LOS ANGELES - STRAWBERRY Shortcake was having an identity crisis.

The 'it' doll and cartoon star of the 1980s was just not connecting with modern girls. Too candy-obsessed. Too ditzy. Too fond of wearing culottes.

So her owner, American Greetings Properties, worked for a year on what it has called a 'fruit-forward' makeover. Strawberry Shortcake, part of a line of scented dolls, now prefers fresh fruit to gumdrops, appears to wear just a dab of lipstick (but no rouge), and spends her time chatting on a cellphone instead of brushing her calico cat, Custard. Her new look was unveiled on Tuesday, along with plans for a new line of toys from Hasbro.

She is not the only ageing fictional star to get a facelift. An unusually large number of classic characters for children is being freshened up and reintroduced - on store shelves, on the Internet and on television screens - as the toys' corporate owners try to cater to parents' nostalgia and children's YouTube-era sensibilities.

Adding momentum is a retail sector hoping to find refuge from a rough economy in the tried and true.

Warner Brothers hopes to 'reinvigorate and reimagine' Bugs Bunny and Scooby-Doo through a new virtual world on the Internet, where people will be able to dress up the characters pretty much any way they want. American Greetings is dusting off another of its lines, the Care Bears, which will return with a fresh look - less belly fat, longer eyelashes.

And 4Kids Entertainment, which licenses the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, will revive them next year in new video games, where they will have more muscles and less attitude.

Even Mickey Mouse is getting an update, although the Walt Disney Co is still mulling over the possible tweaks.

'I love classic Mickey, but he needs to evolve to be relevant to new generations of kids,' Mr Robert Iger, Disney's chief executive, has said in an interview.

Reinventing these beloved characters without inflicting indelible damage is one of the entertainment industry's trickiest manoeuvres.

Go too far, as Mattel did in 1993 when it gave Barbie's boyfriend Ken a purple mesh T-shirt, a pierced ear and the name 'Earring Magic Ken', and it can set off a brand meltdown globally.

Done correctly, it can be incredibly lucrative. Mickey Mouse brings in an estimated US$5 billion (S$7 billion) in merchandise sales every year.

Strawberry Shortcake, even in her diminished state, has generated US$2.5 billion in revenue since 2003, according to American Greetings.

If the classic characters look less stodgy, the companies hope, they will appeal not only to parents who remember them fondly, but also to children who might automatically be suspicious of toys their parents played with.

For parents, nostalgia is considered a bigger sales hook than ever because of the increasingly violent and hyper-sexualised media landscape.

'It's a terrible world, and modern parents are trying to cocoon their kids as much as possible,' said Mr Alfred Kahn, chairman of 4Kids Entertainment, which also manages franchises such as Pokemon and the Cabbage Patch Kids.

'What better way to protect them than wrapping them in nostalgic brands?'

NEW YORK TIMES