Strawberry Shortcake

Strawberry Shortcake
An original Strawberry Shortcake poster
First appearance	1979
Created by	Muriel Fahrion
Information
Gender	Female

Strawberry Shortcake is an American brand owned by Iconix Brand Group, originally used in greeting cards and expanded to include dolls, posters, and other products. The Strawberry Shortcake properties also include a toy line of the character's friends and pets. In addition, the franchise has spawned television specials, animated television series, and films.

The original design of Strawberry Shortcake and her cat, Custard was done in 1979 by Muriel Fahrion during her time as a greeting card illustrator at American Greetings' Juvenile & Humorous card department. Fahrion then designed a subsequent 32 characters for Those Characters From Cleveland (American Greetings' toy & licensing design division).

In 1979, toy manufacturer, Kenner Products, licensed the character and released the first Strawberry Shortcake doll. At the time, Strawberry Shortcake resembled a typical rag doll, complete with freckles, a mop of red yarn curls, and a bonnet with strawberry prints on it. Cindy Mayer Patton and Janet Jones designed the other later characters of the classic Strawberry Shortcake line. Lynn Edwards was the editor of the line and developed the personality profiles as well as the story line and philosophy. The first doll was a rag doll designed by Muriel Fahrion and created by Susan Trentel, Fahrion's sister.

The Strawberry Shortcake line of characters each had their own fruit or dessert-themed name with clothing to match, and they each had a dessert- or fruit-named pet. Like the Strawberry Shortcake doll, all the other characters' dolls had hair scented to match their dessert theme. The characters lived and played in a magical world known as Strawberryland.

During the 1980s, Strawberry Shortcake became a huge fad for young girls throughout the United States. At the time, there were many related products, such as sticker albums, clothing, a video game by Parker Bros. entitled Strawberry Shortcake Musical Match-Ups for the Atari 2600 [1], and numerous other products. Several TV specials were made featuring the characters, one each year between 1980 and 1985, when the fad had waned. Kenner produced no new dolls or toys thereafter.