playing with the boys or prooving herself to be just as good as them. And here we have a corset-ed Miss Shortcake laying into her dear friend Plum Pudding with a riding crop and her sweet kitty Custard is now a ravenous beast on the hunt for human blood. Quite the effective contrast, really.
This has become rather long. I'm terribly sorry I've babbled on so much.
