Strawberry Shortcake stated as a greeting card character in the late 1970s, originally designed by Barbi Sargent a contracted freelancer working for American Greetings, the card company. One of my favourite scholarly quotes that I return to often is Dan Cook’s statement that “children’s culture makes capitalism hum over the long haul.” When I look at Strawberry Shortcake during the 1980s, this statement is revealed to be true. I also think about the deep entanglements between children’s toys and media, and the massive proliferation of consumer culture that has taken place since the 1980s. With the lens of being a scholar in the field of children’s consumer culture, I look back on this moment and recognize it for the radical neoliberal shift in consumer culture that it was. We had a Strawberry Shortcake board game and we even wore Strawberry Shortcake Underoos underneath our Toughskin jeans. In our shared bedroom we had a Strawberry shaped doll house and a box full of colourful outfits for her desert named friends such as Apple Dumplin’, Orange Blossom and Huckleberry Pie. We watched the show every Saturday morning, we asked for the strawberry scented doll and all her “berry nice friends” for our birthday presents. Growing up in suburban Canada in the 1980s, my sister and I loved Strawberry Shortcake. But instead as a consumer, assumed to be a white, middle class, able bodied, heterosexual girl, whose value is based on her ability to purchase products.” “The girl is “understood” purely in market terms, not as a citizen with collective needs and desires, not a complex heterogenous category with diverse experiences of girlhood based on class, race, ethnicity, sexuality, ability, etc.
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