80s Nostalgia Update

As a proud child of the 80s, news like this makes me feel…Hmm, good, bad…Skeptical is more like it:

CLEVELAND and LOS ANGELES, April 12 /PRNewswire/ -- American Greetings Properties, American Greetings entertainment and outbound licensing division, and DIC Entertainment (DIC), a leading global children's media company, announced today that an agreement has been finalized to launch educational and informational programming on the Saturday morning programming block on CBS. The Saturday morning line-up will showcase an all-new animated series featuring world-renowned favorite Care Bears(TM), an animated series starring the ever-popular Strawberry Shortcake(TM), plus an exciting new animated series called Sushi Pack.

Care Bears and Strawberry Shortcake will target children ages 4-8 and Sushi Pack will skew higher to children ages 6-11. All three series are scheduled to launch September 2007.

"We are excited about bringing the new look of Care Bears to another generation of kids, as well as introducing the brand new Sushi Pack and showcasing our timeless Strawberry Shortcake through this new programming," said Jeffrey Conrad, Senior Vice President, Creative for American Greetings Properties. "The initial feedback to the new, updated look of Care Bears has been overwhelmingly positive, and Sushi Pack has the potential to be a breakthrough property for us with its unique style, adventure and sense of humor."

"We have had a tremendous amount of success with American Greetings in re-launching Strawberry Shortcake, and DIC is thrilled to continue our relationship as we partner to introduce brand new entertainment from the classic property Care Bears, as well as the innovative new property Sushi Pack," commented Jeffrey Edell, President, DIC. "The new series will compliment our existing programming line-up this Fall on CBS and offer our viewers a broader range of programming options from pre-school to tween."

The Care Bears, everyone's favorite bears, filled with warmth, caring and humor, are back with an all-new animated series of delightful tales from Care-a-lot. The 52, 11-minute episodes will feature a fresh and contemporary twist on the classic property.

The new animated series Sushi Pack follows five crime-fighting pieces of sushi that protect Wharf City from over-the-top diabolical villains. The humor-filled, action-packed television treatment for Sushi Pack was written by animation legends Tom Ruegger and Nicholas Hollander, the Emmy(R)-winning writers/producers behind such animated hits as "Animaniacs," "Tiny Toon Adventures," and "Pinky and the Brain." The series, of 52, 11-minute episodes, is being co-produced by American Greetings Properties and DIC Entertainment.

My Personal Rundown
Care Bears: This property I could never get enough of as a kid. As an adult, I found it interesting to analyze the evolution of the property even as it was brought into the new millennium. Clearly, this one franchise as wonderful as this one has gone through more changes than a newborn infant’s diaper. I could pinpoint some of the differences between the DiC era and the Nelvana era back in the 80s to the changes already made in the Nelvana in the new millennium, but I wouldn’t want to bore you all with the details. I’ll just say that the initial rebirth of this franchise in the new millennium has been less than phenomenal (to me at least) due to the apparent need to reinvent the world of the characters. It seems strange to me that they had a recipe that once worked and decided to change that recipe just because they could. Now they’re changing it again.

What I’m trying to say is, too much change makes the baby go blind. Albeit the changes already made seem to make the franchise a shadow of it’s former greatness, changing it again sounds like bad news to me. And to think the changes are being put in place by DiC, the company that couldn’t bring the franchise to it’s fullest in the 80s (even though they have some of the best cartoons in TV history under their belt), that’s doubly bad news. And didn’t they just recently sell the Care Bears to SD Entertainment? I think so.

Strawberry Shortcake: Never watched it as a kid. While the Care Bears appealed to both genders, any little boy caught with one was branded a sissy. Any boy caught with Strawberry Shortcake would have been treated worse, no doubt, because it only targets little girls. But I acknowledged the franchise’s existence nonetheless and even when it was reborn with the other 80s franchises. And, I confess: I did, in recent years, watch one of the direct to video Strawberry Shortcake movies they cranked out lately. By my own free will and curiousity, mind you. And I once happened to catch an episode of the show one morning. PLEASE DON’T KILL ME! I was just curious.

Anyway, looking at it context, it’s a cute franchise for kids and thus should be given a chance to flourish. I’m no expert on the history of Strawberry Shortcake, but if I had little girls, I’d buy that stuff for them. No doubt.

Sushi Pack: There’s nothing nostalgic about this property for me whatsoever. It’s a new franchise, which means, of course, that it wasn’t around in the 80s. But in trying to understand what Sushi Pack was, I Googled “Sushi Pack” and the official website came up first. Immediately, the first thing that came to mind was “Super Robot Monkey Team Hyperforce Go!” Although it would be unfair to claim that they were ripping off another franchise, I’ll go, instead, with the summary on the website, that they are crime-fighting, adolescent pieces of Sushi who happen to look too kyoot! Although I know have to beg the question, what kind of evil does mutant sushi battle against? Food from major fast food restaurants? The westernization of Japanese food? Perhaps they fight for the rights of sushi everywhere to have the right amount of additives? I gotta watch the show now just to find out.