By all accounts, bears, or at least the ones found in North America, are incredibly dangerous creatures. While bear attacks are relatively rare, it is rare the human who is unlucky enough to be attacked survives. So why, in so much children's literature and media, are bears presented as friendly, happy creatures? I'm not completely certain, but I suspect it has something to do with how arguably the quintessential toy happens to be a stuffed bear.
There have been several specials produced over the years all about friendly bears. So many, in fact, that I decided to see what, if any, three of these specials had in common. While The Bear Who Slept Through Christmas, Why the Bears Dance on Christmas Eve, and The Bears Who Saved Christmas all took place in different continuities and involved very different situations (even as two of them had very similar titles), each one did have, as its protagonist, a cute, small, cuddly, talking bear (or in the case of The Bears Who Saved Christmas, bears) that bears no resemblance to bears found in the wild.
The Bear Who Slept Through Christmas is the oldest, and arguably the most well-known of the three specials. Its hero is Theodore Edward Bear, who goes by Ted (think about it), who is obsessed with the human holiday of Christmas. The problem for him is that by late December, all bears are hibernating, so Christmas is but a vague rumor to his fellow bruins. Determined to discover exactly what Christmas is, he ignores his biology and travels to the human city, where he...ends up as a gift for a little girl? So, was Ted a toy this entire time? Or is this girl getting an actual bear for Christmas, one who promptly falls asleep? And what of his old life back home?
It's an odd ending, but all around, it's kind of an odd special. To be honest, I found myself much more interested in the ins and outs of the bear society. Ted lives in an apartment with electricity and running water and works at a mechanical factory. There are cars and TV and bear-produced TV shows and even bear airlines and bear airports. So this entire society just shuts down for three months? Do some bear doctors and bear nurses at bear hospitals stay awake? What about bear cops and bear firefighters? What is the school year like? It's probably not a good sign I was pondering these questions more than I was paying attention to the special.
My personal confusion as to the special aside, it clearly did well for NBC, which reran it every year for several years. It also was well produced, with direction from Looney Tunes vet Gerry Chiniquy, and voice work for Ted from Tom Smothers, with other voices being provided by Get Smart vet Barbara Feldon, Laugh-In alum Arte Johnson, and Casey Kasem. It would even get a Halloween sequel a decade later (whose plot suggests that Ted moved back home).
Unlike the relatively big-budgeted The Bear Who Slept Through Christmas, Why the Bears Dance on Christmas Eve was clearly made on a shoestring, as the animation is rather crude and raggedy. It also doesn't boast anyone famous in the voice cast--indeed, the credits don't even list the voice cast, and I suspect it's entirely possible that only a few actors provided all the voices. There are a lot of songs, but most of them are rather repetitive and mediocre, and I can't tell if the rather poor sound quality is a result of being a YouTube transfer of what was then a 35-year-old videotape or it sounded just as poorly when it was originally broadcast. But there is some charm in its story, about a young cub named Bashful who gets himself stuck inside a mountain and discovers a nefarious plot by four environmental villains--personifications of fire, garbage, oil slicks, and energy waste called, I think, the Snirfs (though it sure sounded like Smurfs)--to stop Santa from making his rounds (Why? Because they're evil!). They capture Bashful, who is able to escape when his dancing amuses them so much that they collapse into laughter, allowing him to rally the other forest creatures to dance with him to stop their plot.
Rumor has it that the special aired exactly once before disappearing after the bankruptcy of the production company. I'm not sure that's strictly true (there were newspaper listings for it in 1978 and 1979, and it was apparently shown in Australia as late as the mid-80s), but until it was posted on YouTube by someone who had supposedly worked on it, it has fallen completely off the map. It's hard to tell if the rather poor sound mix is a result of the Internet, a poor quality tape, or if it was broadcast like that. This one is not at all a great special, but it has its moments, and I'm glad it has resurfaced.
Unlike Ted, who may or may not be a toy, and Bashful, who definitely is not, the bears of The Bears Who Saved Christmas certainly are. Their names are Christopher and Holly, and they, along with the kids who own them and their parents, find themselves stuck after a blizzard makes the roads impassable on Christmas Eve. Taking refuge in an old cabin that luckily was still airtight and had at least one bed with clean linens (meaning they probably broke into someone's house), it looks like Christmas will be cancelled. That's when Christopher and Holly come to life and, with the help of a talking flashlight and a talking compass, set out to find a Christmas tree somewhere in the woods. Given the special's title, there's not much suspense in whether they will succeed.
The voice cast is a mixture of professional voice-over artists and B-level celebs who were good for marketing and probably worked for cheap. Charlie Adler (using a variation of his Buster Bunny voice) and the late Mary Kay Bergman voiced the bears, while the mom was voiced by Pam Dawber, the flashlight by Henry Gibson, the compass by Jonathan Winters, and a real bear who seems like a bad guy until it turns out that he has a heart of gold was voiced by Brad Garrett a couple of years before Everybody Loves Raymond. The animation, overseen by TV animation legend Phil Roman, is bright, clear, and colorful. It's a shame the whole thing is rather boring.
The special was heavily promoted by Toys R Us, which sponsored its premiere in syndication the day after Thanksgiving, and also sold both the teddy bears and the special's video in stores throughout the holiday season. Clearly, they were hoping for a franchise. It didn't seem to pay off, as there were no further adventures of Christopher and Holly. The special did get syndicated for the next couple of years, though.
Ultimately, other than being about small bears who save the day, there wasn't too much these three specials had in common. Indeed, it was a bit disappointing that The Bear Who Slept Through Christmas and The Bears Who Saved Christmas the two (relatively) big-budgeted specials weren't that great. While Why the Bears Dance on Christmas Eve isn't any great shakes either, I kind of appreciate the low-budget vibe more than the corporate specials.
Next time: Say hi hi hi to a brand new special
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