Happy 20th anniversary, Winx Club :-)
Jan. 28th, 2024 10:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
spiderbraidsHard to believe that it's been 20 years (!) since Winx Club debuted in Italy, and became one of the country's biggest cultural exports :-) That said, thanks to their Larry David-esque approach to making seasons since the first movie, it's been a tough last few years, especially given all that's happened since the most recent season (season 8) of the mother show in 2019:
- The Rainbow Magicland theme park outside of Rome became just MagicLand, the Winx dark ride there was rethemed to time-travel, and their model of Alfea, their prominent landmark whose silhouette even featured in the park's original logo, was turned into the space-station-themed Cosmo Academy (the PopPixie-themed zone for smaller children had been renovated to a jungle theme the previous winter) due to the new owners not renewing the licensing agreement with Rainbow
- Two seasons of a live-action version, Fate: the Winx Saga; I wasn't interested, but to quote the meme, if I had a nickel for every time a Netflix Winx spinoff was cancelled on a cliffhanger after two seasons, I'd have two nickels :-)
- Ladybug, another show I had no real interest in, became more-or-less the most prominent magical girl show in the west, with a little help from Disney (Disney's previous magical girl effort gets a mention later on in this post)
- Speaking of Disney, besides the launch of their new streaming service and purchase of 20th Century Fox, we also had the entire run of The Owl House, a show I found out about, then fell in love with, and ended up writing about its demise in that time span
- Italy, traditionally one of the best nations in soccer, missing a 2nd consecutive World Cup finals at the feet of, lemme check my notes, North Macedonia, which you can't help but think Italy was already looking ahead to a playoff with Portugal and Christiano Ronaldo and considering getting past North Macedonia a mere formality
- Rainbow made a new show called Pinocchio and Friends where one character has portraits of the Winx in her home, LOL
- Gee, I dunno, a flippin' pandemic? (Which also delayed MagicLand's first Winx-less season from March to June)
Also, I hear that Rainbow's going to reboot the series into short-form CG next year (or even the year after) instead of continuing the thread of Icy's backstory as presented in the last few eps of season 8... but given some fans' reactions to that backstory like this one, they might react with "Nothing of value was lost" :-\
Here's how Zap2It's Jay Bobbin heralded their stateside arrival, as part of an article on coming TV attractions that summer (preserved here):
Fox courts girls with "The Winx Club," which officially launches Saturday, June 19. If Barbie and Thumbelina were combined, and Britney Spears dressed the result, Winx would appear. The cartoon seems destined for merchandise, and the theme song (the 4Kids one, obviously :-) - SB) is perky enough to be an instant morning hit. It features good fairies and wicked witches. There's also a school for heroics and bravery - for boys. The girls, however, flit about in teetering heels and midriff-baring glittery halters.
Hmm, detecting a little sexism there... That aside, seems like Jay was spot on about the merchandise :-) I first heard about the show here as part of a Toonzone thread, where fans of Disney's then-biggest hit toon Kim Possible and other toon nuts were dismissing Winx as a copycat of Disney's upcoming animated adaptation of their W.i.t.c.h. comics (to go alongside the novel adaptations they made for the US market), and the title showed how confident the fans were in the latter: "When Kim Possible Ends, W.I.T.C.H.es Will Rise"... And a very famous Flash animation, since preserved on YouTube, that made fun of 4Kids' infamous version of One Piece (one of the handful of other things relating to 4Kids that remains relevant today ;-)) also made a quick mention of Winx while listing out other shows 4Kids was handling, by showing a picture of W.i.t.c.h.'s Wilhelmina "Will" Vandom clobbering Bloom in the face (!) with a voiceover saying "Not W.i.t.c.h." Which pretty much suggests that toon nuts thought pretty low of Winx at the time...
(Side note: The font on the text in the YouTube version is wrong, as I remember it should resemble the font on the word balloon in this unrelated comic)
(Side note part 2: TIL from reading the comments under the YouTube version that one of the creators of this animation was Kyle Carrozza, who went on to make Cartoon Network's Mighty Magiswords :-))
Well, the title of this early 2005 thread just after the animated W.i.t.c.h. premiered says all you need to know about who won the ratings battle, as proudly proclaimed by Michael Grant, aka the webmaster of the biggest Winx fansite on the net: "WITCH's disaster ratings, Winx Club still going strong" :-) (And in the first thread, the fans were expecting merch too, but although I do have a W.i.t.c.h. notebook I got on a European trip, I only saw dolls and figurines once, on that same European trip)
(Another side note: I remember using posts from this same thread as part of a podcast discussing W.i.t.c.h.'s failure compared to Winx, and it ended up getting me banned from the Winx fan Livejournal, right before the start of the 3rd season I might add, because the moderator thought, based on comments saying such, that I was trashing the show and 4Kids by calling it, for example, "a show with a very inane story and characters, and mediaocre animation", which is something I would never have said of my own accord, as that was actually a quote from a W.i.t.c.h. fan who didn't like how it was being compared to Winx, but even when I posted the transcript to show that I was merely reading other persons' comments, the moderator upheld the ban for not asking people for permission, another thing she was serious about, grumble grumble :-\)
(Another side note part 2: On a lighter note, a long-defunct general TV message board called W.i.t.c.h. "Like Charmed, but better" :-))
Back to that first thread though; I visited the site and noticed that one of the characters was into technology, and thought it was cool... But what really got me interested in the show was discovering that Americans (really, more like the English-speaking world) got a different version of the show than everyone else, and it turned out that "over here" we got the other version... Next thing you know, I was trying to convince the fans that the original version was better (which also gave me quite a bit of trouble with the 4Kids-heavy fanbase at the time, Winx Livejournal included), which ended up evolving into also enjoying the show in its own right (the original version, obviously ;-) and I like to think that that techno-based character helped quite a bit :-)) And next next thing you know, I amassed quite a collection of Winx dolls, mostly Tecna of course :-)
Anyways, here's to the next 20 years, and with any luck maybe I'll still be enjoying the show in my senior years (whether it'll be just the original or alongside the CG reboot, who knows? ;-))
- The Rainbow Magicland theme park outside of Rome became just MagicLand, the Winx dark ride there was rethemed to time-travel, and their model of Alfea, their prominent landmark whose silhouette even featured in the park's original logo, was turned into the space-station-themed Cosmo Academy (the PopPixie-themed zone for smaller children had been renovated to a jungle theme the previous winter) due to the new owners not renewing the licensing agreement with Rainbow
- Two seasons of a live-action version, Fate: the Winx Saga; I wasn't interested, but to quote the meme, if I had a nickel for every time a Netflix Winx spinoff was cancelled on a cliffhanger after two seasons, I'd have two nickels :-)
- Ladybug, another show I had no real interest in, became more-or-less the most prominent magical girl show in the west, with a little help from Disney (Disney's previous magical girl effort gets a mention later on in this post)
- Speaking of Disney, besides the launch of their new streaming service and purchase of 20th Century Fox, we also had the entire run of The Owl House, a show I found out about, then fell in love with, and ended up writing about its demise in that time span
- Italy, traditionally one of the best nations in soccer, missing a 2nd consecutive World Cup finals at the feet of, lemme check my notes, North Macedonia, which you can't help but think Italy was already looking ahead to a playoff with Portugal and Christiano Ronaldo and considering getting past North Macedonia a mere formality
- Rainbow made a new show called Pinocchio and Friends where one character has portraits of the Winx in her home, LOL
- Gee, I dunno, a flippin' pandemic? (Which also delayed MagicLand's first Winx-less season from March to June)
Also, I hear that Rainbow's going to reboot the series into short-form CG next year (or even the year after) instead of continuing the thread of Icy's backstory as presented in the last few eps of season 8... but given some fans' reactions to that backstory like this one, they might react with "Nothing of value was lost" :-\
Here's how Zap2It's Jay Bobbin heralded their stateside arrival, as part of an article on coming TV attractions that summer (preserved here):
Fox courts girls with "The Winx Club," which officially launches Saturday, June 19. If Barbie and Thumbelina were combined, and Britney Spears dressed the result, Winx would appear. The cartoon seems destined for merchandise, and the theme song (the 4Kids one, obviously :-) - SB) is perky enough to be an instant morning hit. It features good fairies and wicked witches. There's also a school for heroics and bravery - for boys. The girls, however, flit about in teetering heels and midriff-baring glittery halters.
Hmm, detecting a little sexism there... That aside, seems like Jay was spot on about the merchandise :-) I first heard about the show here as part of a Toonzone thread, where fans of Disney's then-biggest hit toon Kim Possible and other toon nuts were dismissing Winx as a copycat of Disney's upcoming animated adaptation of their W.i.t.c.h. comics (to go alongside the novel adaptations they made for the US market), and the title showed how confident the fans were in the latter: "When Kim Possible Ends, W.I.T.C.H.es Will Rise"... And a very famous Flash animation, since preserved on YouTube, that made fun of 4Kids' infamous version of One Piece (one of the handful of other things relating to 4Kids that remains relevant today ;-)) also made a quick mention of Winx while listing out other shows 4Kids was handling, by showing a picture of W.i.t.c.h.'s Wilhelmina "Will" Vandom clobbering Bloom in the face (!) with a voiceover saying "Not W.i.t.c.h." Which pretty much suggests that toon nuts thought pretty low of Winx at the time...
(Side note: The font on the text in the YouTube version is wrong, as I remember it should resemble the font on the word balloon in this unrelated comic)
(Side note part 2: TIL from reading the comments under the YouTube version that one of the creators of this animation was Kyle Carrozza, who went on to make Cartoon Network's Mighty Magiswords :-))
Well, the title of this early 2005 thread just after the animated W.i.t.c.h. premiered says all you need to know about who won the ratings battle, as proudly proclaimed by Michael Grant, aka the webmaster of the biggest Winx fansite on the net: "WITCH's disaster ratings, Winx Club still going strong" :-) (And in the first thread, the fans were expecting merch too, but although I do have a W.i.t.c.h. notebook I got on a European trip, I only saw dolls and figurines once, on that same European trip)
(Another side note: I remember using posts from this same thread as part of a podcast discussing W.i.t.c.h.'s failure compared to Winx, and it ended up getting me banned from the Winx fan Livejournal, right before the start of the 3rd season I might add, because the moderator thought, based on comments saying such, that I was trashing the show and 4Kids by calling it, for example, "a show with a very inane story and characters, and mediaocre animation", which is something I would never have said of my own accord, as that was actually a quote from a W.i.t.c.h. fan who didn't like how it was being compared to Winx, but even when I posted the transcript to show that I was merely reading other persons' comments, the moderator upheld the ban for not asking people for permission, another thing she was serious about, grumble grumble :-\)
(Another side note part 2: On a lighter note, a long-defunct general TV message board called W.i.t.c.h. "Like Charmed, but better" :-))
Back to that first thread though; I visited the site and noticed that one of the characters was into technology, and thought it was cool... But what really got me interested in the show was discovering that Americans (really, more like the English-speaking world) got a different version of the show than everyone else, and it turned out that "over here" we got the other version... Next thing you know, I was trying to convince the fans that the original version was better (which also gave me quite a bit of trouble with the 4Kids-heavy fanbase at the time, Winx Livejournal included), which ended up evolving into also enjoying the show in its own right (the original version, obviously ;-) and I like to think that that techno-based character helped quite a bit :-)) And next next thing you know, I amassed quite a collection of Winx dolls, mostly Tecna of course :-)
Anyways, here's to the next 20 years, and with any luck maybe I'll still be enjoying the show in my senior years (whether it'll be just the original or alongside the CG reboot, who knows? ;-))
