Your Clairy Godmother

Hello my beautiful fairies! You may have noticed the shakiness of my upload schedule. There was a long gap in uploading part five and part 6 of my Rose Petal Place retrospective. The gap was due to a mental health crisis. I guess I should explain where I've been, and how I've been feeling. On September 12th and the following weekend, I had a failed suicide attempt. I suppose I should let you guys know the truth about what happened to me.   I spent the entire weekend in the hospital after I tried leaping out of my mother's moving car (I failed). She immediately tried driving me to the hospital. Instead, I begged her to take me to college. I saw three councilors at the school, the last one basically telling me to go to the hospital. I saw two more councilors there in the psych ward. It's both not as bad and as bad as it's imagined. There were "crazy" people screaming, but most of them were just in need of help or felt they weren't being listened...

Rose Petal Place: The Record ("A Concert at Carnation Hall")   We're finally at the end, my beautiful fairies. The last stop on this 7-part journey. The last piece of media of Rose Petal Place. It's certainly been an interesting adventure, full of highs and lows, but all good things must come to an end (and thankfully, this is also true for bad things). “A Concert at Carnation Hall” was an album released by Parker Brothers in 1984 with 10 original songs all based on  Rose Petal Place. Marie Osmond reprises her role as Rose Petal, however none of the other actors from the animated specials return. Instead, we have actress Evalyn Baron as Nastina, famous for the musical Quilters, with all the male characters now voiced by Russell Horton, most famous as the voice of Trix rabbit (yes, the cereal mascot). The album was also was produced by two of the three Chapin brothers, Steve and Tom, sons of American jazz drummer Jim Chapin, though all three boys have gone on to be...

  Rose Petal Place: The Audiobooks ("A Garden of Love to Share" and "Rose Petal and the Evil Weeds") Welcome back, my beautiful fairies! Why don’t we upgrade a little bit and talk about the audiobooks? Well, cassette-books, technically. If you’re young and dumb like me and don’t know what that is, you’d put a cassette tape into the radio and read the book along with the narrator. It was like listening to an audiobook while also reading the physical book at the same time. The first book we’re looking at, A Garden of Love to Share, is adapted directly from the first animated special. This version was written by Dagmar Foslien, with Karin Williams helping Pat Paris out with the artwork. It’ll be fun to see how this differs from the animated special. You can listen along to the audiobook right here! The story starts with a song, just like the animated adaptation. Rose Petal: (signing) “Push through the ground, little plant. Reach for the sun. a bright world will be fo...

Rose Petal Place: The Storybooks ("Rose Petal's Big Decision" and "A Matter of Music") It's storytime again, my beautiful fairies. And today, for the next stop on our journey of Rose Petal Place, we're going to be looking over the last two storybooks I managed to get my fairy fingers on: Rose Petal's Big Decision and A Matter of Music. Let's not waste any time and start off with Rose Petal's Big Decision.   This story comes to us from Nancy Buss, with Pat Paris’s artwork returning, but being assisted by Sharon Ross-Moore. A video read-a-long is provided by 80s Toys & Beyond, who also kindly shares with us her collection of the original Rose Petal Place dolls, showing everyone except for Orchid. Isn’t that sweet?  However, the video quality itself is rather fuzzy and the screenshots I managed to grab from it are rather poor. For that, I apologize. The story begins with Rose Petal getting an important letter in the mail: a contract from ...

Rose Petal Place: The Storybooks ("Lily Fair Learns A Lesson") Welcome back to my theater, my beautiful humans! Oh, that's right! Ha ha! You can’t leave until the show is over. We've held you hostage for the entire time as we made the additional parts of this retrospective. …Hey, this is what you get for entering a fairy’s domain and making a deal with her! You shouldn't have eaten the food I made you if you didn’t want to be trapped forever. Don’t fall for free popcorn next time! Oh, relax. The show will be over soon and you’ll be free. Now where were we?  If it’s been a while since you saw the first part of this retrospective where we looked over the two animated specials, or haven’t seen this retrospective at all, allow me to catch you up on our troubled tale. Rose Petal Place was an obscure American media franchise that lasted from 1984 to 1985. It had two animated specials made by Ruby-Spears Productions, a corresponding line of dolls made by Kenner, and mor...

Rose Petal Place: Real Friends (Animated Special)  The second (and final) special in the series, Rose Petal Place: Real Friends, was released in 1985- the year after the previous special, Rose Petal Place: A Garden of Love to Share, in 1984. All the previous voice actors return to play their characters, with newcomer Stacy McLaughlin joining the cast. The same voice actors from the first special also provide their voices to the new characters. Nastina’s voice actress, the late Marilyn Schreffler, also voices Marigold. Renae Jacobs, who played Orchid and Lily Fair, now voices two more characters with Sweet Violet and Cherry Blossom. And it’s time to be blunt very early on: I don’t like Cherry Blossom’s voice. Having a white actress put on a very shrill and stuttering Japanese accent with all the cultural respect of a 4Kids anime dub telling you a riceball is a jelly-filled donut… well, it’s not exactly in good taste. During the writing of this blog, I actually looked up if there ...