Rainbow Brite: Bringing Color to the World of Kids
While Shirt Tales was a success for Hallmark, they reached another level of popular culture history with Rainbow Brite character. Introduced in 1984, with the sole intention of creating and marketing a toy line, Rainbow Brite was a young girl in a bright rainbow jumper dedicated to bringing color and happiness to the world with her friends, the horse Starlite and a fluffy creature with star-tipped antennae called Twink, who helped her on this mission. Along the way, she met the Color Kids, they launched a merchandising bonanza that involved luminaries like Disney, DiC, and Mattel, spawned a series, a line of books. While Rainbow Brite was criticized as a giant toy commercial, it must have worked as the merchandise generated billions of dollars. Rainbow Brite is one of the lucky toys that has staying power – it has had modern reboots to introduce it to a new generation of kids.