Strawberry Shortcake Needs To Cut Down On The Sugar, Kthnx
12 June 2008, 9:50 AM. By Alex Alvarez
We were obsessed with Strawberry Shortcake as a little Guanababy. So it saddens us to see she’s bought a one-way ticket on the Pixie-Stix Express to Hoochieville. Her pimp, American Greetings Properties, saw that Strawberry Shortcake wasn’t connecting with present-day baby prostitutes, so they decided to give her a makeover and flush our entire childhood down the toilet. The Peculiar Purple Pieman is having a really good cackle over this in his Problematic Puce Pony-Play chatroom:
Strawberry Shortcake, part of a line of scented dolls, now prefers fresh fruit to gumdrops, appears to wear just a dab of lipstick (but no rouge), and spends her time chatting on a cellphone instead of brushing her calico cat, Custard.
That kitten is going to look straight up haggard if she doesn’t brush it. Irresponsible! Why do toys targeted at young girls have to be obsessed with makeup or looking pretty? Strawberry Shortcake’s look was iconic to the point that it wasn’t remarkable. What was noteworthy was her personality, her friendliness, her ingenuity. But, you know. Those things aren’t as cool as a pink cellphone and lipstick (but no rouge, you know, because then she’d be a total whore). But American Greetings isn’t the only company that she’s making nostalgia-laden cartoon characters a bunch of shallow idiots:
Warner Brothers hopes to “reinvigorate and reimagine” Bugs Bunny and Scooby-Doo through a new virtual world on the Internet, where people will be able to dress up the characters pretty much any way they want. American Greetings is dusting off another of its lines, the Care Bears, which will return with a fresh look this fall (less belly fat, longer eyelashes).
And 4Kids Entertainment, which licenses the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, will revive them next year in new video games, where they will have more muscles and less attitude.
Care Bears are supposed to be chubby! Who wants to cuddle up next to a skinny-ass bear? Or an adolescent turtle that’s been made to more closely resemble a steroid-abusing simpleton? How funny, also, that the characters designed to cater to young girls are slimmer and those meant for young boys have bulked up.
We realize times change but we’ve already got enough Bratz dolls and versions of Vice City to make us hate children and the people who market to their parents. Please don’t bring Rosita Fresita into this. Leave Strawberry Shortcake alone!!! She’s a human!!!
(8) 
Post Your Comment
Did you know you can now share a link, image or video?
Click to submit your own notas.
I guess nobody is safe from the high-waisted pant trend.
Frutillita was perfect the way she was. Freckles, chubby cheeks, curly hair and all.
I don’t know. Weren’t we always told in hs that the geeks would inherit the earth? Now it seems that the jocks and cheerleaders are the ones holding the reigns of power, selling watered-down sex to the young’ns.
Or, weren’t the boomers the peacenik hippies whose values of love and acceptance and blah blah the ones who ended up controlling the ad agencies who promoted the gilded but empty shell of a base consumer culture? This is why I despise them for romanticizing their youth. It was a fad and meant nothing. It’s easy to be revolutionary when you’re privileged and doing it for fashion, when there was nothing glamorous attached for the people who were really working for equality.
Ok that thought was a little disjointed. Sorry. But doesn’t anyone else resent them for representing their youth as the halcyon days of the 20th century? It burns me to think those posers think they’re better than us.
But back to the post! All this is enough to make me miss the 80’s, looking now through the lens of the aughts. It was a bad time for non-whites (Junot Diaz described it as being “assimilation time”), so I don’t mean in that way. Personally I miss the aspect of the 80’s where androgyny was hot. Yeah, I said it. Women wore short hair and eyeliner, men wore long hair and eyeliner and EVERYONE WORE EYELINER! ::throws hands into the air::
Hyper-sexual femininity and masculinity was present but it wasn’t uncaged the way it is in this decade. And I don’t mean to imply there wasn’t misogyny. But not everything for girls had to be polished and exposed and bathed in glitter. I just lament that I’ve got to raise my kid in this era of porn culture.
And if you read that novel, let me shake your hand. I tried to stop in the middle of it, but it was like going down a oiled hill in roller skates. There really was no good way to stop.
oh my this makes me sad.
=(
me too, i like strawberry shortcake as she was. so does my little sister.
she’s not dressed like a tart (hah!) and thankfully, she’s also not dressed like she’s an extra on little house on the prairie. it’s a sensible outfit. she looked a bit plump when she was wearin all the crinoline. she’s not vicky beckham thin!
I guess the relaxer in the curls is to suggest that looking slutty at 5 years old is alright. Creepy.
I had a huge Straubery Shortcake-themed birthday cake for my 3rd birthday. Good times.