More on Strawberry Shortcake from the Early Eighties
In both Each Sold Separately* and Action Figures Not Included* I touched on the importance of Strawberry Shortcake as a brand. The line, many may not realize, was one of Bernie Loomis’ greatest achievements in a spectacular career, and the more that I dig into the past the more bits of interesting history I manage to uncover.
This 1983 newspaper article, written by Patricia Lowry, covers Strawberry Shortcake, Care Bears, and Smurfs, and highlights the growth of brand licensing and merchandising. I love stuff like this, including the mention of Kenner passing on E.T.:
“While Kenner may be riding the crest of the Strawberry Shortcake wave, it may have missed the boat on E.T. The big toy company turned away Steven Spielberg’s representatives in 1981 when they were looking for a manufacturer for the E.T. doll. Kenner thought it too much of a long shot.”
Looks to me as if Kenner called this one right. Failing to have the E.T. license wasn’t all that much of a loss for the company.
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Maybe they had a bad case of FOMO after not getting E.T., cause it seems like they made toys for everything after that, haha! Some of them definitely made sense as kid’s toys, but I still remember getting a Kevin Costner Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves action figure when the movie was out. Great fun at the time, but in hindsightit wasn’t the most toyetic of the blockbusters in the early 1990s.