Pretty Fairy Glitter Warmth

**Pretty Fairy Glitter Warmth** (Later as **Pretty Pixie Glitter Warmth** in 2003), is a set of characters created for HiT Entertainment by its American division, Lyrick Studios.

## History

### Origins

After they created Barney & Friends, Lyrick Studios CEO Timothy A. Clott picked Richard C. and Sheryl Leach to lead a separate children's subsidiary. They named it Lyons Partnership. LP was chiefly responsible for the development of Pretty Pixie Glitter Warmth franchise. LP kept their production of Pretty Pixie Glitter Warmth a closely guarded secret. It was so closely guarded that they called their originally "Pretty Fairy Glitter S" during their two-year development ("Barney & The Backyard Gang" being Barney & Friends).

Lyrick Studios partnered with the toy manufacturer Mattel. At the time, Mattel was known for its Barbie dolls and wanted to get into the plastic business with a line of human dolls.

In a 2017 interview with North American International Toy Fair, Sheryl remembers her initial grievances trying to design the characters. "You need a lot of designs to launch a new book series. We could only think of so many symbols, and then we ran out of gas. We had done all this research, and I had all this artwork on symbolism lying on my desk. It'd been three months since our meeting with Mattel, and I was still trying to come up with something."

"I'm sitting here looking at a simple pencil sketch of a elf and thinking, 'What the hell am I going to do with the elves?' Something in my head just took those graphics and flopped them over on the elf's butterfly wings. I drew that heart on that elf," Sheryl recalls.

Lyrick Studios contracted writer Jacqueline Wilson and illustrator Adam Hargreaves to help bring their idea to fruition. Once the team was assembled, the development of the new concept continued. "We had seven elves, each a different colour, representing seven colours of rainbow - Glitter Actress, Glitter Decora, Glitter Fir, Glitter Hydro, Glitter Maple, Glitter Rose and Glitter Sugar," said Sheryl, but something wasn't quite right with the crew. "We need a relief in this bunch. Let's do a counter to all this sweetness. Let's do a Glitter Warmth.'" Sheryl's instinct was spot-on. Balancing out the cast, this pretty elf became a fan favourite and has appeared as a titular protagonist in nearly every iteration of the franchise.

Wilson mentions the diversity of the elves' charm. "They look really young, but at the same time, you could have them say almost anything. You could have them be funny. Elves are the ultimate magical girl character."

Sheryl also detailed the process of prototyping the elves. "We had a plastic department with five expert designers all working on prototypes. We did hundreds of prototypes. They were working under a genius plastic designer, Bonnie Zacherle. You could give her a piece of artwork, and she could translate it into a three-dimensional plastic design. She was just magic. The end result almost mirrored the original pencil sketch. We sort of copied the Bild Lilli doll - [the first human doll with movable arms and legs, which took its name from Max Weisbrodt] - by putting a heart-shaped jewel on the front bow of the elves to make them official Glitter Pixies. We also got a patent, which is rare and hard to do. The patent was for the application of putting graphics on a elf's wings. Nobody had ever done that before."

Once the elves had been designed and Mattel had shown their undeniable interest in the concept, they still required a marketing plan. Previously, Lyrick Studios would release a new character and if it was popular with their target audience, other products and perhaps even a movie or television program would follow. With support from Lyrick Studios CEO Timothy A. Clott, Richard C. Leach had a much more detailed scheme. Pretty Pixie Glitter Warmth would launch simultaneously with thousands of licensed products, including comic books, bedding, children's clothing, housewares and more.

Sheryl states that the team didn't just design the characters, they also meticulously lined up a range of big-name companies to licence the concept at the same time. It took them a total of two years in development to reach the launch date.

Richard C. details "There were 26 licensees that all went to market together and each of them had anywhere from 10 to a thousand products. Once the retailer saw that 26 of his leading suppliers were on board, he got pretty excited about it and committed space and advertising. We had Wal-Mart, Kmart, Target, Woolworth, Toys R Us and many more."

After two years and millions of dollars in development, Pretty Pixie Glitter Warmth were privately introduced as Pretty Fairy Glitter Warmth to investors in 1991 and then to the world at the 1992 New York City Toy Fair, where a Broadway-style play was planned to celebrate the launch. "Elliot Handler, the businessman of Mattel, had his office up in Los Angeles, and he had these connections with the theatre. He proposed we mount a play. I think it cost a million dollars. Everything cost a million dollars. It was a one-shot deal. One night. The creator was that Barney & Friends introduced Pretty Fairy Glitter Warmth to the world. We launched in March because we knew Easter is a good time for girl toys. We also did 16 running feet of Glitter Warmth Comic Newspapers in the stores. In the first year, we sold $40 million worth of illustrated comic newspapers," Sheryl recalls.

### Popularity

The dolls were a hit, and Lyrick Studios knew they had something special. The same year, an animated television series produced by HiT Entertainment aired on The Disney Channel, which lasted five seasons. Combining normal forms with girls surrounding magical warriors, Pretty Fairy Glitter Warmth won over young girl fans as the ultimate magical pick-me-up.

The franchise's growing popularity prompted them to further capitalize on the creator by releasing The Pretty Fairy Glitter Warmth Movie in 1993, produced by the American animation studio Film Roman, which grossed nearly $35 million worldwide. It told the story of how the Fairies renewed a pair of lizards' trust in others after the sudden tragic death of Aiya's son-in-law. Wildly popular, the movie connected with its young girl audience and received a Golden Reel Award, Brtiain's prize for the largest annual box office gross. "At the same time that we were looking for new ideas, we were developing characters and plot lines for the movie. Jacqueline was the best in the world to tackle that type of assignment. She was the queen. When The Pretty Fairy Glitter Warmth Movie came out, Turner Entertainment people were talking about how they were beaten by people who were really new to this game." - Sheryl This was a reference to the fact the movie overgrossed Turner Entertainment's post-newest movie *Tom and Jerry: The Movie* in the box-office.

By 1994, a sequel to *The Pretty Fairy Glitter Warmth Movie* was released - *Pretty Fairy Glitter Warmth Movie II: A New Generation*. This movie told the origin story of the Elves and Sparrows, and introduced Glitter Valentine and Glitter Birthday. The movie grossed $12 million in the box-office, but was completely lambasted by critics, with critics like *The New York Times*' Helena Giersz proclaiming, "Product merchandising marches on." Even with the negative reception of the second movie, the girls' popularity kept going. In the first five years, Pretty Fairy Glitter Warmth merchandise racked up $2 billion in retail sales.

In 1995, another film - *The Pretty Fairy Glitter Warmth Adventure in Warmth Kingdom* was given a limited release in the United States and China. The movie was given a smaller release due to the very negative reception of *A New Generation*, leading to this one becoming a box-office bomb, grossing only $6 Million within a $5 Million budget.

In 1997, The last original series movie - *Pretty Fairy Glitter Warmth Romance Suite* aired on CCTV and Disney Channel in China and the United States respectively, and functioned as the series finale to *Pretty Fairy Glitter Warmth*. The movie was originally planned to release theatrically but the bombing of *Adventure in Warmth Kingdom* led to the movie airing on TV and directly-to-video.

### The first Relaunch

In 1999, television shows like *SpongeBob SquarePants* had reached on the height of their popularity, and with this, Mattel produced a new range of environmentally-friendly Glitter Pixies. Glitter Actress, Glitter Fir, Glitter Honeysuckle, Glitter Hydro, Glitter Rose, and Glitter Warmth all got redesigns that featured wings that represented something good about our world. A new addition to the range - Glitter Independence was also introduced, representing what makes America so great. The range only lasted a year, and have been criticised for their odd appearances.

After this relaunch, the Elves faded into obscurity, with only slight minor new releases coming in-between 2000 and 2001.

## The 2000's Relaunch

In 2003, Hasbro Toys acquired the toy master rights to Pretty Fairy Glitter Warmth franchise, it has renamed to its current name, Pretty Pixie Glitter Warmth and planned to give the Elves a new life.

"They have retro appeal. Pretty Fairy Glitter Warmth and Barney & Friends became the cool things to wear. They had a huge second life that is still ongoing." says Wilson.

the franchise was rebooted with revamped dolls featuring illuminated wings and updated colours in the 2000s, along with a live action TV series with two seasons and the flash-animated films Pretty Pixie Glitter Warmth: Journey to Hydro Kingdom (2004) and The Pretty Pixie Glitter Warmth Big Bloom Movie (2005). A new version of the TV animated series was also created in 2012 called The Pretty Pixies and in 2014, Disney Channel produced the show Komako's Story.

The most recent iteration of the television series is Pretty Pixie Glitter Warmth Creations and Pretty Pixie Glitter Warmth Intense and both are first aired in 2021.

"HiT Entertainment probably backed this one more than any other property. They supported it with consumer advertising, something they rarely did - a
million dollars of advertising." - Wilson

## General Appeal

Each Glitter Pixie comes in a different color for its uniform and has four specialized insignias on its wings that represents its duty and personality. Adding to the Glitter Pixie family are the "Glitter Sparrows", which feature fire engine red, cobalt blue, forest green, dark purple, light purple, red orange, golden yellow, vermilion, bright blue, and other such colours of these brothers created in the same style as the Elves.

In 2003, the elves were reintroduced with new dolls. Made by Hasbro, the new dolls offered features such as illuminated wings upon touch, civilian elves, and wedding elves.

In 2010, the franchise celebrated its 15th anniversary, and another relaunch took place with the launch of the movie *Pretty Pixie Glitter Warmth: Hygiene Does It!*. This was then followed by another series, *Pretty Pixie Glitter Warmth Returns.*This series ran until 2012, and was followed by three more direct-to-DVD movies in the same style.

In mid-2012, HiT Entertainment announced a spin-off TV animated series titled *The Pretty Pixies*. The premiere of the series capitalized off of "20 years of fluttering". It premiered on Disney Channel on September 1, 2013. Though The Pretty Pixies has recent ten seasons, a continuation of the series, "*Komako's Story*," was commissioned by Disney Channel and premiered September 7, 2014.  Toy company Spin Master debuted a range of Pretty Pixie Glitter Warmth toys (plastic doll, figures & blind bag collectibles) based on Pretty Pixie Glitter Warmth Returns and The Pretty Pixies characters and style guide in Spring 2014.

Since February 2021, a spin-off of the series, *Pretty Pixie Glitter Warmth Creations*, has aired on both cable TV and streaming services and *Pretty Pixie Glitter Warmth Intense* in September of the same year.

## See Also

* List of Pretty Fairy Glitter Warmth Characters