The Impersistence of Memory I: The Hazy Memory of Snarkleberry Shortcake

I recently wrote a piece illuminating the high artistic merit of a certain low brow, adult oriented television show from my early childhood. I prefaced the article by talking about shows I had liked previously for their aesthetic qualities. This revived in me a curiosity about those shows and how accurately I truly remember their content. I wanted to do a little experiment, so I’ve decided to write a brief description of what I recall each show being about, followed by a detailed synopsis of an episode of each show, which I will watch only after composing the Phase I memory recaps. Thanks to the wonders of teh interwebz, this experiment is possible and convenient without the arduous task of hunting down various VHS tapes. It is important to note that I will be viewing most of these shows for the first time since my early childhood. Let’s start with the most memorable, most delicious, and most pinkest of all:

Strawberry Shortcake and Friends

What I think this show is about:

This show is about a little ginger girl and/or doll that loves strawberries so much that she decided to live in one. She eats a lot of cake and has a pink cat-bear named Custard. The implication is that the cat-bear is made of custard, and that is why Custard is its name. Moving on, she has friends that are also dessert-themed. There’s Blueberry Muffin who lives in a muffin, Raspberry Tart who likes raspberries, Lemon Merengue who is French, and Orange Blossom who is black. She also has some male friends. The only one that matters is Huckleberry Pie and I think he is supposed to be some kind of throwback to Mark Twain as he dresses like a dessert-themed 19^th century hick. He is SS’s BF. There are other fruit pastry kids who live in…um…Sugarland, including a baby named Apple Dumpling who doesn’t have parents.  In fact I’m pretty sure they’re all orphans and they just take turns hanging out with Apple Dumpling so he/she doesn’t die. Whatever, they seem to make it work so good on them. Anyways, Shortcake and all of her thigh expanding friends hang out a lot and talk about sweets and that’s about it. They’re always in a good mood because all they eat is sugar and carbs without the consequences of heart disease and diabetes. There’s one antagonist, a tall guy that lives on a mountain where it’s always dark. He’s made of licorice and that’s why he hates SS so much. Licorice guy is jealous because licorice is disgusting. SS and all of her pals just kind of ignore him and his bitching and keep having picnics since there are no bugs or heat in Fruity Cake Village.

Synopsis of Episode 1 of “The Wonderful World of Strawberry Shortcake”

Lord of the Fruit Flies.

The episode opens with the sun narrating about some place called Strawberry Land, which is where I assume SS lives. He goes on about strawberries for a few minutes before deciding to introduce SS who is asleep in her shortcake house snoring with the daintiness of a lumberjack that is also a bear. Morgan Freeman Sun mentions that there are lots of other folks in Strawberry Land and shows us their pastry houses to indicate these kids exist. Apparently all of these fuckers sleep in every day. As it turns out, the only person who is awake is the Peculiar Purple Pieman of Porcupine Peak, who we’re led to assume is the villain due to his devious laugh, wiry physique, and razor-thin handlebar mustache. I mean I can’t blame the guy for being a dick so far. All these stupid little kids are still in bed and this guy has probably been baking since 1 am because that’s how real bakers roll. Anyways, he has all these birds which he tells to go steal berries so he can make a bunch of pies, at which point Morgan Sunman is like “Little did the Pieman know that today was not just any day. Some say it was a special day. You may be wondering why. I’ll never know why Andy Dufresne crawled through 500 yards of shit smelling foulness…” Uh…that’s not right. Anyways, instead of saying why today is so important, credits roll and SS’s theme song plays while we’re treated to scenes of her doing stuff like walking around and petting her cat. Then the song ends and SS decides to wake her happy ass up for real, subsequently blaming her alarm clock for her laziness. Like a typical awful child, she starts bothering her cat who is having none of her bullshit today. Custard is all, “Bitch, I don’t know if you realize how this works. Basically I am a cat and you are a human. You take care of me and I sleep all day. Kindly fuck off meow.” But instead of listening, SS picks him up and bangs his head against the floor. After that she goes outside and disrupts the local wildlife with her singing, an offense to which they all seem oddly accustomed, as they join in for the last twenty seconds presumably to shut her up.

Meanwhile we learn that the Pieman has been spying on SS like some third rate Wicked Witch of the West. He sends his murder of crows to steal her berries (typing that makes me realize how much this show is just a cautionary tale about stranger danger) which she is able to fight off for a good two seconds with a broom before being conveniently saved by a tree ent with pink leaves. Instead of being super relieved and thanking him, she informs him, “You can be my personal scarecrow!” And he’s thrilled about it. Wait a minute. She has the authority to hand out jobs to sentient plants who save her ass from crop thieving foul? I want that kind of power. Damn. Super pissed about this turn of events, the Pieman cries in his tower, states his full name with his Vincent Price-y voice and then does a tap dance.

“Shortcake’s a fan of chess. Let’s get her some rocks.”

By this time the other dessert-themed urchins decide to wake up and Sunman Freeman gets down to business nagging Huckleberry Pie about SS’s birthday, to which Huck Pie Finn responds with an air of languid indifference. Finally kind of fed up with this ball of star gas bitching at him, he stops fishing and goes to see Blueberry Muffin who is basically Paula Dean as a child. She’s all like, “Ahh do dee-clay-ah! Ahh plum fuh-gawt all about Shawt-cake’s buhthdayy!” So then they walk over to Plum Pudding’s house, where Plum is doing equations to indicate that Plum is the resident mathematician, which seems necessary for a village made of pastries. Raspberry Tart, the local mean girl, shows up and makes some backhanded comments about how SS is going to be seven, which is, like, so old, you guys…OMFG. A feral baby named Apple Dumpling crawls out of nowhere, and Scarlet Blue’Hara Muffin exclaims, “Ayapple Dumplin! What ahh you doin heeya?” Apple Dumpling then shows them a note she wrote about SS’s birthday party which has the same literary value as a Charlie Kelly journal entry. Yet somehow these kids can decipher her gibberish, so either Apple Dumpling is some kind of mutant baby genius or the other pastry kids are unnervingly stupid.

It’s always sunny in Strawberry Land.

By the time they quit lollygagging and get to work planning the party, it’s lunchtime and SS inquires, “who wants to have lunch with me?” to which her cat, still pissed about the head knocking incident from before, is like, “Sorry. I have an appointment with my…uh…tax attorney.” One by one, all of SS’s friends take turns blowing her off so they can plan her surprise party which makes her think they all hate her. Probably due to the fact that they’re all indiscreet assholes about it. She starts crying by herself and the Pieman, disguised as a peddler, sees this as a perfect opportunity to prey on the vulnerable little girl and…wow, holy shit. Yeah this is definitely just an allegory about child abduction. Anyways, he tries to sell her a magic watering can and she replies, “I want it for realsies, but I’m broke.” And instead of just giving her the damn thing to move the plot forward, he sells it to her friends who need a gift for her in addition to the lavish soiree they’re throwing for her self-pitying ass. Still privy to none of this, SS becomes so suicidally depressed that she wanders into a field, curls up into a fetal position and literally asks herself, “Why am I so alone?” Unable to deal with all of this sadness, Morgan Sunshine inserts himself into the plot and tells her, “Listen Shortcake, before you start listening to Morrissey and opening your wrists, go to the park.” She saunters over to the park and is totally shocked to find out that her friends are there with a big party planned for her. Poor self-esteem works that way. They give her the watering can and Raspberry Bitchface is like “Eww..aren’t you kind of old for that?” which is weird because it seems like SS gardens a lot and that’s a pretty stereotypical old lady activity. SS proceeds to show them how the watering can has magical water generating powers, but the thing is rigged because the Pieman is a devious shitstain on humanity. The can causes a massive flood and the kids are forced to float downstream in a crate to the Pieman, who reveals it was him all along and then tap dances. He gives them an ultimatum: either live in Waterworld forever or hand over all the berries. As they are terrestrial creatures, they relent and ship all the berries downstream along with Apple Dumpling who accidentally fell asleep on one of the berries to be surrendered. Feeling pretty defeated about their stolen berries and inadvertently trafficked infant, the kids start to just give up when the Sun intervenes again. “Hey. I have a birthday present for you. It’s a…um…magic wish.” Without even a second thought, SS says, “Send an army of trees to murder the Pieman.” Almost immediately an army of tree ents marches to his tower and knocks his shit over. When the Pieman comes to, Apple Dumpling presents him with a contract, the terms of which are basically that he stop being such an annoying prick. At first he’s like “Fuck you. I’m not signing anything.” Then the trees present him with the alternative of being eaten alive. He signs the contract and begs SS for mercy. She’s basically like, “Whatever dude. You could’ve just asked for some berries. Look, I’ll make you a deal. We’ll sell them to you at a fair price, you make pies out of them, and sell them at our local farmer’s market every weekend. We won’t even charge you for the booth. Just don’t be such a douche. K?” He seems pretty surprised at all of this and then they sing a song about berries. The end.

Analysis: I remember none of this, but I was 100% successful at not being abducted by any child molesters as a kid, so thanks Strawberry Shortcake and Friends.

Additional note: Orange Blossom and Lemon Merengue don’t show up until “Strawberry Shortcake in Big Apple City” which was episode 3 of the series, which I watched immediately after watching Episode 1. Also, Lemon Merengue is not French; she’s just a narcissistic model.