#188 of 365 Strawberry Shortcake Lemon Meringue

And just because it's Jambalaya, here's something different.  Hasbro relaunched the Strawberry Shortcake franchise, after getting the license and has pared down the cast to a more manageable menagerie.  One of the characters who survived this cut is the yellow Lemon Meringue, which is not pronounced with 3 syllables, but instead has two - I pronounce it as mer-RANG, which is probably wrong, but I'm sure some French person will be more than happy to correct me.

Lemon Meringue is a fashionista or something like that and runs a beauty salon, or something like that.  I dunno, I don't follow the series, or if there's even one.

The packaging is interesting - it's a clear wrap around bubble on a card, and by wrap around, I do mean wrap as it has a curved surface.  The bubble is adorned with stickers which hides the empty spaces in the bubble.  The figure and her accessories - the comb and the lemon slice in her hair is prominently displayed in the bubble.  Hasbro definitely knows how to make use of space.

The back of the card is a bit wordy, but since it's targeted at little girls, I must presume that Hasbro thinks that little girls like words or some such thing.  The action feature - look her hair is combable!!! - is shown on the top right of the card, and one other cross sell toy is displayed below that.  Surprisingly, iespite the fact that it should be boring, it isn't, and the overall appearance is cheerful, perhaps due to the colour and the theme.

There's not much in the package, there's just the doll herself (or action figure, if you prefer) and her accessory the comb.  I have no idea why, but Hasbro decided to sew her hair together rather tightly between two strips of plastic which was a pain to remove.  Quite a bit of her hair was pulled out when I removed the plastic.  I have no idea how little girls would get the plastic off without even damaging her, but hey, I've not, nor have I ever been a little girl, so I have no idea about these things.

I actually like the figure - she looks nice and cheerful.  Despite her 5-points of articulation (yes, only 5!) and short height, she is surprising play-able, and I'm not talking about the fact that her hair could be combed and braided, etc.  I like the cheerful colour scheme and the cheerful expression on her face, which is nicely painted on.  The paintwork is great and professionally applied.  Overall she's just lots of fun as a toy.

She's not my first rooted hair doll action figure - there's Glimmer and She-Ra of course, both recently opened this year, and I do have her friend, Ms Strawberry Shortcake herself somewhere (in a box though, and I'm not going to dig her out).  Lemon Meringue has about the same amount of articulation than both She-Ra and Glimmer in that pic, but is less... in-your-face girly and seems to have been made to appeal across the toy aisle, which is interesting, and makes great commercial sense for Hasbro - after all, why pigeonhole the theme to only 50% of the populace when you could potentially reach all of them?

OK, now I'm hungry.  Where's my meringue, erm... pie?