In 2002, DIC Entertainment's DIC Consumer Products division and American Greetings announced they would bring back AG's classic franchise Strawberry Shortcake for 2003 and beyond. With this, DIC would produce four 45-minute direct-to-video specials, with this one being the one that starts it all.
Since this is part of a relaunch, none of the voice actors from the original specials return, instead DIC went with pre-teens to voice the characters, and in a way changed the characters (like the removal of some, and other changes like Pupcake becoming Strawberry's pet dog instead of Huckleberry Pie) and most importantly, gave them a fresh new redesign that stays true to the original specials.
Anyways, the story-line to "Meet Strawberry Shortcake" is that Strawberry Shortcake wants to hold a birthday party for her little sister Apple Dumplin', but she notices that the best party supplies cannot be found in just your house, so she, Apple, Custard and Pupcake travel to places around Strawberryland they never been to before, where they meet five new friends:
Ginger Snap, a girl who bakes the most delicious cookies around.
Orange Blossom, a girl who enjoys picking fresh oranges to make juice.
Angel Cake, a girl who enjoys baking fresh cakes.
Honey Pie Pony, a talkative filly who loves talking about the adventures she has, although she can make her friends fall asleep!
Huckleberry Pie, a boy who likes seeking on adventures and fun.
Another thing that makes the DIC series great are the song numbers. As with Madeline, they are composed well, have catchy lyrics and feature good singing from the cast. This special contains these 4 songs:
* The Cookie Song: A nice, catchy beat that can make you crave for cookies.
* Friendship Grows like a Flower - Maybe you can sing this song when growing delicious orange trees!
* A Berry Happy Birthday - A creative birthday song with very catchy lyrics! Everyone gets to sing this song.
* Strawberry Girl in a Strawberry World - Quite unfitting for the theme of the special, but is also quite catchy and is nice to see a song solely sung by Strawberry herself.
The special also has a music video featuring the song "Knock Knock, Who's There?", which happens to be one of my favourite songs from the DIC series overall. Not to mention, the opening theme is the most memorable thing about the whole series in general.
In the end, the special gives out a good moral of knowing that even if you meet people who you think are strange and different, you can still be friends with them.
"Meet Strawberry Shortcake" is a great start alone to DIC Entertainment's incarnation of Strawberry Shortcake and is perfect for young girls, even to this day unless they're watching the CGI "Berry Bitty Adventures" series. Sure enough, i cannot give this special a 9 or 10 because some scenes do drag on for the 45 minutes, but even then it is supposed to be a direct-to-video feature so I cannot complain. It would be better to keep them then to remove them, unlike what the US TV airings of them were like.
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