Rose Petal Place - Cartoon Retrospective (Part 1)

Have you ever actually tried to grow a garden?

Sure, we see pretty flowers effortlessly bloom in the wild and go, "I can do that in my own backyard!" But when you actually try to grow anything, you realize that it's the most tedious and unglamorous mud-trudging you could possibly do. And then you give up and start farming potatoes like my mother, who (to her own admitted misfortune) can only ever seem to grow the most "boring plants". We don't grow magical fairy flowers that sing to you then steal your soul if you pluck their petals, and we don't grow giant tree-warriors that sprout legs and join your epic quest to defeat an evil lord of corruption and decay. Add that blunder to my growing list of fairy failures!

I'm not a gardener and never will be, but I like flowers. Not because they're beautiful, but because they're the one thing no one expects them to be: flowers are strong. Flowers don't give up in sleet, snow, or sun. Flowers grow wherever they damn please. If there's an anorexic crack in the sidewalk, you bet a dandelion is making her home in the dirt under the chewed gum and dust of chalk's past. And they look so good while doing it too. Their rain-soaked petals look better than my own hair on my best days.

But, of course, even flowers wilt. Some flowers aren't as strong as other flowers, and they can't stand up on their own stem. And when a flower dies in a sea of snapdragons or a vacuum of violets, no one really notices.

What's all this garden talk for anyway? Because like a garden, it takes a lot of effort to plan, develop, and nurture a children's media franchise. We have many breakout successes or "gardens", especially when it comes to specifically hyper-feminine media (ones that seem a lot more frilly and flowery than their masculine counterparts). But for every Strawberry Shortcake, there's a Cherry Merry Muffin or Peppermint Rose. Or, in this case, there's a Rose Petal Place.

Welcome back to Clairy's Fairytale Theater, the fairy best children's media retrospective/review blog. I'm your hostess Claire Aimée, your fairy Clairy Godmother. And today we're exploring the failed franchise that is Rose Petal Place. This doomed garden was originally planted back in 1984, intended as the next big multimedia franchise for all the Jessicas and Jennifers of the 1980s, created by a soon-to-be famous television producer named David Kirschner. And if that name sounds familiar, it’s because you’ve most likely seen his other works, as the man has quite the diverse and colorful resume. Kirschner would eventually create the story for the 1986 animated film An American Tale. He didn’t direct it, but Kirschner was responsible for the initial concept, the character designs, and writing the plot. (That movie went on to be the highest-grossing non-Disney produced animated feature at the time, if you’re wondering about its success.) After that, he went on to create the story for 1993’s Hocus Pocus, which he also didn’t direct. His career consisted of creating ideas and producing them, rather than directing or writing. But those are not his most famous works. In fact, his most famous work was also a franchise involving dolls. Just a very different kind of doll… 

Yes, if there’s anything David Kirschner was known for, it was producing all of the Child’s Play/Chucky movies. In fact, he was also the creator of the original animatronic used for Chucky. He did album covers for Neil Diamond and illustration work for Jim Henson early in his career, but as far as his own original projects went, Rose Petal Place was David Krischner’s debut creation.

Well, isn't THAT a bit of a contrast?

And Rose Petal Place jumped right into the market with an onslaught of merchandise: storybooks, clothing, stationary, bicycles, cassette tapes, and more! There was shockingly a lot of merchandise for such an obscure series, according to the toy archive website Ghost of the Doll. But, big surprise, it was mostly toys.

Look at all these beautiful characters! We have Madame Eggplant, Amy Rose, Sailor Mercury, B*tch Pudding, Oprah, and B*tch Pudding 2: Electric Begonia.

Regarding the toys themselves, as a doll fan, I actually love these. The faces are perfectly cute without being too cloying- some even having unique face molds, which was pretty rare for dolls like this at the time. The clothing is detailed, themed perfectly, and made of real fabric. And the giant flower hats complete with tear-shaped gemstones resembling dewdrops are just a lovely touch. They’re genuinely beautiful toys, and most of the character designs are genuinely distinct (with exceptions later to be discussed). And if you didn’t like the clothes, there were even additional outfits to be bought for even more fun. As an avid expander of my own personal army of plastic women, I think these would make excellent collectables. (You know, if the online prices didn’t make me wanna eat dirt.)

Fairy Fact: Kenner, who made the Rose Petal Place toys, would later reuse the Rose Petal Place doll molds for another failed toy line called Bubble Belles in 1990. Talk about cheapskates!

But we’re not here for the toys (even though the marketers definitely were), we’re here for the surely riveting story and characters. Despite being a cartoon from the 1980s, Rose Petal Place didn’t get a 13-episode series of commercials- I mean, a TV show. As you’d expect from the TEMU version of Strawberry Shortcake, Rose Petal Place found life through animated specials, music records, and read-along storybooks with cassette tapes. This is where the vast bulk of her shenanigans took place.

 

Marie Osmond, 1981

Across the cassette tapes, records, and animated specials, Rose Petal herself would be portrayed by famous singer and actress Marie Osmond, who you might recognize if you’re old. Debuting on TV when she was 4-years-old on The Andy Williams Show and the only daughter of the already influential Osmond family of Mormon country singers, Marie Osmond became the youngest female act with a number-one country single at 14-years-old with her 1973 cover of the song “Paper Roses”, originally sung by that homophobic piece of garbage who got pied in the face and whose granddaughter just got married to her wife.

 

Rot in piss to your grandmother's J. K. Rowling, Anita Bryant.

(Update: Anita Bryant died while I was writing this review. She died penniless and blacklisted from the media industry for her anti-LGBTQ+ activism. Her granddaughter, Sarah Green, is marrying a woman. You know what they say: a day without lesbians is a day without sunshine!) 

As an adult, Marie later became a prominent television personality with her brother, Donny Osmond. But she’s done everything from books to charity work to Broadway that it’d be impossible to condense her life and creations in this blog. The most important thing for me, as an animation historian whose life purpose is found solely in watching cartoons and collecting dolls, are the two TV specials- as well as the cassettes and storybooks where the plot and characters shine. This retrospective series of blogs will be dedicated to discovering all about Rose Petal Place.

The animated specials are easy to find online, but what can be found online regarding things like audio cassettes and books is actually quite limited, as websites like YouTube and the Internet Archive don’t preserve all the material. While all the storybooks can be purchased, very few are freely available to read online. I will be sharing what I managed to find, but there is not too much in terms of this franchise.

Rose Petal Place was an extremely short-lived series, lasting for only one year between 1984 and 1985. Despite the celebrity star voice actor and the floral flood of merchandise so heavy that Noah needed to build another ark, this series remains one of the many forgotten failed franchises of the toy-crazed 1980s. But why? It seemed to have a lot going for it, as its creator proved to be talented and the toys were good. That's what this series of retrospective blogs will be about, my beautiful fairies. Why don’t we dig into the dirt to its roots and see why this pretty little flower only lasted a single springtime? 

We’re going to be looking at the two animated specials, the audio cassettes, the storybooks, and the record. And across reviewing all these pieces of media, we’re going to be using each to highlight the five main issues I believe led to Rose Petal Place’s failure in terms of storytelling and appeal. So enough beating around the rose bush, join me for this fun 7-part retrospective looking over the wilted remains of this strange series. We're beginning this fairytale by looking over the first of its animated specials, Rose Petal Place: A Garden of Love to Share, next time with Your Clairy Godmother.