Strawberry Shortcake

Create social media pages, sell them to your friends and family.

Or let's say you create a platform on Facebook called Strawberry Shortcake and you love Strawberry Shortcake.

Make candles, find vintage toys and sell that.

You can literally create a business around anything.

It's why I would not let you watch

Strawberry Shortcake.

Strawberry Shortcake.

I'm sorry.

Is that where you were going? That was where I was going.

And it's not because anything other than when Strawberry Shortcake had a problem, she sat on the curb and cried until somebody came and helped her with the problem.

And I did not want you to be like that.

And you are not like that.

Let's move on to Hubman and Chubgirl, a husband and wife stationery brand built on a shared love of drawing, journaling, and helping others find joy in creativity.

Their first license was Strawberry Shortcake, which launched in July this year.

Here's something that I found to be a great touch.

Instead of just using Strawberry Shortcake style guide artwork, Chubgirl, that's the wife and also the artist, hand redrew Strawberry Shortcake in their own signature illustration style.

So it didn't look like other licensed merchandise.

It looked like a Hubman and Chubgirl product that was infused with Strawberry Shortcake.

The results speak for themselves.

Pre-orders for early stock sold out on day one, resulting in them opening up more pre-sale batches.

Um-

I mean, I love Strawberry Shortcakes.

Like, I really wanted to be Strawberry Shortcakes when I was a kid, so I'm like, "Ah!"

Oh, is she the voice for that?

She's the voice of Strawberry Shortcake.

You kidding me?

Oh, see, I didn't know that.

Oh, I, when I was a child, Strawberry, I wanted to be her, I swear.

Congratulations on this.

You know, what does this character mean to you? What do you think Strawberry Shortcake represents to you and to everyone at WildBrain?

Oh, man.

So Strawberry Shortcake is definitely one of the crown jewels of WildBrain.

Um, it's one of our leading franchises.

It's obviously got an incredible almost 50-year history, so, um, for me, it feels super exciting for our team to kind of get to dive in and sort of bring this kind of reimagined character to life and sort of show, um, hopefully our existing fans and also some new ones kind of what we love about Strawberry Shortcake, which is, um, her incredible spirit, attitude, um, and all the things that have made her so beloved across so many generations.

She is a fantastic character.

I screened the first episode, which is really nice.

And so bec- they were kind of around our age, but they were girls, and so I kind of am familiar with what the popular girl toys and girl gifts were through the '80s just because of my cousins.

They were into C- they were into Cabbage Patch dolls, they were into Pound Puppies, they were into Munchy Cheese, and the Smurfs, and Strawberry Shortcake and all that stuff, so that's pretty awesome.

Oh, yes.

I had all the Strawberry Shortcakes.

My room smelled like a fruit salad.

[laughs]

Well, and I would say then it sounds easy on paper to use, you know, the brand's fan base to, you know, to scale the potential of it.

But at the same time, I think it's also a double-edged sword because you have a lot of brands that have a strong fan base and the fans may be, you know, a little bit... well, in a way, obsessed with the brand or maybe want something from the brand, expect something from the brand and maybe be disappointed if, you know, some things change or, you know, you had with Strawberry Shortcake, you know, rebranding recently.

We talked about nostalgia in Bologna and with Erin Morris.

And like, I think there is a risk in that, right? There is also maybe, okay, we'll try and do this, but what happens if it fails? So...

You also want it to be really relevant.

You need to think globally, and the brand will mean different things for different people in different markets.

With a brand like Strawberry Shortcake that's been around since the early 80s, you've also got multiple generations, and for them...

Gen Z versus Gen Alpha versus millennials, they're all going to think about the brand in slightly different ways.