Lady Lovely Locks


Lady Lovely Locks and the Pixietails is a character property created by American Greetings subsidiary Those Characters from Cleveland in the mid-1980s which soon expanded into a toyline by Mattel. An animated television series produced by DIC Animation City was produced in 1987, running for a single series of ten half-hour episodes ; and was syndicated by LBS Communications on the Kideo TV strand.

Animated series

Lady Lovely Locks is the princess of the Kingdom of Lovely Locks. She and her friends are aided by the Pixietails in keeping the kingdom safe from its enemies. Among the hero characters of the show are Lady Lovely Locks, Maiden Fair Hair, Maiden Curly Crown, the Pixietails, Prince Strong Heart, Shining Glory, Silky Pup, and Silky Mane. The main villains are Duchess Ravenwaves, Hairball and Comb Gnomes, the latter of whom tend to speak in rhyme. The show was cancelled after one season.
The series was produced by the French and Japanese animators of Rainbow Brite and Jem, among other 1980s cartoons. The music for the series was composed by Shuki Levy and Haim Saban and supervised by Marty Wereski. The original "Lady Lovely Locks" theme song was composed by Shuki Levy and produced by the music department of Saban Productions and performed by Donna De Lory. The original full theme song can be heard on Shuki Levy's official website.
Hi-Tops Video released five Lady Lovely Locks videos in the 1980s. These videos have since reappeared on the market. They resurfaced as part of the DVD set "Girls Rule Vol. 1" which included the following cartoon series: Jem, Rainbow Brite, and Lady Lovely Locks. Several of the episodes are also available on a DVD in the "Biggest DVD Ever" series for Lady Lovely Locks. Two episodes have never been collected except on the Australian VHS edition. As of 2024, the series is currently owned by WildBrain.

List of episodes

Broadcast

Broadcast USA history
  • ''Syndication''
    Broadcast Polish history
  • ''Jetix Play''

    Broadcast UK history

  • ''Sky Channel''

    VHS UK history

  • ''Channel 5 Video''

    Characters

Protagonists

  • Lady Lovely Locks - The series' main protagonist, and Lady is her given name. She wears a pink dress and has blonde hair with streaks symbolizing her royalty in three colors: soft pink, gold and lavender. She is the princess of Kingdom Lovely Locks as well as its main source of power and life. She is a very loyal, brave, kind, selfless, polite, resourceful, optimistic, dependable and friendly individual who always treasures her people and her home.
  • Maiden Fair Hair - A maiden and best friend of Lady Lovely Locks who wears a blue dress and whose light brown hair is worn in waves. A natural beauty, party-planner, daydreamer and painter, she is very serene, cool-headed, and intelligent, but would sometimes lose track of something important and/or, to the extent, her sense of direction.
  • Maiden Curly Crown - Another maiden and friend of Lady Lovely Locks who wears a yellow dress and has her red hair done in curls. A funny and imaginative girl with a big heart, she loves making up stories, styling her hair, and collecting bugs, but is somewhat impulsive and, despite being quite smart, would sometimes get herself into trouble.
  • Silky Mane - Lady's kind-hearted, trusty royal horse who always understands her thoughts and feelings.
  • Silky Pup - Lady's happy-go-lucky, yet trouble-prone pet puppy who has a secret crush on the Prince.
  • Shining Glory - a blind, yet very wise and powerful sorcerer and wizard, and the beloved mentor to Lady and her friends. He often aids Lady with his magic. It is also said that he has adopted the Prince after he was cursed. When inside a dimensionally transcendental crystal in his castle, Shining Glory has his sight, but when outside, he is blind again.
  • Prince Strong Heart - originally a human, but was turned into a dog known as "Prince" as a result of a dreadful curse. He often visits the castle gardens since being adopted by Shining Glory. In times, the opportunity for him to turn into human again comes; however, he rather puts this aside into helping his companions, such as coming to Lady's rescue when she is in danger. He was not much likely seen in his previous appearance. In Shining Glory's crystal, Strong Heart is human.

    Antagonists

  • Duchess Raven Waves - The series' main antagonist. She wears a purple dress and, like Maiden FairHair, her black hair is styled in waves. She is the mean, jealous, cruel, stubborn, selfish, domineering, cold, and conniving ruler of Tangleland, as well as the main archenemy of Lady Lovely Locks. Duchess always plots dastardly schemes to take over the kingdom of Lovely Locks for herself, and believes that cutting off a piece of her rival's hair would do it. She is not actually evil, and on one or two occasions she actually helped Lady when it was to their mutual advantage.
  • Hair Ball - a former apprentice of Shining Glory who is now in employ of RavenWaves. Deemed untrustworthy by good people, he specializes in magic and is very practical when it comes to making and causing trouble. He also acts miserable when he feels defeated; however, this makes him quite sympathetic to his peers.
  • Comb Gnomes - creatures with big ears and wild-looking hair and fur who are henchmen of Duchess RavenWaves and accomplices to HairBall. They are very mischievous and mean-spirited, yet lazy and irresponsible during a plan and become upset when their part of a planned scheme fails. They are also archenemies to the Pixietails, as they all have magical powers, of which theirs is a lightning attack. Their names are Snags, Dulla and Tanglet. Unlike the Pixietails, these were the only three Comb Gnomes ever to be seen in the entire series.

    The Pixietails

The Pixietails are fairy-like animals, who help Lady Lovely Locks whenever she is in need for a problem or whenever someone is in trouble. Lady's Pixietails are rabbit-like, FairHair's Pixietails are squirrel/chipmunk-like, and CurlyCrown's Pixietails are bird-like.
  • Pixieshine - A blue rabbit-like Pixietail under the ownership of Lady Lovely Locks.
  • Pixiebeauty - A purple rabbit-like Pixietail under the ownership of Lady Lovely Locks.
  • Pixiesparkle - A pink rabbit-like Pixietail under the ownership of Lady Lovely Locks.

    Dragons

Dragons exist in the kingdom. They can breathe fire and have wings to fly with. Instead of hatching from eggs, newborn dragons are born from the Dragon Tree. A plant called Dragon’s Hair has some connection.
  • Longcurl - The mother of the dragon triplets.
  • Sweetcurl
  • Merrycurl
  • '''Bouncycurl'''

    Toy line

The Lady Lovely Locks toyline was created by Those Characters from Cleveland and produced by Mattel from 1987 to 1989. The toyline consists of character dolls that are approximately 8.5 inches tall, with certain dolls having long, colorful locks. Most dolls came with three to four Pixietails. The Pixietails could be worn in the hair of either the doll or the child. Additional items in the toyline included other pets and playsets.

Books

A number of tie-in books were released alongside the toyline and animated series. Among these books are "An Enchanting Fairy-Tale Adventure", "For the Love of Lovely Locks", "Lady Lovely Locks Original Story", "Silkypup Saves the Day", "Silkypup's Butterfly Adventure" and "The Golden Ball".

In popular culture

In the eighth season episode of the series That '70s Show, "Killer Queen", the character Randy says: "Donna, Hyde's already given me a nickname. It's Mrs. Lady Lovely Locks". This is an anachronism, as the Lady Lovely Locks toyline and animated TV series were released in the mid-1980s.
A customised version of the tape was chosen by film critic Gene Siskel as his worst gift for the 1987 holiday season during the Holiday Gift Guide episode of Siskel & Ebert.

German audio tapes

In Germany, ten audio tapes were produced by Europa, which extended on and continued the storylines that were never resolved by the short-lived animated TV series. Not only did the tapes dive into Lady's childhood, but they also resolved Prince StrongHeart's curse by turning him human, featured the couple's wedding and the birth of their daughter, as well as the infant's kidnapping by Duchess RavenWaves and her glorious rescue. While each character had her or his own voice actor, the series was narrated by Hans Paetsch. The voice actors differed from those used in the animated series.

Voices

  • Tony St. Vincent - Lady Lovely Locks, Pixiesparkle
  • Jeannie Elias - Maiden Fair Hair, Pixiebeauty, Snags, Dulla
  • Brian George - Shining Glory, Pixieshine, Hairball
  • Danny Mann - Prince Strong Heart, Tanglet, Comb Gnomes
  • Louise Vallance - Duchess Raven Waves, Maiden Curly Crown

    Releases

In Germany, the first three episodes were released on three VHS tapes. The tapes contain these episodes dubbed in German with the opening theme and closing credits as well as a TV commercial for the Lady Lovely Locks dolls.
In November 2015, the entire series was released on DVD in Germany containing both German and English audio tracks under the name "Lady Lockenlicht" which translates into "Lady Locks Light". It uses the broadcast TV material as seen on German television, which is 1:1 identical to the English video material except that it is converted to PAL and therefore slightly faster than the original NTSC format.