New little thing

 Strawberry Shortcake was a toy/greeting card line that came out in the very early 80s.

I was (or so I thought) too old for them (I was like 12) but I thought the dolls were cute. I did buy one of the OG Strawberry Shortcakes but I don't think I bought any other ones new.. (Maybe my Angel Cake was bought new, on clearance, some years later, once I was collecting dolls?)

Anyway, as I said: that was one of the things that, had it been around when I was a real kid, I would have wanted every doll in the line. In the 70s, when I was a kid, there were few "little girl" dolls - there was Barbie, who was kind of boring to me because I didn't care that much about clothes as a kid, and also it was the Malibu Barbie era where it was mostly "swimsuit" dolls, which doesn't work for a landlocked girl in snow country. And there were baby dolls, but having my own little brother, I knew babies were loud and messy and tended to require a great deal of attention, and so they didn't interest me.

But dolls representing girls my own age, or "fantasy" dolls, might have appealed. And Strawberry Shortcake was kind of both.

Over the years, they've tried "rebooting" her - the originals were very cutesy, sort of Raggedy Ann style, with little-girl dresses more like what a little girl in the 1920s or 30s would have worn. In the reboots, they were made more modern and some of the "fantasy" aspect (including "fighting bad guys") was downplayed - there was a version roughly contemporaneous with the G4 My Little Ponies cartoon where the main conflicts were the sort of minor interpersonal conflicts (like: misunderstanding what someone said, or feeling miffed at being "not invited" to a party where your invitation got lost in the mail) were the "enemies" to be fought. It was a blandish cartoon, and I guess the doll line didn't do that great. And I guess there was another reboot or two, one that made them more tweenish than little-kid. 

But I guess Gen-X nostalgia dollars are strong, and so periodically some company makes reproductions of the originals (most recently, "The Loyal Subjects," which I can tell whether or not it's a successor company to Basic Fun,, which did an earlier line of these - the originals were by Kenner, which is long-gone).

I have the main dolls - Strawberry, and Huckleberry Pie, and Orange Blossom (a Black doll, but she only really differs in skin tone; they all have the same mold). 

Then I heard they were coming out with Plum Pudding, who is an interesting character - in the original version, the character was a boy (and I JUST remember that from the old, old cartoon in the 80s) and then later resurfaced as a girl. 

(No, this being the 80s, it was not an attempt to sneak in a transgender character, though I suppose for good or ill some people who know that fact might "headcanon" it - for good, people saying "good for her!" and the like, for ill, some complaining about "indoctrination" or somesuch. Really it was just an unsuccessful character done away with and a new one created under the same name)

Anyway, the doll also wears glasses, which I like, as a glasses-wearer. So I ordered one:

Unlike the old ones, these are more poseable, with elbow and knee and wrist and I think ankle joints. But. The elbow joints pop-out easily (I had to push one lower arm back in) so I don't think I'll be moving her limbs that much. She comes with a little friend - Elderberry Owl (I had to look it up) and a comb, and a lunchbox and composition book (the old ones didn't have the lunchbox or book)

I really need to get a shelf and put it up for some of these small dolls I have scattered around, so I can keep them together and see them more regularly than having them boxed up or tucked away somewhere.