Who Decides: Strawberry Shortcake

Now I have a daughter and she adores Strawberry Shortcake. I don't know how it happen and neither does my wife, but it happened. Well, if you didn't know this her (Strawberry's) look has changed over the years and I will take a quick look at the different designs. This actually would have fit in well with my post on comic book costume redesigns, but whatever.

I remembered Strawberry Shortcake from the 80's. She kind of looked like an old grandma, yet she was young. It wasn't a flattering look at all. I'm sure that the kids loved it at the time, but the big puffy hat, short yarn like hair. Man, I don't know how my wife liked this. She had a definite country style going on, but it was the 80's I guess. But it became iconic. The striped green tights, the apron diamond pattern, the puffy hat. It became the look.

Enter the 90's.

Strawberry Shortcake was no longer the dress wearing grandma from the 80's she was a cool hip girl who wore jeans because we all know that wearing dresses in the 90's was

uncool. And what better way to make Strawberry cool again by taking away one of the most identifiable things about her...her dress. So no dress, no green tights, no puffy hat...this is just some generic cartoon character. And it's nice that they even managed to give her worse hair

than her 80's style. Besides the strawberry on her hat how are to supposed to know who this is?

Now there was sort of an updated version of this Strawberry in the mid 2000's, I guess. I'm no expert. This was a little better. First off, the jeans are gone and the dress is back. Another plus is the hair actually looks good. But that's where it ends. No green tights, no apron. Once again, without that strawberry on her hat, how do you know who it is? This is nothing like the original iconic figure.

Enter 2009. This is how you do a redesign. You take all the iconic elements from the original and update them.

Much like the Ben Reilly Spider-Man suit. I still say if that suit was introduced with Peter Parker and not during that horrible Clone Saga, we would have a new Spider-Man suit...but I just got off topic.

Look at how much it mirrors the original. Dress...check. Green tights...check. Puffy hat...check. Diamond pattern...check. It has it all. And right away you are connected with who it is. Not only is the look iconic, but the hat looks like a strawberry!
I am glad that my daughter actually likes this version of Strawberry Shortcake. It is by far the best version and really stays true to the original look. We picked her up a dvd of the 90's Strawberry Shortcake and she told us quickly that this wasn't Strawberry Shortcake...too funny.

I know this post seems a little out of place, but it has been weighing on me for about 4 months now. While getting the pictures for the post I found this one which shows the looks through the years. Pretty interesting.

The 2007 one bothers me a bit because I can't really find anything else but that picture. The design looks close to the one up above from the mid 2000's, but she has pants on again. It's also interesting to see the one thing that connected the first 3 designs was the strawberries on the hat, whereas the new design brought the puffy hat back, but turned the little strawberries into little seeds.

That's it. Enough of this, my wife will probably make fun of me for posting something like this here.