Ciao amore,
welcome to Stella’s Winx Club Diaries.
I am Stella, born and raised in Germany and a Winx Club fan and collector since 2004. In this series I would like to share my personal experiences with the Winx Club from the last 20 years with you.
Welcome to Alfea
The year was 2004 – I was 9 years old at the time.
On 28 January, a Wednesday, the Winx Club series was released in Italy.
On 9 July, a Friday, Winx Club was then released in Germany.
Tuesday, 13 July, 2:48 pm
It was the summer holidays and of course I had nothing better to do than spend my time in front of the TV instead of being outside in the beautiful weather. I flicked through the TV channels looking for something interesting to watch. There was a channel called RTL2, which at the time was known for showing anime in the afternoon programme. When I switched to this channel, there was something I had never seen before and it was so beautiful in my eyes that I decided to keep watching.
To be precise, it was the third episode of season 1 of Winx Club. The scene where Bloom, Stella and Flora were in Bloom & Flora’s room while Bloom kept trying to magically change her hair colour. It didn’t work, and Bloom asked Stella and Flora why they were both with Alfea.
This scene played out so quickly for me and even though I didn’t know the names of the characters or the name of the show and didn’t know which episode I was in, I got butterflies in my stomach and felt like I had fallen in love. I remember very clearly thinking: “No matter what this series is, you’ll love it forever”. And here I am, 20 years later.
It’s funny that I remember those first few seconds so vividly, but I can’t tell you if I continued to watch the episode or even if I watched the show every day after that. Because even though we had TV guides and I knew how to read them, I don’t think I thought too much about looking up when Winx Club was on.
A month later, I drew each of the five Winx in their everyday outfits and in their Magic Winx outfits. Since they don’t quite match the original, I don’t think I’ve seen too much of the show.
In the last quarter of the year, the first Winx products were finally launched on the market. These included DVDs, CDs, cassettes, magazines and dolls.
One day in early October, I was once again sitting in front of the television watching RTL2. At the time, there was a series called Pokito TV, in which two young adult presenters talked about the anime that was being shown on RTL2. Dubbing actors, musicians and fans were also invited to give interviews. This particular episode I saw was about crowns and since Bloom wears a crown in her transformation form, she was mentioned and her transformation sequence was shown.
When I saw it, I started crying because I really missed Winx and I hadn’t seen it in that sense for a good two months as the season was only shown once.
I ran outside to my mum who was in the garden and she was quite startled to see me crying and asked me what had happened. Still crying, I told her that I had just seen some of Winx on TV and really missed the show.
My mum had to smile a little and said that we could look on Amazon to see if the series was available on video cassette – even though DVDs were already available back then, video cassettes were still commonplace.
So we looked on Amazon the same day and sure enough, 3 out of 5 DVDs of the first season had been available since 4 October. My parents ordered these for me straight away and of course I was super happy. However, the other two DVDs were not released until 22 March 2005. We pre-ordered them and I can’t believe that I really waited a good five months for the DVDs.
On 24 November, the first magazine was published by the publisher Panini and probably in the same period a poster magazine by the publisher actticFutura, which also published other girls’ magazines at the time. The first season was also broadcast for the second time on RTL II.
When my best primary school friend at the time and I saw the magazines in the shop on a Saturday, she bought the poster magazine and I bought the normal magazine. The magazine was shrink-wrapped in a large cardboard box and came with a purple bag as an extra, which I loved. I quickly regretted not buying the poster magazine, but luckily I was able to find it on ebay in 2013 in good condition and buy it.
It might even have been on the same Saturday that my friend and I found the free Barbie journals from Mattel in the toy department of another shop. In these journals, there was a double page spread on the Winx dolls, which we had never seen before and I was beside myself with excitement. The double page spread featured the five Winx and Icy the witch in their transformations, as well as the second outfits they were all wearing. Strangely, there was no picture of Prince Sky, although he was also available. Fun fact at this point: Sky’s packaging says “Brandon”, although at the time of release in America the season had run its full course and anyone who has seen the series therefore knows that Sky and Brandon had only swapped names to protect Sky.
Mattel published a biannual free Barbie Journal twice a year, I assume in April for spring/summer and in October for autumn/winter. These small magazines featured all of Mattel’s new products and were designed to be interactive, so that they appealed to the very young target group.
So I assume that the Winx dolls were released around October because the latest Barbie Journal was probably published at that time. And since the first DVDs were also released at the beginning of October, it makes a lot of sense to me that the dolls didn’t make it to the shops in September. But unfortunately I still haven’t been able to find out the exact release date for the dolls.
The second magazine came out in mid-December, which was again shrink-wrapped on a large cardboard box – similar to the way the magazines were published in Italy for a very long time.
Christmas was getting closer and closer and my girlfriend and I wanted a doll for Christmas so much – but I couldn’t even decide which one I wanted. My friend was very lucky because she got Bloom for Christmas, but I wasn’t allowed to have another doll because I really had too many Barbie dolls. And how is a 9-year-old supposed to convince her parents that a Winx doll means something completely different to a Barbie doll?
I have to admit that I was very sad not to have got a doll, but I was also very happy for my friend. We played with her Bloom doll so much and I was so obsessed with the smell of the doll and how different she was from the Barbie dolls. She was much smaller, much more delicate and very detailed. We spent hours looking at the wiggle picture card and stickers that came with the doll. We were also fascinated by the packaging, which resembles the shape of the X in the Winx logo.
Thank you for reading this post – I hope it made you reminisce.
When did you meet Winx and what are your first special memories?
Segui il tuo cuore,
Your Stella