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Plum Puddin'

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Plum Puddin' (also stylized as simply Plum Pudding) is a recurring character in the Strawberry Shortcake franchise. They are usually a nerdy scientist or a sporty dancer, whose gender is subject to change in certain generations.

General Information

1980s Series

Plum Puddin’ was first introduced in The World of Strawberry Shortcake, as a genius boy who lived in Strawberryland. He would only end up portrayed as this for the first two specials, however, and after Strawberry Shortcake in Big Apple City, Plum was quietly removed from the series. He didn’t appear for the next two specials, but in 1984, Plum would finally make her return. Plum was now portrayed as a genius girl, and her previous absence was explained with her having gone on vacation. Plum was also accompanied by her new pet Elderberry Owl, and a new southern belle friend named Peach Blush. She remained a central cast member for the final two specials.

Her gender change is never addressed in-universe, though it’s likely that the intention is a retcon to claim she was always a girl and never a boy. In real life, however, this ultimately came down to toy sales. Plum Puddin’ wasn’t part of the original doll line released by Kenner, but Huckleberry Pie did get one. Unfortunately, Huck’s toys ended up selling poorly, and so it was determined there was no point in making more dolls of boy characters. Without a doll to promote, Plum was written out until it was decided to turn her into a girl, meaning she would be given a doll and be reintroduced into the animated specials to promote it.

2003 Series

Plum Puddin’ returned for the 2003 Series, but her role was significantly reduced from before. Plum made her debut in the first episode of Season 4, Back on the Saddle. She was still a nerdy genius girl, and now had a love of photography and reading, but this aspect of her wasn’t explored much. She was also made to be clumsy, shy, and self-doubting, which got her bullied by Banana Candy and Lemon Meringue. Her appearances in the series had her overcoming her doubts and inner flaws to embrace being more confident in herself.

Strangely, Plum’s only other roles weren’t actually as herself, but instead as a reimagined version of Glinda the Good Witch from the 2003 Series’ retellings of The Wizard of Oz. This version of her only appeared in Toto's Tale and Where the Gem Berries Grow.

Strawberry Shortcake's Berry Bitty Adventures

Plum Pudding was promoted to a part of the main cast for this series, but was now substantially different. She was no longer a nerdy genius, but was more girly (though more tomboyish than her friends) and now had a love of dancing and sports. Plum Pudding ran the Sweet Beats Studio in Berry Bitty City, and is one of Strawberry’s closest friends. Plum is portrayed as a happy, carefree girl who is very kind and funny. Dancing is both her passion and way of life. She can sometimes be a graceful ballerina, and other times very clumsy and awkward, but she’s always ready to dance at any opportunity, even if it’s not in her studio. She also enjoys other sports and has a very active lifestyle.

Strawberry Shortcake: Berry in the Big City

Plum Pudding initially didn’t appear in Berry in the Big City, until Season 2 saw Plum return in the episode All About Lemon. In a surprise change, Plum Pudding was once again not just a nerdy scientist, but a boy as well, hearkening back to his very first portrayal in the franchise.

Plum works for an influential science and technology website called Fusionberry. He first met Strawberry and friends when he arrived at the Berryworks to interview Lemon Meringue about her Lemon-Ventions. After his visit, Plum would occasionally stop by the Berryworks to invite Lemon and her friends to participate in other scientific endeavors, such as an inventing competition hosted by the Big Apple City Science Museum (Berry Competitive), or working with Lemon to develop a plant growth formula (Strawberry Shortcake's Spring Spectacular). As Season 3 showed, He also befriended Huckleberry Pie and Bread Pudding at some point, and the trio would meet up from time to time so they could LARP (Live Action Role-Playing) and host sessions of the tabletop game Doughnuts & Drawbridges.

While Plum’s appearances weren’t very common, most of his episodes had him be a major character in the plot, with his biggest role being in the Spring Spectacular special, wherein he joined the main cast for their adventure and even participated in a musical number.

Personality

1980s Series

Plum Puddin is an endearing and friendly nerd. They’re described as a bookworm and budding scientist, as they are always Strawberry's scientific consultant. Plum’s skilled in calculations, numbers, and scientific studies. When Plum was made a girl, she showed herself as being more friendly, outgoing, and confident.

According to Muriel Fahrion, Plum was intended to be a parallel to Huckleberry, being the responsible contrast to Huck’s lazy personality.

2003 Series

In this series, not much is seen of Plum Puddin' and we don't get a big grasp of her personality. Apparently she is an intelligent nerd, but we don't see any actions that really show her as a nerd. She likes photography and reading, and though this is not expressed much in the show, it does imply she has a creative and artsy side to her.

She's initially shown as weak, introverted, and a scaredy cat, but one of her most fatal flaws is that she doubts herself. Despite this, she's less useless than she seems and has the capability to be brave if she just believes in herself, and she’ll always try her hardest to help her friends.

Berry Bitty Adventures

Plum Pudding is a happy, energetic girl who is affectionate with her friends. She is eager to be kind and always tries to help them, even if they're too stubborn to ask for help or insist they don’t need it. Such as in A Stitch In Time, when she secretly got everyone (without Strawberry) to help Raspberry make her outfits when she was overworking herself. She's very friendly and kind, and always puts others before herself.

Plum is also known to be silly, she laughs a lot and loves things like being a prankster and jokes. She could keep laughing, much like a hyena if given something super funny. However Plum does not overdo it, she tries to not make someone feel bad, should something funny happen to them. But she does try to use jokes to clear up the situation.

She enjoys sports, and music, and dancing. Thanks to Cherry Jam, she becomes a drummer.

While Plum is usually nice, she does have her flaws. She lacks leadership skills and happens to be very competitive. She also has a passion that can not be put out easily and leads to her action stubborn as a result. As shown in one episode, when the girls were going to perform in a dance-off and her lack of good judgement and intention to cut out the complicated dance made things very hard for the others and eventually forced them to drop out. She also panics and gets nervous quickly, suggesting they run in the face of fear. She is also the first to whine in a situation.

2022

Plum Pudding is very similar to his 1980s incarnation. He’s a studious and chipper boy who’s unconditionally friendly to everyberry he meets. Plum is always polite and courteous to the berries he talks to, and never really shows any signs of negativity, at worst expressing a mild underwhelmed reaction. He’s also very understanding when mistakes happen, as he considers making mistakes a natural part of inventing.

Because of his great intellect, he usually speaks in a formal tone and occasionally talks in a somewhat verbose manner. He’s always enthusiastic when it comes to science and technology, which is why he gets along well with Lemon Meringue. Aside from STEM topics, Plum also enjoys traditionally “nerdy” activities like tabletop roleplaying games and LARPing.

Plum also has a massive sweet tooth. In his debut episode, when Strawberry baked him a galaxy-styled cake, he devoured the entire thing in seconds.

Appearance

1980s Series

Boy Plum Puddin’ was a dainty and short boy with fair skin and light-blue short hair that sticks out at the sides. He wore a purple puffy scholar’s hat with a plum on top, thin round glasses, a purple cardigan with a pink bow tie, and purple short striped shorts over green-and-white leggings with brown loafers. Plum usually has a pencil resting on one of his ears.

As a girl, Plum has a straight light-blue bob. Her outfit is broadly the same as before, but is now visibly “girlier”. Her scholar hat was replaced by a sun hat, her cardigan is slightly shorter and much rounder, the striped shorts are replaced with a purple pleated dress. instead of brown loafers she wore purple slip-ons, Her bow tie was green-and-white striped like her leggings, and her round framed glasses were now reddish-purple.

2003 Series

Plum is a teenage girl with fair skin, purple eyes, a visible blush, and long messy purple hair that reaches to below her waist, with some of her hair tied into twin pigtails with plum-shaped hairties. In artwork her hair has lime green highlights, but that detail isn’t in the cartoon. She is slightly taller and thinner compared to her friends.

She wears semi-rimless rectangular glasses with rounded edges and a lime green frame, a lime green 3/4 sleeved button up shirt alongside a purple and lavender checkered sweater vest, purple jeans with a plum graphic on the hems of her pant legs, lime green crew socks, and purple Mary Janes with a plum design in the middle of her shoes.

Berry Bitty Adventures

Plum Pudding is a fair-skinned girl with long purple hair tied into a ponytail with a blue scrunchie with two plum ornaments on top, and her face is framed by loose bangs. When her hair is down, it is perfectly straight and in her face. Her eyes are purple and she has pink lips.

Plum wears a lavender dress with a ruffled skirt-like bottom and a pastel blue layer beneath it, and a pastel blue ribbon across the belly. Over the dress she wears a dark-ish purple mid-length cardigan with a plum-shaped button tied with a pastel blue ribbon. She also has purple and white striped tights (green-and-white in 2D art), darkish purple leg warmers, and lavender ballet flats with a plum ornament at the top of her toes.

Berry in the Big City

Plum is a short teenage boy with dark skin, brown eyes, buckteeth, and black hair with a drop-fade cut. He is implied to be younger than the Berry Besties.

Plum wears black oversized round glasses with connected lense frames, a purple shirt, a closed white lab coat that reaches to his knees, dark purple pants, and blue sneakers. He often carries around a purple tablet with a plum logo that he uses like a notepad, and a purple pen with a plum ornament at the end.

Pets

1980s Series

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Plum’s pet was an owl named Elderberry. He has primarily purple feathers with blue wings. He has yellow eyes and yellow talons, and wears white “socks” with yellow buttons.

Berry Bitty Adventures

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Plum Pudding initially didn’t have a pet in the series until Season 3, in the episode "A Boy and his Dogs”. She initially adopted a Border Collie named Scouty, but the two were incompatible as Scouty’s naturally inquisitive personality and love for sniffing around meant he never wanted to dance. Plum decided to give Scouty to Blueberry Muffin, while she got Pitterpatch the Parson Russell Terrier from Raspberry Torte. Plum and Pitterpatch got along much better, as he loved to run and dance thanks to his energetic and playful nature. Pitterpatch remained Plum’s pet puppy for the rest of the series.

Trivia

General

  • Plum is the first character in the franchise to be depicted as multiple different genders, having been portrayed as a boy and a girl.
    • Because of this, it became widely popular among fans to headcanon Plum Puddin’ as a transgender girl.
  • Plum Puddin' was likely characterized as a brainy scientist because of the “Plum Pudding Model”[1], an early proposed model of the atom by JJ Thomson.

1980s

  • In a few greeting cards, boy Plum Puddin’ is shown giving a valentine to T.N. Honey, implying that they have a crush on each other, likely because both are the intellectuals of Strawberryland.
    • Ironically, neither would actually meet each other in the animated specials.
  • According to his original designer, Muriel Fahrion, Plum was created to be the responsible and studious contrast to the lazy Huckleberry Pie. However, because of how poorly the dolls of Huckleberry sold, Plum Puddin' was pulled from the lineup and written out of the series until 1984, whereupon Plum was reintroduced as a girl character with an accompanying doll in that year's lineup. Muriel is unaware of who designed the girl version of Plum Puddin'[2]
  • The name of Elderberry Owl was suggested by Dave Polter, a senior editorial manager for American Greetings.[3]

2003

  • She is the least prominent incarnation of the character, due to being introduced in the final season.
  • She is one of the few characters in the series without a pet.
  • Out of her few appearances, two of them are as Glinda in the Berry Brick Road episodes, making her the only character who’s had more appearances as a Fairy Tale character than as her normal self.
  • She is the only glasses-adorned Plum without round glasses.

Berry Bitty Adventures

  • She is the only incarnation of the character who isn’t interested in science or nerdy things.
  • She is the only incarnation who doesn’t wear glasses.
  • She is the first Plum whose last name is the regular "Pudding", rather than the shortened "Puddin'".
  • It is revealed in "Too Cool for Rules" that she likes Gooseberry Pie.
  • In "Berryella and Prince Charming", the ringtone of her cellphone is the song "Anything is Possible".
  • Ironically, despite being a dancer who’s performed for others before, Plum has stage fright.

Berry in the Big City

  • He is the second incarnation of the character to be a boy, nearly 41 years after the original 1980s incarnation.
    • By default, this also makes him the first Plum Pudding to remain a boy for the entire series.
  • He is the first version of Plum Pudding to be black, rather than white like previous incarnations.
  • He is the only other supporting cast member from the main cartoon to appear in the CGI specials, with the other being Aunt Praline.
  • According to showrunner Michael Vogel, Plum Pudding was made a boy again because they felt it would be fun if Strawberry and friends had another boy character to interact with, and so Huck and Bread wouldn’t be the only guys around. Because Plum had been a boy before, they decided he would be the best choice.[4]

Gallery

  1. ↑ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plum_pudding_model
  2. ↑ https://www.instagram.com/p/CT1CFRugmf2/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
  3. ↑ https://www.cnn.com/2010/SHOWBIZ/11/08/strawberry.shortcake.anniversary/
  4. ↑ https://x.com/mktoon/status/1883248211038781452
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