Rainbow Brite

Rainbow Brite (real name: Wisp) is a young girl who helps to bring color to the world, accompanied by the seven Color Kids, Twink the sprite, and her horse, Starlite.

Rainbow Brite and her allies frequently have to deal with the schemes of Murky Dismal, a short, mustachioed villain who, along with his oafish henchman Lurky, tries to make all of Rainbowland as dark and gloomy as his lair in The Pits.

The franchise was initially adapted as a series of 5 TV specials in that aired during a syndication week. This was followed by a feature-length film, which in turn was followed a 13 episode TV series, all produced by DiC.

Quite prominent in Deviant ART, where most of the fan art features Rainbow Brite as a scene kid or an Animesque Magical Girl.

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Tropes:

• All Your Colors Combined
• Animesque - Explained by being a Japanese coproduction, as with much of DiC's output at this time. One of the key animators, Masaki Kajishima, would go on to create Tenchi Muyo!. And the movie's co-director, Kimio Yabuki, had directed the original TV series of Dororon Enma-kun over a decade earlier.
• Apocalypse How - Had the Dark Princess hit planet Spectra when she flipped out over her plans going wrong, the Universe would collapse early.
• Blooper - In the first episode of the TV series, we see that Murky and Lurky have captured Lala Orange, Indigo and Buddy Blue. When Wisp and her group rescue them, Buddy's been switched with Patty O'Green, who had actually been rescued earlier.
• Conveniently an Orphan - Wisp, alias Rainbow Brite.
• Cool Horse - Starlite certainly thinks he is, true to his somewhat egotistical personality. Actually, every horse in the show is a Cool Horse.
  • Ask any girl who watched this while she was growing up, and she will insist that Starlite is the Most Magnificent Horse in the Universe.
• Cosmic Keystone - the Sphere of Light. Fridge Brilliance when you realize it's Rainbow Land's sun.
• Crapsack World - Rainbowland before Wisp arrived.
• Darker and Edgier - Sure, The Movie starts with a nice and cheerful song about spring and waking up and being energetic and the first 15 minutes or so go on just like any other Rainbow Brite episode... and then the robot horse arrives and the cheerfulness goes right out the window not to be seen until the very end. And believe me, it does get dark before that.
  • This, however, made it awesome.
  • There's also "The Beginning of Rainbowland Part 1 and 2" which showed that Rainbowland had been a Death World before Wisp brought color into it.
• Death by Despair - A late spring results in mass depression for the Earth in The Movie.
• The Eighties - Just look at the wardrobe, dude...
• Everything's Better with Rainbows
• Everything's Better with Sparkles
• Everything's Better with Princesses - Inverted in The Movie. The Dark Princess is a spoiled Robber-Baron sorceress who wants to shanghai Spectra, a star-sized diamond without which the cosmos will wither and die. Oh, and she also uses her (lifeless) pet gemstone as ship fuel when things don't go her way...
• Fiery Redhead - Red Butler is notorious for his hot-blooded nature.
• Freudian Excuse - It is revealed in the episode "Mom" that when Murky was an infant, he loved colors, and he expressed this by coloring on the walls. This angered his mother, who told him, "You're going to get rid of every bit of that color if it takes you all day, if takes you the rest of your life." Ever since, Murky has devoted his time to destroying colour.
• Girliness Upgrade- The new doll series.
• Girlish Pigtails - All the girls in Rainbow Land, except for the short-haired Canary Yellow and Lala Orange.
• Gone Horribly Right - Upon taking offense to his habit of coloring on the walls, Mrs. Dismal demanded that Murky gets rid of every bit of the colour on the walls. Come the present day, and now he has decided to exterminate all colour. You really should have worded your demands better, Mrs. Dismal.
• Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold - Rainbow Brite herself. Canary Yellow also fits.
• Happiness in Slavery - The Sprites
• Heartwarming Orphan - Wisp, the girl who would become Rainbow Brite.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes - The only part of the show to get DVD treatment was the movie back in 2004. It has since gone out of print (again; the DVD release came long after the VHS release went OOP)
• Leeroy Jenkins - Red Butler can sometimes get into more trouble than planned due to his reckless nature.
• Live Action Adaptation - "Rainbow Brite: San Diego Zoo Adventure"
• MacGuffin Girl - The baby in the origin episode, who is actually the Sphere of Light.
• Merchandise-Driven: And how!
• Meganekko - Shy Violet
• Mini-Dress of Power
• Minion with an F In Evil - Lurky
• Mona Marshall - Voiced Red Butler.
• Mordor - The Pits
• The Movie - "Rainbow Brite and the Star Stealer"
  • And a lesser-known Live Action Adaptation, shown here.
• Narcissist - He may be one of the good guys, but Starlite takes pride in his magnificence and isn't afraid to boast about it to anyone who is around him.
• Never Say "Die": Inverted in the movie when Rainbow explains why she has to go to Spectra:

"Don't you understand? Spring will never come again if something happens to Spectra. I've never been there, but it's part of me. It's part of the colors and the joy that we bring, and if Spectra dies, happiness everywhere will die. Without the light of life, we'll all...all of us will die."

• Not-So-Harmless Villain: Murky has his moments, such as when he captured and tortured Moonglo with light. In the same episode he nearly killed Rainbow by pushing her into a pit.
• Not Quite Flight: Starlite can gallop on rainbows as if on solid ground, but he still needs Rainbow to create them for him. Inverted in the movie with ON-X, a robot horse who can actually fly.
• Off-Model - Indigo's skin in "The Beginning of Rainbowland" is light in one scene.
• Painting The Colors On Leaves - The basic point of the show.
• Parental Bonus - The name of Color Kid Red Butler, Murky mixing a potion in a cocktail shaker and pouring it into a martini glass, etc. Double as Late to The Punchline moments for some viewers.
• Peter Cullen - Yes, that's Optimus Prime himself voicing Murky Dismal.
• Premiseville - The franchise is set in Rainbow Land, with the movie involving Spectra the diamond planet.
• Rainbow Motif: The Color Kids.
• Remember the New Guy? - Stormy, Moonglo and Tickled Pink show up in episode 4 with absolutely no explanation. In the same episode, Starlite looks at Murky's Paper-Thin Disguise and muses, "I thought I knew all the Colour Kids."
• Really Seven Hundred Years Old - According to an offhand remark in an early episode, possibly everyone in Rainbowland, and definitely Murky at least.
• Shout-Out: DS game Treasure World has a the Rainbow Tiara, Dress, Skirt, and Belt that makes your character look exactly like Rainbow Brite.
• Shrinking Violet - Shy Violet.
• Spring Is Late - In Star Stealer.
• Sugar Apocalypse - Murky Dismal makes it his mission to turn Rainbow Land into a gloomy place.
• Sugar Bowl - Which does not preclude the occasional threat of a Sugar Apocalypse.
• Token Minority - Indigo is black East Indian.
• Tsundere - Stormy, arguably.
• Well, Excuse Me, Princess! / Vitriolic Best Buds - While Rainbow Brite isn't a princess, her and Krys' initial relationship bordered on the former trope in The Movie, with Rainbow as a Tsundere and Krys as a Jerk with a Heart of Gold. It was more like the latter for the most part until they become True Companions.
• World-Healing Wave
• Wrench Wench - Shy Violet, despite her shyness, knows her way with machinery.
• You Gotta Have Blue Hair - Most of the cast, Rainbow and LaLa being exceptions.