I wonder, since your account revolves around girly things (duh), have you ever heard of rainbow magic? If so, did you know that it has an anime movie called return to rainspell island?
I have! I don’t think I could name a single western kid raised in an Afab way who isn’t at least aware of the original seven book Rainbow collection!
Rainbow magic was something I was aware of in my childhood but not something I personally partook in. I think I read like one book? Realised it was about the two girls and fairy of the book was a side character and lost interest. Never hated them but just didn’t immediately catch me and for an ADHD riddled brain that was enough.
But it fascinates me now from an outside view. As an extreme example of a “Forever Brand.” As the girls media industry especially the western one doesn’t get those often.
A Forever Brand is a type of brand that instead of Rebooting and changing the original story for new ages every five-ish years instead chooses to just continue the original story indefinitely. It just keeps going forever.
Which is the bit that I’ve seen shock people. Learning that rainbow magic is still going. Even to this year 2026 they are still releasing new books and fairies.
Yes I am surprised they haven’t ran out of names and themes too.
This is maintainable thanks to the formula the books work on itself being really repetitive. They can keep going forever because almost every book in the series acts like it’s the first of them you’ve ever read.
It is not a book series you are expected to own every book from. You’re more expected to have around five that you’ll personally grow up with and only learn the rest exist in your twenties.
It is infinitely accessible and infinitely renewable. But because of that it is rarely anyone’s favourite childhood brand.
And it also means the only characters from it that any spin-off medias are actually interested in using are the original seven rainbow fairies. They are the only ones that actually end up mattering.
If there’s plushies? It’s one of them.
If there’s a movie like the one you brought up?
They will be the fairies we follow.
The one curse of a Forever Brand is that ultimately whichever characters you make first will be its face lineup forever.
And with Rainbow Magic in particular? That is actually an issue. Especially as the brand continues to get older and older.
Because the diversity in the original fairies lineup by modern standards is kinda… abysmal? Just kinda not acceptable by modern standards?
Seven main fairies and six of them are white. One is nebulously Brown and continuously whitewashed in spin-off media. And four of them are blond. The movie had to change Saffrons hair colour to a dirty blond just to mask how bad it is.
For a group of rainbow fairies that is kind of awful variety. It’s so early 2000s it hurts. It’s ultimately likely why we’ve seen spin-off media for the brand kinda dry up. Because it doesn’t matter how diverse they make the new fairies when it’s only these seven that anything would reasonably focus on.
For a forever brand it’s now kinda itching for a soft reboot. At least for the main seven girls. It needs to get comfortable messing around with their designs. Making them less universally white as wonderbread.
And it’s something they are toying with in the safety of children’s graphic novels this year!
Not only making one of the child protagonists darker skinned? But also the fairies. So far choosing to retcon Saffron into being South Asian and Fern into being Black. While also doing littler changes like making Ruby a redhead to soften the overloading of Blonds.
Because having a cast that white was getting outdated even in 2003 when the books started airing. Arguably it was outdated even in the 90s.
Ironically despite being a case of a Forever brand done well? It becomes a great example of why change (and therefore reboots) are in fact necessary.
Because shit gets old. Things that were standard once become not so. Time simply moves on.
So the things that stick around restart every now and then to reflect that. And that is a good thing.
Modern reboots not landing is not because they’ve changed “too much.” It’s because they’re insecure in what they do change. Ready to backtrack at the slightest bit of pushback.
But there will always be pushback. People hate change. Learning when to just push through ignoring it and when to actually heed it is what makes a great brand great.
I hope the Graphic novel designs become the next standard designs for the core seven fairies. I hope they do well. It is kinda time.
