Story

Rose-Petal Place was introduced in 1984 by Kenner, launching with a short for television animated movie, coming at 30 minutes. The movie told the story of how a young girl's tears over leaving her beloved garden behind brought our protagonist, Rose-Petal, to life. The girl pleaded her favorite rose to live on forever, and that is what Rose-Petal is doing - taking care of the garden, keeping it lovely in the girl's stead.

The magical tears also brought Rose-Petal's best friends to life, who are all similarly flowered theme. Of course the beautiful wish for the garden to flourish is threatened by the evil spider named Nastina, who wants the garden to fall into disuse and disarray. She lives in her Tin Can Castle with her side-kick Horace the horse-fly plotting schemes to disrupt or otherwise dispose of Rose-Petal.

VHS cover of the Rose-Petal Place animated movie

Luckily Rose-Petal has her many friends, including a cat, hedgehog and several insects who live in the garden to help her out smart and thwart Nastina's various misdeeds. This plot unfolds within the 1984 movie, but is augmented by a book series and audio books.

The story of Rose-Petal Place was created by David Kirchner a film and television producer best know for his other works including An American Tale, Hocus Pocus and The Flintstone's movie. When Kirchner was developing the concept of Rose-Petal Place the first and only person he imagined in the role of Rose-Petal was Marie Osmond, singer, author and actress.

During the 30 or so minutes of the movie we see the basic plot of Rose-Petal Place play out very simply. We are introduced to the main characters via our narrator Elmer, the living elm tree who tells all of Rose-Petal's stories, and follow a basic story of Nastina capturing Rose-Petal in hopes of taking over the garden. Naturally Rose-Petal's friends are able to save her and together they defeat Nastina.

via Behind the Voice Actor

As was the main point of cartoons in the 80s, Rose-Petal Place's movie was designed to sell toys. To get kids interested in the the merchandise and beg their parents to buy them. It's pretty evident as you watch the movie, there's little quality in the plot or animation but it certainly is cute. To read more about animation practices in the 1980's check out this link.

While the Rose-Petal movie doesn't hold up against modern cartoons (esp ones like Steven Universe, My Little Pony: FIM, Gravity Falls, Korra, etc) it no doubt was charming to young girls and there were plenty of dolls and merchandise to keep them interested in the line. Luckily the movie is available on Youtube, check it out for nostalgia or if you're like me and Rose-Petal Place came out before you were born it gives you a good feel of 80s cartoons. And Marie Osmond really sounds lovely in her role.



Furthermore a year later in 1985 a second animated short movie was developed by David Kirchner again, it introduced 6 new flower themed characters. Kenner had plans to expand the doll line with these characters but they only got so far as creating prototypes. The entire Rose-Petal Place line was discontinued before the dolls could be manufactured.



You can also watch the second movie Rose-Petal Place: Real Friends on youtube. The second one was not as good as the first which is sadly often the case with sequels and the animation was even more poor. It's hard not to wonder if the followup had been a bit morewell-done if the line could have survived.