The theme song is recognizable from the first four beats of music. My sisters and I grew up knowing those words and the entire theme sequence. Even past the original airing of 2003 to 2006, we loved watching Strawberry Shortcake. Even every once in a while now, we’ll break out the five DVDs we have and sing along to the theme while laughing at all the corny songs. But to a six-year-old hearing them for the first time, those songs are musical gold.
And yeah, I stopped watching when the reboot of this reboot, known as Strawberry Shortcake’s Berry Bitty Adventures, premiered, though it wasn’t because I was too old for it. When it started airing, I was only seven. No, I found less to look forward to with the new episodes. It wasn’t that the series was bad, though it was dramatically different from what I’d become used to. To this day, when I think about Strawberry Shortcake, I think about the version I have on DVD (yes, even before the food).
My question, upon discussing the series with some friends, was why were there dramatic changes? From my viewpoint, the old series was near perfection, especially in character design. Herein is the first difference I immediately focused on: Berry Bitty Adventures has only 11 human characters while Strawberry Shortcake had 25, 28 if the three adult characters are included. These characters alone hold so many of the differences.
Out of the 23 female, non-infant characters in Strawberry Shortcake, six have relatively short hair, 20 wear pants, three wear skirts or dresses over leggings, five are people of color and five are from other “countries.”
Out of the ten female characters in Berry Bitty Adventures, one has relatively short hair, none wear pants, meaning that all of them wear skirts or dresses over leggings, one is a person of color and there are no other “countries” discussed.
I noticed this first when I was discussing the series with my friend (hi Al, love you!). I’d gone back and looked at pictures from the old series, quickly realizing that I couldn’t remember a single character that wore a skirt or dress. A little deep-dive for nostalgia (and a 48-page self-made character archive) later, I learned more about the show than I ever knew before, including the original 80s series.
With Strawberry Shortcake, it’s easy to tell the characters apart, despite there being so many of them. While part of this is their color palettes being closely coordinated with their names (for example, obscure character Watermelon Kiss’s color palette being composed of light greens and pinks), all of their designs are truly diverse. There’s hardly any elements that they all share apart from the hats they all wear. When I compared this with the newer version, it was clear that one of the only things the characters had different were their color palettes. This is seen easily comparing Blueberry Muffin’s old and new designs as well as Orange Blossom’s old and new designs.
It’s possible, of course, that this could be attributed to the challenges of animating. Strawberry Shortcake was done with hand-drawn animation, after all; surely with CGI, animating different clothing designs would be easier. It does stand to reason that it would take more effort to animate skirts or dresses traditionally, since the illustrators would need to make sure the animation was smooth.
CGI is also easier to use, since the models of the characters are made once and all that needs to be done is manipulation. However, that means that there was room for more outfit and design changes, while that simply isn’t true of Berry Bitty Adventures. Over the five years it aired, Berry Bitty Adventures only had one outfit change, whereas Strawberry Shortcake had not only multiple outfit changes, but even episodes where the characters were mermaids and required drastic design changes. Especially given that the hand-drawn animations were more expensive and time-consuming to produce, this change is peculiar.
Even though the newer CGI animation flows more easily on-screen, it would’ve been so much easier to animate pants on the character models rather than skirts and dresses. Trends of the 2010s (including prep, hip-hop and hipster) include more skirts than the scene, hip-hop and indie trends of the 2000s. Fashion in the 2000s was tailored more for comfort than style like fashion nowadays. This could be why Strawberry Shortcake had children being less fashion-forward and more comfortable in their own clothes, individuality and uniqueness than the Berry Bitty Adventures characters, who all look essentially the same.
Speaking of individuality, the Berry Bitty Adventures characters are also reduced to serving more feminine roles in their society. For example, some of their jobs include running a bakery, salon, boutique and dance studio. Why is this such a big point to me? Because I can’t see myself as any of them. I saw myself more like the Strawberry Shortcake characters who were inventors, mechanics, sailors, athletes, scientists and farm workers. Of all the characters, there are two who run boutiques or salons and one actress. While some don’t hold those kinds of “jobs,” if they could be called that, the characters who did leave a lasting impact on me and my sisters, and surely the other young girls who watched the show growing up. In fact, when I reached out to my sister Julia on her opinion of all this, she replied, “Nina is taking this too far. She needs to stop overanalyzing our childhood. It’s just a cartoon.”
With the push to bring more girls into STEM professions, I find the lack of that representation in Berry Bitty Adventures odd at best. Characters like that are supposed to be role models for the younger population, and for role models, there certainly isn’t much diversity in them. Strawberry Shortcake at least had something for everyone, and the characters were almost more diverse in temperament. It’s easier to have a favorite character when they don’t act alike and don’t share the exact same views and hobbies. Representation of every type of child is in there somewhere, from brash and bold to meek and shy, perfectionist to workaholic.
So maybe it’s the countries it aired in that brought that to a screeching halt? On the contrary. While Berry Bitty Adventures aired in America, Latin America, Canada and France, Strawberry Shortcake aired in America, Southeast Asia and other Asian territories, UK and other European territories, France, Italy, Canada and Australia. A wider broadcast range would stand for more censorship, as is often seen with internationally airing shows (case in point: there are a handful of episodes of the Pokémon anime that are not available in some countries). Mix in different views on a woman’s role in society, and it would’ve been easier to have the characters reduced to what they are now. When I discussed this with my parents, my dad brought up the wider range of broadcasts as a possible reason the characters changed, but as my research has shown, that can’t be the reason.
My dad also started stating other reasons why the changes might’ve occurred, only to start supporting my position on why the changes shouldn’t have occurred. This was both funny and a waste of 30 minutes of my time.
Because I take things like this way too seriously, I decided to dive deeper and took the liberty of looking at several other influential children’s shows that debuted in the same timeframe as Strawberry Shortcake and Berry Bitty Adventures. Unfortunately, it isn’t as representative as I’d hoped, as I couldn’t use shows that were live-action or did not have a majority of human characters. Of the 32 shows I took as a sample, only 13 were left after that one elimination. However, it was still worth it to look at the different qualities of the shows. I divided the shows between when they debuted, either during the 2003-2006 reign of Strawberry Shortcake or the 2010-2015 airing of Berry Bitty Adventures. As there were only three shows that were human-focused and animated in the 2010-2015 period, please take this with a grain of salt. Or a heap.
I took a look first at which shows had more female characters in the main cast, as those are more traditionally advertised towards young girls. All four of those were more geared towards girls, as I expected. On the flip side, six shows had more boys than girls in the main cast. Most of these are meant for children of either gender or mostly boys, as I expected. The three remaining shows had the same number of boys and girls in the main cast. However, I know from personal experience that one of the shows, Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug and Chat Noir, is geared slightly more towards girls in my opinion, as of the two main characters, Marinette (the face behind superhero Ladybug’s mask) is the one most followed. This isn’t truly indicative in and of itself, especially as of the three from the 2010-2015 period, one show is in each category.
The second point I looked at is what I first thought about with Strawberry Shortcake: whether the characters wore pants or skirts. Seven of the shows, including all three from 2010-2015, have the majority of the female characters in pants. Might I add, that includes the Dora the Explorer reboot. That’s a feat in and of itself. Because all three shows from the 2010-2015 period are in this category, it would make sense for Berry Bitty Adventures to be as well, but that’s not the case, as I’ve mentioned before. This leaves the other six shows with the majority of female characters wearing skirts, and while there’s a tiny bit of wiggle room, it does make me wonder why they’re so close in number. Some of the shows in the former category were only one or two characters away from having the majority of their girls in skirts, which I personally find a bit alarming.
Even though I set this up myself, I wondered if it’s fair to compare the two eras this way. Since there were so few animated and human-centric shows from 2010-2015 compared to 2003-2006, I wasn’t sure it would even be fair to compare them. In and of itself, it shows a more skewed look towards shows for kids that are either live-action (such as Fetch! With Ruff Ruffman from 2006) or are based mainly around non-human characters (such as Littlest Pet Shop from 2012). The reason these were not included was to make sure all the shows had the main cast in common. If there were no human characters, or weren’t animated at all, there’s nothing to answer for CGI versus traditional animation in terms of what the characters wear.
Why do these changes even matter? Berry Bitty Adventures still caters to young girls, drawing them in with colorful characters and lessons on morals and friendship. And it’s a kids’ show, anyway; why does it matter to a college sophomore (though I originally wrote this as a high-school senior)? Well, as I said, I get way too into analyzing things like this, and my point is that it offers less to girls now.
I think we can all agree that the media children are exposed to can have an influence on their lives. I’ve learned a lot of what I learned from watching shows like Time Warp Trio and reading books like Percy Jackson. I learned from Strawberry Shortcake that I could be whatever I want to be, whether it be something “girly” like a salon owner, something traditionally masculine like a mechanic or even something nerdy like an owner of a bookstore or library. I learned that there are so many kinds of people in the world, it would be a shame for us to not celebrate our differences. Berry Bitty Adventures didn’t offer that to me, as the nerdiest character (the one most like me) was still fashion-conscious and we no longer looked alike. And as a kid, of course I wanted to have that connection with a character.Â
As it becomes more and more important for the representation of minority groups in media, Berry Bitty Adventures is not up to par with the standards set by Strawberry Shortcake. As I’ve already said, it’s so much easier to enjoy a show with a connection to characters you look like or have similar interests with. Because there is not the same diversity in Berry Bitty Adventures, it does not deal with the minority representation much, and does not serve the same connection. Good representation of minority groups is hard either way, since it can’t be only one character, or a couple of side characters who do not have speaking roles. This is why shows or books like Percy Jackson are critically acclaimed and generally likable; there are so many kinds of characters that no two are alike. This is unfortunately not the case with Berry Bitty Adventures.
The conclusion to draw here, other than the fact that I’m way too thorough when I am not given a word/content limit, is that the diversity of characters is one of the most important factors of a television show, especially one shown to kids. All kids want a connection to a character who looks or thinks like them. With a show like Berry Bitty Adventures, the most connections will be made by Caucasian and occasionally Black girls who are into more feminine professions and hobbies, whereas Strawberry Shortcake brought in more diverse audiences, both because of character design and a blend of traditionally masculine and feminine hobbies and professions.
I know this sounds like the “same old feminist agenda”, but watching a show I love turn into something that I despise watching does not feel good. I’m all for representation in the media, and I love seeing diverse characters. A lot of the shows and books I love are centered around representation and diversity, and when I hear about kids who are told by their parents they can only play with “girls” or “boys” toys, a little part of me dies. This is the first step to being put in the box of society and not being allowed to be who they want to be. I am who I am because my parents let me play with what I wanted to; my sisters and I, along with Strawberry Shortcake figurines, played with toy monster trucks. We had a whole bin full of them.
I’ll always encourage any kids I come across to do what they want, as Strawberry Shortcake teaches. Even if this means destroying the gender roles society dictates, I say go for it! Be who you are and stay true to yourself—an important lesson I learned from an episode of Strawberry Shortcake where the characters play dress-up and tell stories about their costumes. There’s a song in it with the lyrics “I can be whoever I want to be, whatever I want to see,” and when I was little, that hit hard. I feel like kids now, especially older kids, are too focused on being Instagram or TikTok perfect and mature, to the point where they really lose out on their childhood years in an attempt to be perfect and attractive.
In fact, I feel that social media’s influence is one that in essence prevents kids from being kids. That is an essay for another day. My immediate point here is that kids should be allowed to be kids, and that means enjoying themselves above all else. I know that so many more kids would be able to enjoy themselves watching Strawberry Shortcake as opposed to Berry Bitty Adventures. I only wish that the creators of Berry Bitty Adventures would’ve seen that.