Now I bring you Strawberry Shortcake Get Well Adventures. This is one of my personal favorites so far, due to some funny moments.
Strawberry tells us that Honey Pie Pony is going on a trip to Marshmallow Marsh, and the kids are throwing a party to see her off on the journey. Honey Pie Pony devours nearly all of Ginger Snap's cookies, gulps down all of Orange Blossom's juice, and swallows nearly all of the cake that Angel Cake made. Damn, she must be really hungry. She also promises to bring back marshmallow related goodies for her friends. Honestly, after what you've done to their food, you'll probably eat everything on the trip back.
She then sings a song about the perils of her journey and what she'll encounter while she's there. What makes this especially funny is that during the song, they expect her to write and take pictures (Though in all fairness, somebody could do that for her), and every time they see her off, she comes back for another verse. Huck even face palms at one point during the song and goes, "Oh, brother!" It's so freaking hilarious. Just be thankful the songs are as short as they are, Huck.
After the song ends, she takes off, but botches a jump over a fence and injures her leg in the process. She's now cooped up at Strawberry's house, which means it'll smell like a dirty pony instead of fresh Strawberries. Um, ewww...
Anyway, Honey Pie complains about the situation she's in and tries to leave, but Strawberry tells her that she needs to be patient and wait for the leg to heal. At one point, Orange brings her a glass of juice and Strawberry asks her to look it. Yeah, it's one of those "Glass half empty or half full" moments. Custard, the loveable but cynical cat, says it's half empty, Ginger Snap says it's half full. Strawberry tells Honey Pie it depends on what you make of it. In fact, being the optimist, she tells Honey Pie hurting her leg can be a good thing as she's now surrounded by friends to help take care of her, so Honey Pie decides to grin and bear it for the time being.
Ginger offers her some cookies, but Pupcake and Apple Dumpling beat her to it first. She also complains about Angel Cake massaging her broken leg after removing the ice from it, and even complains about the pillows, saying one is too soft while the other is too hard. Custard reluctantly offers Honey Pie her sleeping pillow. Her response?
- Honey Pie Pony: "It's too... in-between!"
Oh my goodness, she's a riot. Strawberry gets understandably annoyed at this and tells her that she needs to be more grateful for the friends who are taking care of her. Honey's trying, but she's still being an Annoying Patient. Strawberry tells her that instead of criticizing them, to ask in a nice way what she needs. Honey decides to have ice put on her leg again, and complains. Strawberry admits this is going to be harder that she thought.
An hour passes, though Honey acts like it's been days, and nothing has changed. She's still being ungrateful towards her friends. Frustrated, they decided to quit and leave, because they're getting really sick of this. Strawberry persuades them to stay, because she's only acting this way out of boredom. Huck then has an idea of his own. He's been practicing magic, but he knows a really good magician who preforming for one more night in Huckleberry Briar and decides to catch him before he leaves so he can entertain everyone. He takes off on his skateboard and without a moment too soon, because Honey needs some help again.
The girls don't have the time or patience to wait, but Strawberry says they can make their own fun, and sings a song about using your imagination. When the song ends, they offer some ideas on how to entertain Honey Pie, and Honey refuses their suggestions. Meanwhile Huck tries to reach the magician, but his skateboard hits a rock he couldn't dodge in time and falls into the river. Huck remarks that he'll most likely be late. Better haul ass then, Huck!
Back at Strawberry's house, Honey Pie still refuses the girl's various suggestions, and proceeds to tell a story about how she was bored once, then proceeds to try and tell other stories which they heard before. This gives Strawberry the idea to tell stories of their own to Honey Pie.
Strawberry goes first with her story. During one spring, it barely rained in Strawberryland, and no rain means no berries for the spring and summer. She decides to try dowsing for water with a stick, but a gopher eats it and tells her to find a magic creek that can solve her problems. She finds it and it's just a another chocolate creek. She wishes it was a strawberry milkshake and she immediately enjoys it, but this didn't solve her problem as she wanted rain. A bird tells her that a magic creek has it's limits. Well, of course it would, since it's basically like a soda jerk machine with the advantage of choosing your flavor. I had no clue what the gopher was thinking, to tell you the truth. She tells Strawberry to head to the clouds to make it rain, and travels via balloon with the bird.
In the clouds, Strawberry finds a a nice big one to land on and the cloud reacts appropriately with an ouch, as she's not used to people walking on her. Strawberry tells the cloud that they need rain, but it tells her clouds produce rain when they cry and she's too happy since she came to Strawberryland, so she has no reason to do so. Strawberry decides to ask if it can pretend to be sad, but no nice, so she settles for happy thoughts by crying tears of joy instead, and think about all of the things she's happy about. That turns on the waterworks and the strawberries finally grow, all according to plan.
After her story ends, Honey admits that she starts to feel a little better and her leg doesn't hurt as much. We then head to another song called the "Getting Better Boogie Woogie, and then Orange Blossom decides to tell her story next via a puppet show. Honey Pie doesn't like the idea, until she admits she never saw one, so she gives it a chance. Orange tells her the story of how she grew a tree that plants pitchers of juice. However, we interrupt her story to bring you more misadventures of Huckleberry Pie. He arrives at the theater where the magician is preforming, but he just missed him. Disappointed, he heads back only to see a box of magician's props like a rabbit and a hat, giving him a backup plan.
We now bring you back to Strawberry's house just in time for Orange Blossom to finish her story. Don't you hate it when that happens? Ginger Snap is up next and she starts off her story by saying she ran out of chocolate chips for her cookies, so she heads to Chocolate Town to get some. While she's there, she eats a piece of the chocolate road. Er, you do realize you just walked on it, right? A chocolate bunny comes by and tells her not to do that, and Ginger apologies, but she explains her situation to the bunny and it tells her you can't find it in this town, but he knows of another place. The bunny leads her to a pot of gold, and Ginger assumes she can buy a lot of chocolate until the bunny asks her to look closer at the coins. Those coins are actually chocolate with a golden wrapping around them. She, along with the bunny's help, get a wheelbarrow and carries them back to Cookie Corners to get her new chips. Ever since then, she knows where to get some new chips.
Angel Cake has a similar story, but with colored frosting instead of chocolate chips. She was finishing a birthday cake but ran out of colored frosting, so first she decides to take three separate ingredients for the colors, using blueberries, roses and grass. Blueberries seem logical for blue, but I don't even know what she was thinking using roses and grass. Even funnier is that the colors manage to appear, but now the frosting tastes crunchy, and we certainly can't have that, now can we? She heads to Spongecake Forest, and notices that everytime she squeezes one, different colors come out. Yay for more surrealistic food! She comes here often now to get cake frosting as a routine.
Honey Pie starts to feel better after each story, and Strawberry senses someone at the door, although I'm not sure as to how, since no one knocked. She sees Huck hiding behind a bush, and upon noticing Strawberry, he says he couldn't get the magician in time, but Strawberry says that they've been having fun anyway and Honey Pie has become better. Come on in. Huck! Your harem... er.. I mean friends are waiting!
He tells the girls that while he couldn't get the magician, he has been practicing magic. First he tries the card prediction trick with Ginger volunteering, but Huck screws up all three of his guesses and gets frustrated. Strawberry encourages him to try another trick so he tries the rabbit in a hat trick. Orange Blossom notices the top hat near her (And I forgot to mention that orange doesn't wear a hat until after the first four episodes, for some reason) and Huck has better luck performing the trick successfully. All of a sudden, Honey Pie's leg feels better. That was really fast, considering she injured it during a failed fence jump. But whatever, she's healed and the next day she's off.
Or is she? As leaves, she sneezes and Strawberry notices she has a cold. Here We Go Again!! Only this time, Honey knows what to expect. The last song reflects on the advice Strawberry gives her about looking at the bright side of bad situations, and they prepare to take care of her and entertain her once more. And that's the end.
This special had a few funny moments, and so far, this is already better than the 80's version IMO. I like the art style and the characterization of this series so much. That said, I hope the later episodes can keep me entertained like this.
