Slightly Worried About Strawberry Shortcake and Sushi Pack

With just three weeks to go until the release of "Strawberry Shortcake: Sky's the Limit Movie," I've been thinking about certain things promised that are yet to be delivered, with no news to be found. This is mostly due to the complications brought on by the American Greetings/Cookie Jar dispute. If you haven't been following it (and it's not like I've been ardently following this, either), here's my take on it. Back last year, Cookie Jar purchased DIC's library, which includes Strawberry Shortcake, Care Bears, and Sushi Pack. At the time, American Greetings was going to sell Cookie Jar the rights to Strawberry Shortcake and Care Bears, but Cookie Jar couldn't raise the agreed-on amount. So another company, Moonscoop, offered to buy them instead for a lesser amount. Cookie Jar was given the chance to match that offer, but later sued AG for not giving them the same amount of time to get the money as Moonscoop. AG countersued, saying Cookie Jar never intended to get the amount they offered in the first place. Most recently, Moonscoop has sued AG to make them get a move on with untangling themselves from Cookie Jar and sealing the deal with them.

What this means for the moment is that Strawberry Shortcake, Care Bears, and Sushi Pack are not going to be on TV, as Cookie Jar acquired CBS' Saturday block, which will be changing its name from Kewlopolis to Cookie Jar TV on September 19th. What this means for the supposedly upcoming 26 episode Strawberry Shortcake CGI series is unclear right now, as is the future of Sushi Pack (Care Bears' upcoming retooled third season was already delayed, so I'm not as worried about that). Speaking of Sushi Pack, isn't there supposed to be a DVD coming out this fall? Lionsgate has the distribution rights, but so far, there's no word on a DVD release. And there's supposed to be toys coming out this Fall, but as of yet, I haven't seen any. There's still time for that, I know, but the way things are looking, I'm not feeling very optimistic.

Update: AGP is going to MIPCOM, and says that the new CGI series, officially called Strawberry Shortcake Berry Bitty Adventures, is still in production and will be "available for a Spring 2010 delivery." No word on Sushi Pack, though.