Strawberry Shortcake and the Beast of Berry Bog is the first (in release order) installment of the Strawberry Shortcake: Berry in the Big City Berry Big Specials. This special's theme is Fright Fall, the Halloween equivalent of the series, myths and facing your fears.
Summary
Family Jr.
Strawberry and her friends must sleuth out clues to discover the truth.
Netflix
When a big, scary monster tries to spoil the spooky season, Strawberry Shortcake and her Berry Besties must face their fears to solve the mystery.
Plot
Strawberry Shortcake bakes muffins and is excited about what she's going to do in this year's Fright Fall. She gets out of her truck and sings with her friends. Once the song ends Bread Pudding makes a remark about their musical number and asks the girls if they are done supplying the food for the Fright Fall Fun Fair and each of the friends show what they've made for the Fun Fair. Strawberry compliments everybody's treats and makes a claim that everyone is excited for Fright Fall, but Sour Grapes contradicts this reminding her that Huckleberry Pie is afraid of the celebration, a montage plays of Huck getting scared over everything around him to the point he's afraid of a lamppost. She assures him that he doesn't have to love the celebration and he checks the lamppost again, he almost hits a man who asks if the fair's food is ready and walks off disappointed before hearing any responses. Lemon Meringue makes a snarky comment about him and Bread tells his friends that his name is Crusty Muffin and he runs the the Fun Fair.
A corn cob mascot approaches the friend group saying that he's not bad once they get to know him, a part of the mascot opens and shows a girl, who tells them that he is her uncle. The Berry Besties gets adored by the girl's appearance and Strawberry introduces herself and some of her friends to the girl, she gets an introduction back and makes herself known as Candy Corn, who plays the corn cob mascot Corny the Cob, she also tells them that she made Corny herself. She mentions she's from Niblet's Hollow, Strawberry takes notice of this and notices that she's a country person from a location next to Berryvile. Candy is a bit nervous about moving to Big Apple City for the fair and Strawberry encourages her, letting her know that celebrating Fright Fall here is the same as back in her old town. An influencer by the name of Pumpkin Spice walks towards the Berryworks, who is visiting the fair for a review. Strawberry suggests Candy to talk to the influencer and she does, but gets aggressively shoved by her and ends her stream after leaving her opinion on the fair. Orange Blossom gets angry by her actions but Pumpkin suggests for the fair to be more scarier otherwise her channel's traffic will go down but asks the three to contact her if anything scary does happen and departs. Strawberry tells her that only a few people are rude. Then she hears The Peculiar Purple Pieman outraged that he couldn't place his many scattered signs on Crusty's fair. Crusty also chases out Johnnycake Cobbler for attempting to cheat the fair with a ring toss game with rings that can't fit the bottle. Crusty talks about how troublesome running the fair is but knows that his niece loves the fair as much as he does, he goes back to check on a few booths that aren't set up. Strawberry tells Candy that she and her friend will make sure that her fair will go well without any setbacks. It cuts to nighttime where a big silhouetted figure of a monster destroys the fair.
In the early morning, Strawberry goes to the Berryworks and witnesses the aftermath of the mysterious beast's attack. Lime Chiffon notices Corny's destroyed stage and Strawberry goes to comfort her, but the mood of the situation breaks when Huckleberry started strumming his guitar out of fear. Crusty tells everyone else that everything is fine but fixing "small" repairs, Bread gets upset by being ordered to have fun after what just happened. Candy feels unwanted and Strawberry gets enraged, and now wanting to find the culprit behind the fair's destruction. Lime leads the investigation and the Berry Besties split up to check each area. She notices claw marks on the damaged properties and elderberry sauce on the ground, Strawberry hears about this and is appalled, remembering a myth she was told back in Berryvile. Lime and the friends decides to continue investigating until nighttime but because Huckleberry is too scared to go with them, Bread, Raspberry Tart and Sour chooses to stay with him while the others go. Fast forward a bit, Raspberry fails to sell her pumpkin tarts due to the recent event that happened and the fact that Huckleberry is scaring everybody with his song. The three determines to help Huckleberry get over his fear of Fright Fall. Bread gets him to dress up to overcome his fear, but accidentally gives Huckleberry an existential crisis over the "Angry Eyebrows Huck" costume that only gave him bigger eyebrows.
At night, Strawberry and her remaining friends, with Candy searches the night looking for the culprit. Lemon brings an invention, The Grabber 3000 and accidentally breaks a stall trying to show how it works. Afterwards, everyone splits up leaving Strawberry alone and frightened over everything that happens. She hears a thud and notices that some things have been knocked down an bumps into all of her friends, who have all backed into the same direction. Lemon thinks that Orange made the monster noises but Lime says that the noise could have come from anything and one of the many things she points out that could be the sound's origin was a pair a glowing red eyes, and realizes that there is a monster. The five girls run into the maze field and Strawberry manages to find Custard but also finds the beast, she gets saved by Lemon's Grabber 3000 and both girls run out of the maze. Orange asks where they were and Candy reports her sightings, Pumpkin Spice notices and eavesdrops on the girls. Strawberry recognizes the monster as the Beast of Berry Bog. She gathers all of the Berry Besties, including the non investigating group to tell them about the myth she grew up hearing. Huckleberry nervously strums his guitar but this time, he wasn't stopped. Candy notes that if the Beast really is real, her uncle has to shut down the fair for safety. While Strawberry did mention that she won't let a monster stop the fair, she didn't mean for it to actually happen. She pretends to be unafraid of the beast and Lime tells her that it is a big deal. Pumpkin records the conversation and quickly reports what she heard to her audience.
The news spread very quickly as people are getting fearful of entering the fair and Johnnycake makes a profit of the current situation. Strawberry conflicts with her goal on making the fair fun by being glad that the fair will close because of the beast. Orange is concerned about her sudden change in behavior. Crusty considers shutting the fair down and Lemon wonders why the beast would attack the fair. Lime asks how the beast appears and hears that it has been summoned, she makes a board with four suspects on who could have summoned the beast: Pieman; who is theorized to summon the beast out of pettiness, Pumpkin for her opinions on the fair and possibly summoning it for more views, Johnnycake for quickly profiting off the situation not long after it happened and Crusty; who may have summoned it as an excuse to stop running the fair. Lemon shows off her upgraded Monster Grabber 4000, but it explodes offscreen. Bread brings up Huckleberry, who can't contribute as much due to his fear, Sour wants to help him by blindfolding him and making him touch the contents in 3 bowls, it works until he gets frightened over an empty bowl. Meanwhile, the 6 girls try and fail to interrogate their four suspects. Lime gets frustrated by their lack of progress and Candy accepts defeat and leaves the Berryworks. Strawberry is conflicted, she glad that she won't see the monster again but broke her promise to make the fun fair the best. The rest of her friends are upset, planning to give up too, but Lemon shows up in a ride able robot that is an upgrade of the Monster Grabber 4000 not planning to give up the beast soon. She also tells her friends that her goggles can see a trail of where the Beast of Berry Bog went and they all follow it.
The five of them follow Lemon in her Monster Grabber 4000 into the woods, following the trail only she can see. Strawberry gets scared of her surroundings and receives flashbacks of her encounters and finally couldn't take it anymore, she admits to her friends that she is extremely petrified of the monster expecting to be humiliated but didn't receive any negative remarks for it. She starts singing about how she wanted to be brave to appear more heroic and make everything okay and her friends join in assuring her that it's okay to be scared and that they'll help her face her fears together. Once the song ends, she is determined to look for the beast. In the meantime, Bread and Sour give up trying to help Huckleberry overcome his fear of Fright Fall, Raspberry decides to deal with it herself by telling him bluntly that Fright Fall is a holiday to face your fears. Back to the five girls, Lemon notices that the trail stops in a lake, but sees that it went into the Funnel Cake System. She encounters an issue that the Monster Grabber 4000 cannot walk down the stairs, so she and the group goes down the stairs without the robot.
Once they head downstairs, they encounter a storage room. Lemon reaches to open it and notices that the beast is in it. They all scream, expecting it to attack them on the spot but it's just standing in there. They think about why it would be in there and it wakes up, Blueberry Muffin approaches the Beast to hug it but it fails, they all run out of the Funnel Cake System. At the Berryworks, Huckleberry thanks Raspberry for helping him and is ready to face what he thinks is scary next time, unbeknownst to him, the Beast of Berry Bog has appeared in the Berryworks. Pumpkin hides while filming the beast live. The Monster Grabber 4000 approaches the Berryworks, but Strawberry is the one controlling the robot. She fights the robot while telling all of her friends to get everyone else to safety. When she hits the beast, she notices a part of it fell and revealed a big red button, she gets Huckleberry to distract the monster and manages to malfunction the beast thanks to him. It was revealed that the person controlling the Beast of Berry Bog animatronic is Candy Corn, who divulges that she made the beast because she's tired of people, including her Uncle Crusty, underestimating her for being sweet and nice which causes her to be unable to talk about what she really likes, horror, and that she doesn't want to play Corny the Cob anymore so she tries to shut the fair down. Strawberry offers to help her tell her uncle together about liking horror and not wanting to play Corny.
After he hears about this, including Candy liking horror, he wonders why she was afraid to tell him, while also unaware about how intimidating he can be to other people. He understands her and tells her that she can tell him anything because it won't make him love her even less. While they are happy that the situation has been resolved, Bread wonders if the fair would still go on. Strawberry gets an idea. Fast forward to later in the morning, the damages done to the area has been fixed, Corny is now played by Lemon and Corny's stage has been replaced with a stage for the Beast of Berry Bog animatronic ran by Candy Corn. Strawberry serves some of her friends her new Fright Fall recipe, the Berry Bog Blondie. She cautions Huckleberry before he eats the treat and he proves her wrong that he is no longer scared of Fright Fall, to prove himself wrong and getting scared. The special ends with everyone laughing from Huckleberry's attempt to prove her wrong.
Cast
- Ana Sani as Strawberry Shortcake
- Diana Kaarina as Blueberry Muffin
- Chirag Naik as Bread Pudding
- Vincent Tong as Huckleberry Pie
- Andrea Libman as Lemon Meringue
- Margarita Valderrama as Lime Chiffon
- Cassandra Consiglio as Lime's singing voice
- Bahia Watson as Orange Blossom
- Tabitha St. Germain as Raspberry Tart
- Shannon Chan-Kent as Raspberry's singing voice
- Meg Roe as Sour Grapes
- Odessa Rojen as Candy Corn
- Kelli Ogmundson as Pumpkin Spice
- Alvin Sanders as Crusty Muffin
- Ian Hanlin as The Peculiar Purple Pieman, Johnnycake Cobbler
Trivia
- This special and Strawberry Shortcake’s Perfect Holiday are the only two Berry Big Specials to have promotional images on Wildbrain's catalogue website before it got refreshed with actual model images. [4]
- Custard is not voiced by Ana Sani in this special, but her voice is completely replaced with sound effects.
- The special seems to take place between Season 2 and 3, as it is established that they know Purple Pieman and Sour is shown as a part of the Berry Besties, but Crabapple Jam is nowhere to be seen.
- Sour Grapes' first three confessionals happens in this special and not in an episode.
- Bread's costume of Honeybee Lightly is a reference to Aubrey Heburn in Breakfast at Tiffany's, titled Breakfast at Mulberry's instead.
Continuity
- Huckleberry is still very frightened about Fright Fall.
- Though, it is also now known that he may also be scared of ambulances, as his fear of Fright Fall also ties to ambulances.
Errors
- There are many shots of inconsistent lighting in a lot of the scenes of the special. It's more obvious in the darker settings.
- After Huckleberry explains why he's scared of Fright Fall the lighting suddenly becomes brighter.
- The lighting between the beast revealing itself to the Berryworks and Huckleberry running away from it also greatly changes.
- Some lighting in the earlier parts of the movie make Orange Blossom and even Lime look paler/
Videos
Trailers
Music Videos
Gallery
Click the image to view the gallery of the TV Special.
References
- ↑ https://www.tvpassport.com/tv-listings/stations/family-jr/5330/2023-09-22
- ↑ https://www.facebook.com/StrawberryShortcake/posts/pfbid02LAsVuruPRvDzhkJp1edguLRsF9Bk27npEPHYm2U5uEfwJLSt89vbq49jP6MCK1Erl
- ↑ https://www.anbmedia.com/news/2022/09/wildbrain-teletubbies-lets-go-plus-merchandizing-strawberry-shortcake-chip-and-potato-in-the-night-garden
- ↑ https://distribution.wildbrain.com/catalogue/222