Do you remember...Care Bears?

I was just watching a 1986 episode of The Care Bears (What? Is that weird at almost 33 years old?).  Man, I remember how popular they were back in 2nd-3rd grade.  I remember going to the Care Bears Movie with my mom, my cousin Laura and her mom.  As a little girl, I was so drawn to them because of the rainbow colors, hearts, rainbows, clouds...all the stuff a little girl loves.  I got a Care Bear for my birthday.  I had wanted Cheer Bear or Bedtime Bear...one of the pretty pastel colored ones with either rainbows, or hearts, or moons and stars on their belly.  Pink, lavender, turquoise...so pretty!  I was so excited to open mine on my birthday...I already knew what it was from the shape of the box.  But alas, I was so disappointed to find that I got Friend Bear...the peachy-gold colored bear with the gold and orange marigolds on his belly.  Um, I got the ugliest one.  For a little girl, when all her friends have the pink one with the rainbow on its belly, or the blue one with the moon on its belly, or the mint green one with the stars on its belly...an orangey peach bear may as well have been sh*t brown.  Technically Friend Bear is supposed to be "orange" according to Wikipedia (Care Bears character list), but the stuffed animal was definitely not.  I would've even preferred Funshine Bear...at least he was bright yellow with a sun on his belly.  And Tenderheart...he was brown like a teddy, but at least he had a heart on him.  Marigolds with dark green stems are yucky in the pinky purpley world of a little girl.

But even as a kid, I had empathy.  I saw that my parents were excited to watch me open it.  I thought about my mom picking it out at the store.  Why she chose that one, I don't know, but she picked it out and gave it to me, and I didn't want to hurt her feelings by telling her she picked the ugly one.  Actually, I just told her about all this recently...25 years later.  LOL! 



There's Friend Bear, top center. Actually,
he doesn't look that bad now.

I never got another Care Bear, even though it was "customary" in my school to have more than one.  So about 5 years ago, when Care Bears started make a comeback, they were all over Seaside Boardwalk.  I was so excited when my brother (or was it my bf at the time?) won me Cheer Bear, which was THE one I wanted most of all as a kid...pink with a rainbow.  Seriously, I slept with the thing on my bed that night...I was about 27 yrs old.  After a few years, the novelty wore off and Cheer was sold at a garage sale, probably for a dollar.  But I had had him, finally.  As for Friend Bear, I don't know what ever became of him...possibly another garage sale or donation.  Or he could've been one of the victims of the "toilet training phase", during which time my little brother was toilet training, and thought it would be fun to train my stuffed animals too.  One of my Cabbage Patch Kids, Hollis Jenean, to this day has a water ring around her waist, thanks to my brother.  But CPKs are a whole other post...