In 1990, Abrams & Co. Publishers Inc. of Austin, Texas, bought the rights to "The Letter People" from the previous owner, Norwalk, Connecticut-based New Dimensions in Education, Inc. At first, the company slightly revised the program considerably, such as adding lowercase letters to the back of each Letter Person (previously they had been placed on each character somewhat randomly), but in 1996, they gave the program a major update, completely redesigning the look of the characters and the associated materials, and also made sweeping changes to over half of the Letter People's genders themselves, most obviously equalizing the proportion of male to female characters (vowels are now distinguished by their ability to light up via "LetterLights," which appear as yellow suns on their right shoulders). The male characters' names changed from "Mister" to "Mr.", and the female characters' names changed from "Miss" to "Ms.". Most of the characters' associated characteristics were changed as well, such as all references to "junk food" being swapped for non-food-related characteristics (Mr. D's "delicious donuts" were exchanged for "dazzling dance", for example) and any Letter Person that Abrams deemed as expressing negative images being changed to be more positive (Mr. H's horrible hair became happy hair instead, Mr. R's Ripping Rubberbands became Rainbow Ribbons, and Mr. X was no longer all wrong and became different). New Letter People storybooks were written with an eye toward teaching conflict resolution and problem-solving skills. They used Alphakid A as their mascot.