This week's review is a little different from what I normally write. I am going to look at a series of Strawberry Shortcake dolls, focusing on how the dolls have changed over the years as the brand license moved from company to company. What inspired me to write this retrospective review? Well, first of all, the Strawberry Shortcake license very recently changed hands for the fifth time. Hasbro, which had been manufacturing the dolls and toys since 2009, passed the torch to The Bridge Direct in 2014. I have been looking at the new Bridge Direct dolls in the stores for a few months now, trying to decide if I like them and wondering if a comparison to Hasbro would be fun. The thing is, I don't actually know much about Strawberry Shortcake, and so I kept postponing my review, thinking that I couldn't really do the subject any justice.
How can I be a child of the 80s and not know anything about Strawberry Shortcake, you might ask? Well, that gets at my second motivation for writing this review--and certainly the most powerful. I still vividly remember a day during my childhood when I was shopping at a department store with my family. On that day I saw a small display of Strawberry Shortcake dolls, and badly, badly wanted the Blueberry Muffin doll. I loved her blue hair and couldn't believe that she might actually smell like blueberries (at this time in my life, scratch-and-sniff stickers and those smelly Mr. Sketch markers were the best things ever, so a fragrant doll was like perfection). I wasn't allowed to have the Blueberry Muffin doll that day, and so there's been a small, obstinate, foot-stomping piece of me that's wanted it ever since.
So...for this review I bought all of the Blueberry Muffin dolls! Well, not actually all of them, but a representative sample from each of the big companies that has held the license. Because there have been six different incarnations of Blueberry Muffin since her debut, there's a lot to cover. For that reason, I will post in two parts--starting with the 1979 first edition doll made by Kenner and working my way forward through time until I get to The Bridge Direct doll that came out last year:
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Blueberry Muffin dolls by The Bridge Direct, 2015 (left) and Kenner, 1979 (right). |