Friday, March 25, 2011

Grab Bag Friday: Is it Morally Wrong to Give Strawberry Shortcake a Makeover?

A few weeks ago, in a fit of procrastination-induced nostalgia, Kevin and I did a little e-bay searching for a once-loved toy of mine. (Man, I loved that it was portable so I could set it up anywhere in the house and rock out to "Sugar, Sugar, oh Honey, Honey, you are my candy GIRL"...which I totally thought was a song SS and the gang had stolen from The Archies. My first foray into the world of music licensing. But that's a story for another day.)

Anyway, in our search, I found out that my dear Miss Shortcake has undergone quite the makeover in the last few years:

Poor Kevin had to witness quite a tirade. I was completely appalled. Does Strawberry Shortcake really need to be all glammed up like a teen Disney star with glossy long locks and that RIDICULOUS pageboy hat? Isn't this just one more step along the slippery slope of pushing young girls into sexualization at a younger and younger age? When Strawberry's makeover came out, the blog Shaping Youth, in fact, wrote up a very similar response.

This kind of thing makes me crazy. Take Dora the Explorer, for example. The whole reason we all love Dora is because she's a regular, albeit bilingual, kid. So why do we need tween Dora? Do we seriously want to teach girls that being a normal kid is okay as long as you eventually "blossom" into a thin, pretty kid with stylish clothes? (Below image from AboutFace):



Or is this all simply marketing common sense? Dora lovers grow up and and voila! a new product line now awaits. I can admit the old Strawberry Shortcake was outdated and frumpy and her shoes looked like potatoes. But still.

I had blissfully pushed this all to the back of my mind until yesterday when I followed Fuse #8's link to Peggy Orenstein's post about the new Trollz. The TrollZ, you ask? With a Z? Oh, yes.

These little guys:


Have been transformed into Trollz:

Sigh. What do YOU think?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sex it up Baby!
moooooooo... mooooooo... moooooo....

---
alan

Anonymous said...

Perhaps SS and Dora are trying to compete with the Bratz dolls. You know the Bratz dolls - they are the ones working the corner at the end of the doll aisles.