Subscribe!Care Bears (1985)
Originally posted on 13 December 2025First episode title: Birthday / Camp
How familiar with the show am I?: Is it possible to have not heard of this? I don't know too much about it, though.
Is this the first episode?: There were a couple of TV specials first - this is the first episode of the series proper.
Another show made to sell toys, this time plush teddy bears (what else?), the Care Bears are all different coloured bears that live in the clouds and each have dominion over different aspects of life, represented by images on their bellies. Are they gods? That feels like a description of gods. Brightly-coloured adorable gods.
The theme song is all about wanting to become a Care Bear. Is that something you can just become? Cool!
There are two segments in the episode and the first one is called "Birthday". It opens with a ship made of clouds in the sky, and some presents of the typical "box with a bow around it" design floating towards the boat on their own individual clouds. Some of the bears on the boat are then taking the presents and piling them up. This behaviour is confusing one bear, a yellow one with a picture of a cake on his tummy, who we'll soon learn is named Birthday Bear. This series does the classic toy-advert-show thing of having a larger main cast than can reasonably be shown off in one half-hour episode, so I'll only be calling particular characters out if they're relevant to the story or if I have something to say about them.
So, Birthday Bear is confused by the presents, and by the fact that they're all going to the Forest of Feelings, but one of the other bears reassures him it's just an ordinary visit to the Care Bear Cousins. You would think someone literally named Birthday Bear would recognise the obvious signs of a surprise party, right? The boat flies them to a colourful forest on top of another cloud. At the front of the boat is a star-shaped telescope that will be relevant soon.
The "Care Bear Cousins" are evidently all different animals that nevertheless share a similar design to the Care Bears. It's interesting how their name defines them in terms of their relation to the bears when they aren't bears - do they use that name amongst themselves, I wonder? Seeing that the Care Bears are about to arrive, they scramble to their positions.
The boat approaches a spot where all the Care Bear Cousins are gathered, wearing party hats and shouting "Surprise! Happy birthday!":
As the Care Bears disembark:
Birthday Bear: A birthday that I didn't know about? Whose birthday is it?
Care Bear Cousins: It's yours, Birthday Bear!
Gentle Heart Lamb: You were so busy thinking of other people's birthdays, you forgot your own!
Yes, even as the Cousins were literally saying happy birthday to Birthday Bear, he still didn't catch on immediately. I think they need to find someone new to take his job. Gentle Heart Lamb is a green sheep Care Bear Cousin. She has a baa-ing sound to her voice, making her seemingly the only character with lines in this episode whose voice is meant to relate to her species in any way.
The Care Bears put on party hats too and Birthday Bear starts opening his presents - the only one we hear about is a box of double chocolate fudge. Mmm. I just ate some fudge before writing this. Fudge is good.
Some of the Care Bear Cousins gather at the Care Bear Telescope - the one we saw on the boat, so it seems it's been carried into the forest. A couple of the Cousins have to jump out of the way when Lotsa Heart Elephant thunders towards the Telescope and lands heavily in front of it. Being a Care Bear Cousin, he's not exactly huge compared to the other characters, but if there's an elephant I suppose that's the joke you have to make. (Note: different versions of the franchise over the years have varied on what gender Lotsa Heart Elephant is, but it seems he's intended to be male here. This is, I gather, far from the only example of this in the Care Bears franchise.)
Anyway, the Telescope. The purpose of it is to give the Care Bears a view of what children are up to down on Earth, through its heart-shaped lens that seems to be able to see anywhere, even inside buildings. In this instance, it shows inside a house where a man is calling his son Matthew to come and look at his new baby sister's bedroom, but Matthew moans that he doesn't want a baby sister, almost having a tantrum over it. Ironically, he is acting like a baby himself. And then he complains that tomorrow is his birthday and no-one has even remembered. We can probably guess where that is going.
Several of the Care Bears and Care Bear Cousins (I'm just going to collectively call them all Care Bears from now on) decide that Matthew needs their help, so they head down to Earth, this time travelling on cars made of clouds. I don't know whether those were being kept somewhere in the forest or whether the Care Bears can just, like, wish things like that into existence.
Back on Earth, it seems to be the next day, because there will be some mentions later of the fact that it is Matthew's birthday. Did the Care Bears take a while driving around in the air before they actually got there? Matthew is now playing catch outside the house with a boy named Eddie, both of them equipped with baseball gloves, while the Care Bears watch from nearby bushes. Eddie mockingly tells Matthew that he will hardly ever see his parents any more once the baby is born, and tells Matthew he knows a way to "fix your parents good". Immediately he feels like something of a bully - why does Matthew even hang out with him?
Eddie throws the ball and one of the Care Bears hits it with a blast of magic, making it go off course and land amongst the bushes instead of in Matthew's hand. Somehow Eddie doesn't notice that anything weird has happened despite the ball blatantly not moving in the direction it was heading, but Matthew does, and when he heads into the bushes and sees the Care Bears he asks "Who are you?" He's surprised, but not as surprised as you should be about seeing living, sapient teddy bears.
The pink Care Bear with a rainbow on her belly, who redirected the ball, introduces herself as Cheer Bear. The fact that she acts as spokesperson here, as well as the fact that a responsibility like "cheer" is one of the most generic ones a Care Bear could have, make me wonder if she is meant to be the leader of the group.
The Care Bears try to convince Matthew that he's lucky to be getting a new baby sister but he says that he'd rather have a birthday party. So, the Care Bears tell him they can give him one, and Birthday Bear magically generates some cakes. Lotsa Heart Elephant's belly symbol is a weight with hearts on it, as if his responsibility is to be heavy, and when he generates a heart-shaped balloon it has his symbol on it - consider the irony of a lighter-than-air balloon with a picture of a weight on it! Matthew, however, is uninterested, saying there's no point in having a party if even his parents have forgotten.
Next, the boys are inside the house and Matthew's father is leaving to go and pick up Matthew's mother and the baby from the hospital. He tells the boys to be good while he's gone, implicitly leaving Matthew unattended by anyone except his obviously untrustworthy friend. Matthew's age isn't stated as far as I've noticed, but he definitely doesn't seem old enough to be left without any adults for too long.
Eddie says in a michievous way that they can have some fun now that they're alone, and Lotsa Heart Elephant says worriedly that he doesn't think it will be the kind of fun they will like, all of which makes it sound like Eddie is going to do something really evil... so it was hilarious to see that his idea of mischief is to make a birthday cake without permission. Sure, he's using ingredients that aren't his, but this sounds extremely tame. Even so, the scene continues as if he's doing something bad, Matthew nervously saying that he doesn't think they should be doing this and Eddie telling him to stop being such a goody-goody, all while he's mixing ingredients in a bowl. Evilly.
We'll never get to find out if Eddie had anything particularly bad planned for the cake, because at one point he asks Matthew to pass him the bowl and Matthew slips and dumps it all over him. An annoyed Eddie goes storming off to wash himself, telling Matthew to clean up the kitchen, and that's when the Care Bears show up again for Matthew, too late for Eddie to see them. Matthew is annoyed to see the Care Bears again, but Cheer Bear helps by magicking the mix back into the bowl and putting it back up on the table where it was. He's amazed for a second, but when the Care Bears start talking about Matthew's little sister, he again starts insisting that he wants a birthday party and runs off.
So he ends up back with Eddie, and this time they do something actually naughty, driving a go-kart around the back garden, smashing things like slides and see-saws as they run them over and making a big mess of the flowerbed. Matthew's expression is stunned as Eddie, in the driver's seat, causes all this chaos, and the Care Bears remark that Matthew does seem to really care despite what he's going through. At that moment Eddie drives them inside the house, sending cupboards and the TV flying. Matthew says again that he's not so sure about this but Eddie persists.
Cheer Bear pursues them and uses magic to lift the car off the ground and spin it around. Once again, Eddie is oblivious to the fact that there is magic afoot, and just remarks that this floor is "slippery" as if they're not clearly above it. He manages to get the car out from the magic somehow, and then he manages to sound very evil when asking Matthew which way it is to the baby's room, even though the baby isn't actually present to be hurt by any of this.
Matthew can't bring himself to answer but Eddie remembers and steers them into the baby's room, messing everything up. The Care Bears all gather and send a rainbow-coloured beam of magic out of all of their tummies together... which misses the car and does nothing. After Eddie messes up more of the baby's stuff, including the bed, the Care Bears say together "Cousin Calls!" which I guess is a particular ability in their magic arsenal, and this time the rainbow beam stops the car completely and slams it against the wall. And after Matthew says that maybe this is enough, the beam comes in and slams them into the wall again, for some reason! They weren't even doing anything!
Matthew gets annoyed with Eddie and grabs him by the shirt, but Eddie says he has to go now and starts to walk out of the room. So, now Matthew would be left completely alone, as far as anyone else knows! Matthew says that they've got to clear up this mess before his parents get home, and Eddie tells him that that's his own problem now. Matthew grabs Eddie by the shirt again, and so the Care Bears choose this moment to reveal themselves to both boys. Eddie seems even less surprised to see them than Matthew was, telling Matthew that he has some "weird friends" as if some goofy kids had walked in rather than some living plushies.
Cheer Bear and Lotsa Heart Elephant tell Eddie that he only acts the way he does because he thinks he doesn't have any friends, and that the Care Bears can be his friends. Eddie's response is doubtful but less mocking than you might expect, telling them to prove it to him. The elephant, saying that he's going to show how Eddie really feels inside, unleashes another heart balloon from his belly and it pops with a magical sparkle in front of Eddie's face, and soon, Eddie's expression changes to an eerily docile one, and he immediately apologises to Matthew for what he's done. Despite Lotsa Heart Elephant saying that this is how Eddie truly feels, this looks a lot like brainwashing to me! Matthew accepts the apology and says he can't blame Eddie for something he joined in with, but really I can't think of any trouble that Matthew actively caused in this episode - the only mess he made was when he spilled the cake mixture, and that was a complete accident!
The Care Bears tell the boys that they can fix everything if they just close their eyes and "care". The boys both cover their eyes, and the assembled Care Bears all say "Care Bear Stare!" Another set of rainbow beams come out of them, and this time the beams travel all around the house fixing the broken things, inside and outdoors. I don't really get why beams coming out of bears' bellies would be called a "stare" - I already knew the phrase existed thanks to Lemon Demon's Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny, but I'd have thought that seeing it in context might clarify it slightly. I guess not! And I also guess that the boys' "caring" is amplifying the magic so that it can work all over the place like this, because otherwise what's happening doesn't seem much different from how the Care Bears have used their magic already.
Eddie: Wow! This is even more fun than making a mess!
No, sorry, it's too weird to hear Eddie talking like this. He was a one-note obnoxious bully-like character until now - you're going to have to work harder than that to convince me that this is how he really felt all along. And Matthew says that he can't wait to meet his baby sister now, because somehow he learned his lesson from all this too. Which part exactly convinced him, again?
It fades to later on, in the house, when Matthew's parents get home with the baby. Matthew gets introduced to his new sister Lisa, and gives her a kiss on the cheek. Eddie is there - apparently he was lying before when he said he had to leave, predictably - and, even weirder than when he said cleaning up was fun, he asks if he can kiss the baby too. You see why I think he seems brainwashed?
The Care Bears are watching from around a corner - Lotsa Heart Elephant wants to kiss the baby, but Birthday Bear tells him she's probably not ready for a kiss from an elephant yet. What with this and the joke earlier where everyone had to run out of the way, I'm wondering if the writers imagined the elephant would look a bit more imposing than he does.
The family (and Eddie) all go to look at Lisa's new room, and then Matthew's mother says to Matthew that they weren't sure how he would feel about his new sister getting all the attention on his birthday. So Matthew's father reveals that they did arrange a party after all, as you've probably been expecting since we first encountered Matthew, and a group of kids with party hats and musical instruments come out from around a corner. This moment is hilarious for a couple of reasons. One is the implication that the kids have been lurking there until their cue, but the other is that Matthew says he doesn't need anything for his birthday other than Lisa, and at that moment the entire family seems to forget that the other kids were even there - they don't appear outside of the shot that introduced them!
As the family all gather around the baby in her new room, the camera zooms out to show the Care Bears watching through the window, and Birthday Bear says "Now that's what I call caring!" OK, I know they are the Care Bears, but I think it would have been more appropriate for several different reasons to say "Now that's what I call a birthday!" Regardless, the Care Bears float back up into the sky on little clouds, and that's how this segment ends.
Segment #2 is "Camp". Outside of a castle up in the clouds, a pair of Care Bears - Funshine Bear and Share Bear - are looking through the telescope at some kids at a summer camp. Share Bear says how much she loves watching kids go to camp, which might sound creepy if not coming from a cute teddy bear. Or does that make it more creepy? Share Bear's stomach emblem is a milkshake with two straws sticking out of it, and Funshine's is a smiling sun. What else?
At the camp, a man with red hair and a big chin who I assume you'd call a camp counsellor is reading names off a clipboard to assign pairs of kids to their tents in the campground. He's noticeably squinting to read the page - this will become relevant soon. One pair of boys we're introduced to is Murphy and Sanford. Murphy is a scruffily-dressed boy who accidentally drops his belongings during the scene and steps on a tube of toothpaste that has fallen out of his bag, squirting the contents out, but he's enthusiastic to go and see his tent. Sanford is a neat boy in glasses who looks nervous and winces at Murphy's behaviour. So, the watching Care Bears observe that the two boys are very different and might need the Care Bears to help them out.
At that moment, a group of other Care Bears approach the first pair with a basket, asking them if they know a good place to have a picnic, and Share Bear says that they know just the place. What a coincidence that they want to do an activity that could be done at exactly the place Funshine and Share Bear were observing. Or is that just what they want us to think?
Rather than the cars, this time the Care Bears descend to Earth on a heart-shaped cloud, three of them following on oval clouds that make the whole ensemble form the shape of a paw. The designers on this show must have been seeing heart shapes in everything by the end of it.
Back at the camp, the counsellor doesn't have any kids left to assign, and he's now staring closely at the page again and commenting that he wishes he had his contact lenses. He lowers the clipboard to see the Care Bears now assembled in front of him, and tells them they need to go back to their tents. Yes, his eyesight is so bad that can't tell the difference between the Care Bears and human children - he should not be allowed to be in charge here!
The Care Bears go to Murphy and Sanford's tent, and peek inside. Murphy, who keeps calling Sanford "buddy" which made it harder for me to keep track of their names at first, shows Sanford a bird's nest that he is excited to have found. Sanford inspects the nest with a magnifying glass, then looks it up in a guidebook and says that it's the nest of a Western Wood Pewee. Our old friend Birthday Bear comments that Murphy knows how to have a good time, making me wonder what the next birthday he treats someone to is going to end up like now that he has that idea in his head.
Then the Care Bears set up their picnic outside the tent. Of course, instead of a picnic blanket, they use a cloud! A blue bear with a moon and star design called Bedtime Bear has a very sleepy voice. He asks why they're here because those two boys seem fine together, but Share Bear says that when two people are so different it can be hard for them to work together. She does seem weirdly insistent that there's going to be a problem for them to solve, even if it will later turn out that she's right about that!
The two boys look out of their tent at the Care Bears and casually ask them who they are - yet another pair of humans that don't seem surprised to see them. Perhaps it's fine if kids see them but adults aren't allowed, hence the need to give the counsellor bad eyesight? The Care Bears introduce themselves and explain that they're here to make sure everyone has a good time at camp, and the boys just smile in response. Obviously it's good that not every story they tell in this show is the same, but you'll be glad to hear there is going to be some actual conflict for the characters to get through in this episode!
Next, it's nighttime. A full moon, so you know it's a spooky night. Around a campfire are the counsellor, all the kids, and the Care Bears (the other kids don't seem surprised by their presence either). The counsellor is telling a scary story about a haunted house. The kids already look pretty scared, when there's suddenly a screeching noise from the forest, and the counsellor, still in scary story mode, tells them all that that was the "Flying Phantom", who haunts this campground at night! Even all the Care Bears look scared, when you'd think they might know better. When the counsellor finishes by telling them the Phantom might get them, they all go running off screaming, and then the counsellor scratches his head and wonders how he ended up with so many kids at the camp. Really he should contact someone about that, although I suppose in 1985 he wouldn't have a mobile phone or any other way to communicate.
It seems Bedtime Bear's power is to shine a light from his belly, which safely leads all the Care Bears and Murphy and Sanford back to the boys' tent. There's another screech from outside, and when Murphy suggests that it could be the Flying Phantom, Sanford looks in his guidebook again. He reads out that the flying creatures in the area are mostly plant-eaters, and the ones that do eat meat only eat small rodents. I don't know whether it's an intentional gag, but at the moment that he mentions small rodents he happens to glance in the direction of Bedtime Bear, as if he's uncertain whether a carnivorous animal would care about the difference between a rodent and a Care Bear! Murphy, who seems less bothered than anyone else by the idea of the Phantom, says that they should just go to sleep, and so all of them do, the bears sleeping on clouds floating outside the tent.
Now it's the morning and the boys are cooking pancakes over a log fire. Murphy casually tries to do a tricky flip of the pancake and spills it into the fire - it's like he doesn't even know how clumsy he is! He isn't fazed and goes off to get some more mix, leaving Sanford to cook his own pancake much more carefully. But then Murphy shouts from off-screen that it looks like the Flying Phantom has been in the supply tent because everything is knocked over, and Sanford, shocked, spills his pancake too! Have you noticed how both stories in this episode involve cake mix being accidentally spilled? What's up with that? Anyway, I'm pretty sure we don't actually get any resolution on why everything is knocked over in the supply tent...
All of the kids and Care Bears gather around the counsellor, and once again he wonders to himself how he ended up with so many kids. OK! We get it! His eyesight is bad! He instructs everyone to find items in nature, and to use them to construct totem poles in their pairs that say something about their interests. The Bears of course join Murphy and Sanford for this, Sanford collecting items such as an eggshell and a feather. Murphy discovers a log crawling with ants, and a lizard under a rock - it's noticeable that Murphy seems to like gathering live animals whereas Sanford goes for things they've left behind, which perhaps already says something about who they are.
The two boys reunite at the entrance to a cave, which they cautiously creep into the entrance of... only to encounter a pair of glowing red eyes, and the same screeching sound from before! The boys run away from the cave fast, in what looks like a particularly anime style, knocking down the Care Bears as they go. They panic together beneath a tree until the Care Bears approach them calmly and tell them that talking about your fears can help with them. So, as they all walk back to the camp together, Sanford explains what happened.
Back in front of the boys' tent, it's time to make their totem pole. Sanford makes a mound of earth and delicately places his eggshell on top... and then Murphy, carrying his ant-filled log, trips and drops the log on the shell, breaking it! Until now Sanford had just been cringing at Murphy's clumsiness, but now he gets angry, telling Murphy he can't work with him any more and storming off. The emotion of the moment is kind of undercut by his unintentionally hilarious angry stride away.
Murphy sadly piles up his log and the rock he found the lizard under, and Sanford, on his own, puts his feather on top of a twig, complaining about Murphy the whole time. When some of the Care Bears approach Sanford, he tells them he can't work with Murphy because they're too different, and they tell him that sometimes being different can make the best creations. This somehow puts a smile on his face. In the process, one of the bears places both front paws on Sanford's legs while talking to him - something I always wonder when humans interact with these kinds of toy-like animals is how it would feel against the human's skin. Do they feel like actual animals would, or do they have the outer layers of plushies but still with lifelike movements underneath the skin? Would that be quite disconcerting? It doesn't seem so in this case.
The other Care Bears are talking to Murphy, who kicks over his own totem pole in frustration, saying that he finds these things amazing but Sanford just sees a mess. The bears pile Murphy's fallen objects back up while explaining to him that people's differences are what make a friendship interesting, and then Bedtime Bear accidentally knocks the rock onto Birthday Bear's foot. Aww, he's clumsy too. Ouch, though. Also, when Birthday Bear hops around in pain, the lizard adorably imitates his movements. Sanford comes back around the corner in time for everyone to laugh together, and the boys agree to work together again. I'm not sure how they got there, but they did.
We cut to the boys tying a rope between two trees with a lot of noisy objects dangling from it, like bottles and utensils, which Sanford says will protect the area while they work. From what? Presumably not the Flying Phantom, because Murphy then mentions that it could keep him away too as if it's a new point he's raising.
That night, everyone is around the campfire with the counsellor again and he tells them the totem poles will be judged the next day. He also tells them to watch out for the Flying Phantom, then, when they've departed, comments to himself that the kids are really scared of him. Why keep mentioning him, then?!
A cloud passes over the moon, and the already visually impaired counsellor reassures himself that he can find his tent just fine. He walks off through the darkness... and then we hear a crash of metal and a yell. In the boys' tent, they're scared it's the Phantom, but Bedtime Bear tells them that light will make the darkness less scary, so they go outside with a torch and, of course, what they find is the counsellor caught on their rope, screaming that the Flying Phantom has got him. Wait, he believed in the story all along?
Suddenly they see a spotted owl in a tree and it screeches, and Sanford realises that that was what they had been hearing all along. That was a bit anticlimactic. Murphy, as if we needed telling, also realises that the crash they just heard was the counsellor. For some reason he says that it was him "falling over our totem pole", even though it didn't look like that's what happened at all.
The story acts as though their totem pole did get knocked over again, though. The next day, Murphy suggests making a totem pole about spotted owls since they have to start over again, and Sanford is happy to agree. Apparently the feather they already gathered was from a spotted owl anyway, so they have that to start from.
Share Bear tells the other Care Bears that the boys will be fine and that they can go back to Care-a-Lot now. Yes, that's what the place they're from is called. The bears get back on their clouds to float away, and the boys, whose log is already starting to look like an owl, hoot up at the bears and wave goodbye, apparently just as unsurprised to see them flying through the air as they were to see them in the first place.
This was very cute and silly. There are only a few characters I could tell you anything about so far but I enjoyed the ones we did get to know!
This will be the last Debutniverse entry until January. Have a merry Christmas and a happy New Year!