Strawberry Shortcake
Strawberry Shortcake ( the original English Strawberry Shortcake ) is a character and the franchise greeting card company American Greetings. Besides the use on greeting later dolls, posters, and many other products have been offered by the licensee; the product line has also been extended to the friends and pets the figure.
History
The figure and her cat was designed in 1977 by Muriel Werwigk, who worked at the time as an illustrator of greeting cards at American Greetings. 32 more characters were added, each was named with a alliterative name for a dessert or a fruit, wearing appropriate clothing and a named just after fruit or desserts pet had. Werwigk also designed a rag doll of Strawberry Shortcake, which was the starting point of a new product line. The hair of the dolls were provided with a suitable name for their fragrance.
American Greetings launched the products in 1980 with an advertising budget of 2.5 million U.S. dollars. A special feature was that the launch - was not prepared by comics or movies - unlike usual at the time. In the following years, Strawberry Shortcake became a fad of young girls in the United States. By 1983, over 1000 Strawberry Shortcake products were published, of scrapbooks about clothing to curtains and cereals, and later a computer game for the Atari 2600. Already before the brand was one year old, were goods worth 100 million U.S. dollars sold; on the third anniversary of the brand, they reached a value of over 1 billion U.S. dollars. The figures were given between 1980 and 1985 every year a cartoon. After that, the enthusiasm for the phenomenon subsided.
1991 tried the toy maker THQ, the brand with a revamped product line of Strawberry Shortcake dolls (Emily and five of her friends ) to revive, but the production was discontinued after one year.
Another restart was attempted in 2003. The figures have been re- designed and licensees especially in movies ( for example Strawberry Shortcake - Beerige Christmas) utilized on DVDs and VHS tapes as well as in computer games. From 2006 figures were also offered by the toy company Playmates Toys, and the animated film Strawberry Shortcake: The Sweet Dreams Movie was released in theaters. This reboot was granted greater success: Between 2003 and 2007, American Greetings gave the brand more than 300 licensees and took the figure of over 2 billion U.S. dollars ( about 2.5 billion by 2008 ). With the (1983 started ) Care Bears Strawberry Shortcake was the most successful brand of American Greetings. Penguin Books sold in the same period, 11 million books of 70 stocks with the character.
2008 gave Playmates Toys over the license for the manufacture of toys for Strawberry Shortcake at Hasbro. The new figures came simultaneously with the film Strawberry Shortcake Movie: Sky's The Limit out.