Oh Lisa, no.

During my lip-gloss and glitter addiction years, Lisa Frank was a big part of my life. Yes, my aesthetic was one of a raver long before I had ever done been to a party more exciting than a 6th grade mixer. My mother had to be forcibly restrained from preventing me from leaving the house, not because I looked skanky, but because I looked freaking ridiculous. Yes there are pictures, and No, they most definitely are not scanned. Just imagine a 12-year-old in green eyeshadow with 4 foot long red hair in a school uniform (skirt to the knees) and enough Mardi Gras beads on her arms and neck to make Mr. T blush.  In my defense, I absolutely loved that look, rocked it, and it was the Millennium and you should have seen what people were wearing.

But enough about me and Dennis Rodman, that's not what I want to talk about. I want to talk about Unicorns and neon-penguins and the design that once graced every trapper-keeper, folder, sticker, eraser that didn't really erase anything, pencil, pen, and poorly-manufactured plastic trinket in sight in Junior High.

I remember falling in love with Lisa Frank, not just because of the obvious unicorns, bright colors and acid-trip sensibility, but because the other options for folders were barbie, tiger beat heartthrobs, and plain. The images were never some image of a girl how she should appear, but images from a young girls dreams. That is I think, why I find this revamp so very disappointing.

The use of human figures at all turns me off to them, before we even get to the sexualized aspects of them, and the well, Bratziness. Must I go cry tears of rage? Where WILL girls find images that aren't filled with girls of a certain type?

I guess the future is full of DIY art projects for the back to school set who prefers adventure and creatures of legend to shopping and baby dolls. At the end of the day, that could be worse. I just hope they keep making brightly colored paints.

Regardless, I'll let Andy Wright of SFWeekly's thoughts send us off..

"The whimsical ponies of my childhood [a]re being straddled by big-headed coquettes in hot-pink midriff tops.

Ostensibly, the purpose of tampering with a brand is to adjust for what the appeals to the audience. And while I'm sure interest in the Lisa Frank line may have waned since the color-saturated '80s and '90s, I have to wonder if little girls actually are more interested in bizarrely proportioned nymphets dressed like sexy hippies than a righteous day-glo tiger cub. And if they aren't, who are these re-designs really for?"