Dunn Megan - Things I Learned at Art School

Dear God

Please look after Mum and me and keep us safe.

Also when I grow up can I look exactly like Olivia Newton John?

Amen.

I unclenched my hands and hopped into my single bed. Thats a bona fide prayer, circa 1982. Its just as well it never happened because I never specified in the prayer what age Olivia Newton John should be. I thought God would just know, because he was omnipotent and therefore it was inconceivable that God wouldnt be watching TV like me and therefore know what I meant.

The first film I ever saw at the cinema was Grease. I loved it. I did not ponder the feminist treatment of Olivias character Sandy. When Olivia emerged at the end of the film in that tight black leather pantsuit and sang Youre the One That I Want to John Travolta, I thought her transformation was good. Virgin to whore: what a brilliant narrative arc! I didnt understand that I would never look good in a tight black leather pantsuit or that I needed more worthy prayers. Nor did I react to a happy ending with cynicism. When John Travolta and Olivia Newton John drove off into the sky in a big shiny red hot rod, I simply felt elated.

But my prayers didnt end in the eighties I prayed for a Happy Birthday Barbie and got one. I prayed for a Care Bear for Christmas; God didnt come through. I prayed for a Cabbage Patch Doll. No cigar. I got my first but not my last Strawberry Shortcake doll instead. Fair deal. Back then God must have got a lot of requests for Strawberry Shortcake and her pet cat Custard. I wonder if he, like my mother, found it hard to keep up with the new dolls in the range. Each was based on a baked fruity morsel with scented hair to match. Mmmm. The sweet smell of Raspberry Tart and her pet monkey, Rhubarb. Alas, that curly-haired tart was never mine. I did however own Plum Puddin and Elderberry Owl, and my favourite, cute little Apricot and her pet rabbit Hopsalot. Beneath her suede hat, shaped of course like an apricot, her hair was platinum blonde. So I made Apricot speak in a husky whisper like Marilyn Monroe.

Dear God

Please look after Mum and me and keep us safe.

Also when I grow up can you tell me who created the Strawberry Shortcake doll franchise?

Amen.

Barbi Sargent first drew Strawberry Shortcake on a greeting card in 1973 while she was working as a freelance illustrator for the American Greetings Corporation. So Barbi made Strawberry Shortcake well, that sure makes for a sweet answer but of course its not that simple. Strawberries sell. Thats what Jack Chojnacki learned from market research when he was co-president of Those Characters From Cleveland Inc., a subsidiary of American Greetings set up to create and license characters to people who make dolls and other merchandise.

So Barbi was simply an early influencer. Strawberry Shortcake met her next maker in Muriel Fahrion, another illustrator employed at American Greetings, who gave the sweet little redhead some extra strawberries and a cast of fragrant friends. Muriel then gave her designs to her sister Susan Trental, another employee at the corporation, who made Strawberry Shortcake into a rag doll after which Bernie Loomis, president of the General Mills toy division which owned the licence, said, This is going to be the next major phenomenon in merchandising. In 1980, Strawberry Shortcake products grossed 100 million dollars. Thats a lot of answered prayers.

And in the eighties my prayers didnt stop, they were just gettin started.

I also owned Twilight and Windy, a pair of My Little Pony unicorns by Hasbro (each figure sold separately). In 1984, I got the Baby Cotton Candy pony for Christmas. Accessories: a lavender playpen, a pink heart blanket, a baby bottle with yellow trim, a duck pull toy, a white baby necklace that read baby, a diaper box containing one diaper to be Velcroed around Cotton Candys tush (the diaper had a hole for her pink tail to fall through) and a lavender brush to brush her hair. Next I got Surf Rider, a seahorse with a separate blue fish float with purple fins for maximum bath-time fun.

I didnt know then that the first My Little Pony was invented by Bonnie Zacherle, an illustrator employed in research and development at the Hasbro toy company in Rhode Island. Bonnie was the daughter of a military veterinarian. Her interest in horses began when she was only four years old and her father was stationed on a US military base in Japan. One of the animals her father had to care for was a Korean pony Bonnie fell in love. She longed for a pony of her own. Maybe she prayed for one. But God and/or her father never delivered. She grew up. At Hasbro one of Bonnies responsibilities was to come up with new ideas for toys. Lots of little girls want to own horses but not every little girl can.

Bonnie designed the original My Pretty Pony based on a Palomino; she wanted the toys to look like real horses, but the marketing department suggested the ponies be pink and purple. Marketing won.

Little girls had to put their own personalities into each individual pony, Bonnie said on a podcast in 2014. When play is open-ended like that it causes children to have stories of their own Thats when it starts to grow and go.

Muriel Fahrion, the illustrator of Strawberry Shortcake, later noticed that the generation of girls who collected Shortcake in the eighties later grew up and dyed their hair all kinds of different colours. I like to think Strawberry Shortcake had something to do with that she embodied things I think are great like creativity, going toward your potential and the freedom to have fun and be original.

I lost Apricot on my way to school. She dropped out of my bag. I cried. Apricot wasnt just a piece of merchandise. She lived in a village at the foot of my bed overseen by a poster of Olivia Newton John.

But now Olivia and me and the whole cast of plastic toys that were acceptable in the eighties are jammed in time, like videotape, our lives unspooling indiscriminately, our faces munched then crunched and sometimes Botoxed. The My Little Ponies and Strawberry Shortcake dolls have gone through upgrades. Everything retro can be brought back, thinner the second time around.

Google the past and you can trace a path back to the patent and the names attached, but can you ever really meet your maker?