Life is like a hurricane

November 2, 2018 12:12 PM

The one show that came completely out of thin air was the Gummi Bears. I remember Michael saying that his kids had just come back from camp and all they could talk about was this new candy called gummy bears, which is the German for “rubber bears.” And I'm always kind of amazed by this, because he didn't know who I was or anything, but he turned to me and he said, "Make me a show called Gummy Bears."

An oral history of the Disney afternoon.
posted by MartinWisse (58 comments total)

Darkwing Duck appears in the new DuckTales reboot and I tell ya I am there for as much of that as they want to give us even if the premise is a little different in this incarnation.
posted by Servo5678 at 12:19 PM on November 2, 2018 [5 favorites]

Yeah, Gummi Bears was kinda nuts in so far as it existed and it din't that surprising that it came about due to Eisner basically aaying "make it happen" because his kid liked the candy.

That said, it was less stupid than it should have been and I have fond memories of it. I think I'll avoid going to watch it on YouTube so I can leave my memories that way.
posted by GuyZero at 12:34 PM on November 2, 2018 [7 favorites]

Servo:

Have you gotten to the Gummi Bears callback episode yet?

If not, hold on to your butts.

The Ducktales reboot is the best thing on TV right now.
posted by Pickman's Next Top Model at 12:35 PM on November 2, 2018 [8 favorites]

Oh, I've seen them all as they air. They're building an entire Disney Afternoon Extended Universe on that show and it's amazing. Even Don Karnage showed up!
posted by Servo5678 at 12:48 PM on November 2, 2018

I remember Michael saying that his kids had just come back from camp and all they could talk about was this new candy called gummy bears, which is the German for “rubber bears.”

Where did this kid go to camp that Gummi Bears were new? Weimar Germany?
posted by Sys Rq at 12:59 PM on November 2, 2018 [17 favorites]

Yeah, Gummi Bears was kinda nuts in so far as it existed and it din't that surprising that it came about due to Eisner basically aaying "make it happen" because his kid liked the candy.

Even as a child, I found that show deeply cynical and phony, probably the most cynical and phony of all the ensemble-characters shows that I watched. It surprises me not at all that it was made for bizarre reasons by Eisner's fiat, and this fact only makes me yearn for, like, expropriating the rich.
posted by Frowner at 1:00 PM on November 2, 2018 [8 favorites]

Making (reboot) Darkwing Duck into (reboot) Ducktales' Grey Ghost is fine by me, but I will never forgive Tad Stones for refusing to treat (original) Darkwing Duck as a spinoff of (original) Ducktales purely because he didn't want to deal with continuity. Making shows with syndication in mind so nothing ever changes is the worst kind of television.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 1:03 PM on November 2, 2018 [4 favorites]

I can remember nothing about the characters on Gummi Bears, and yet I can still sing most of the theme song. Like yeah, DuckTales was also catchy, but I keep thinking, I'm going to be forty in a couple years and I'm still going too be waking up with the theme songs from Gummi Bears or Rescue Rangers stuck in my head. Bouncing here and there and everywhere. Help.
posted by Sequence at 1:03 PM on November 2, 2018 [32 favorites]

Sunni Gummi was my first tv crush (I was 7 years old in 1985).
posted by glonous keming at 1:04 PM on November 2, 2018 [7 favorites]

I feel obliged to use this opportunity to share this dancing dog. (sound on)
posted by slipthought at 1:06 PM on November 2, 2018 [3 favorites]

Do yourselves a favor and read the Wuzzles copyright infringement decision:

Once upon a time, in lands far, far away, lived strange but cuddly creatures that became involved in a struggle for identity. In "Whatland," which is just a few miles north of Fairyland, lived the "Whats." In the "Land of Wuz" lived the "Wuzzles." We don't know where "Wuz" was, but we are told we could get there if we "snuzzle a Wuzzle."

posted by Jugwine at 1:14 PM on November 2, 2018 [11 favorites]

I can remember nothing about the characters on Gummi Bears, and yet I can still sing most of the theme song.

Could be worse.

You could be over forty and have that song in your head.

In Dutch
posted by MartinWisse at 1:14 PM on November 2, 2018 [18 favorites]

Sequence, I can confirm that one gets to their 40s and finds themself singing themes from Gummi Bears, Rescue Rangers, Duck Tales, and Muppet Babies at wholly inappropriate times.
posted by advicepig at 1:15 PM on November 2, 2018 [9 favorites]

I remember the purple magic Juice being Sizzurp spiked with Walter White's "Blue Sky".
posted by Brocktoon at 1:20 PM on November 2, 2018 [1 favorite]

Bouncing here and there and everywhere!

I hate you so much right now (and for a few days until the stupid earworm goes) MartinWisse.
posted by jeather at 1:26 PM on November 2, 2018 [6 favorites]

Think of how demoralizing it must be to be told to spend the next few years of your life working on something absolutely idiotic because your boss' kid liked a candy. That's not cute; it's super fucked up
posted by phooky at 1:31 PM on November 2, 2018 [10 favorites]

My favorite thing about the Gummi Bears theme is that the writers clearly gave up on good scansion with the "Magic and mystery/are part of their history/along with the secret/of gummiberry juice." Just bad.
posted by acidnova at 1:34 PM on November 2, 2018 [5 favorites]

didn't they bounce, why did they bounce

i too can remember that stupid theme song. why.
posted by poffin boffin at 1:41 PM on November 2, 2018 [2 favorites]

The Gummi Bears was the greatest of Disney’s 80s TV animation rebirth. Anyone who disagrees is wrong and I will fight you.

Right after I have a swig of gummiberry juice...
posted by Big Al 8000 at 1:43 PM on November 2, 2018 [5 favorites]

I'm old enough to remember Linus the Lionhearted, the 60s cartoon based on mascots for Post cereals. (Linus king of the Crispy Critters jungle, Sugar Bear for Sugar Crisp, Lovable Truly the Alpha Bits postman, Rory Raccoon for Post Toasties and the solidly racist SoHi for Rice Krinkles) The whole series disappeared when the FCC passed a rule banning direct tie-ins between products and TV content. Filmation's HeMan and SheRa somehow worked their way around the prohibition a decade and a half later and when the Gummi Bears show appeared I was semi-gobsmacked that Disney pulled off the "almost-but-not-quite-sponsored content" trick (I was also impressed by their voicecasting including Bill Scott, the original voice (and co-creator) of Bullwinkle and June Foray, the original Rocky, Lorenzo "Garfield" Music, Jim "Winnie the Pooh" Cummings, Paul "Tigger AND Dick Dastardly" Winchell, and many more... Even more impressive than the Linus cast, which included already-TV-producers Sheldon Leonard and Carl Reiner, and pre-Laugh-In Ruth Buzzi.

My childhood cartoon theme earworms include Linus, Bullwinkle (1961 theme, there have been several since), Yogi Bear, The Jetsons, Magilla Gorilla, Secret Squirrel, George of the Jungle, Thunderbirds and the Anime OG, AstroBoy (again, 60s version, not any since).
posted by oneswellfoop at 1:52 PM on November 2, 2018 [4 favorites]

I remember it came right after Mattel Chocobot Hour.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 1:57 PM on November 2, 2018 [2 favorites]

I grew up on Ducktales (in the 1980's, after school every damn day) and I'm sitting here trying for the life to me remember the Gummi Bears.
posted by nikaspark at 2:14 PM on November 2, 2018 [2 favorites]

Best childhood memories: Ducktales theme song coming on as I'm dipping Wendy's French fries into my chocolate frosty.
posted by nikaspark at 2:16 PM on November 2, 2018 [3 favorites]

Darkwing Duck appears in the new DuckTales reboot and I tell ya I am there for as much of that as they want to give us even if the premise is a little different in this incarnation.

Did they just say the actor's name was Jim Starling?
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 2:20 PM on November 2, 2018

this fact only makes me yearn for, like, expropriating the rich.

I'd never seen the Gummi Bears and I was curious, so I watched a bit of the first episode on YouTube. There's quite a bit of "the rich are irresponsible/destructive parasites who subordinate others to their own comfort/ambition" in the first few minutes!
posted by trig at 2:22 PM on November 2, 2018 [3 favorites]

Heck, Marvel Comics used to have a comic for several years, ROM Spaceknight, that was based on a shitty toy that failed quickly; io9 called the comic one of the best SF comics ever, which is kind of a stretch, but I was a fan for a good long time.

Something else that caught my eye was "Ricky Rat", which reminded me of Robert Armstrong's Mickey Rat. (If Armstrong or any other artist tried putting that comic out today, Disney would probably sue them into a smoking hole in the ground.)
posted by Halloween Jack at 2:28 PM on November 2, 2018 [4 favorites]

Family legend: My mother claims that her college German club may have helped introduce Gummi Bears to the Midwest US in the mid-1970s. One year, they decided to sell imported German candy as a fundraiser, and one of the selections in the German candy company catalog was something that none of the students or professors had ever heard of called Gummibärs, which they ordered a couple of cases of just to see what they were. They sold out almost instantly, because everybody on campus was curious to try them. Literally seven or eight years later, suddenly these things are in every candy store and grocery checkout line in the US.
posted by Strange Interlude at 2:30 PM on November 2, 2018 [8 favorites]

The Ricky Rat thing was weird because to me that role, a bit-player bitter that Mickey got all the fame, belongs to Mortimer Mouse.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 2:32 PM on November 2, 2018 [1 favorite]

I'd never seen the Gummi Bears and I was curious, so I watched a bit of the first episode yt on YouTube. There's quite a bit of "the rich are irresponsible/destructive parasites who subordinate others to their own comfort/ambition" in the first few minutes!

It made me yearn to expropriate the rich because it was so mediocre and rich people shouldn't have the freedom to produce garbage on a whim, not because of its specific messaging - which I recall as cynically moralizing in the style of eighties children's cartoons. (If Eisner thinks the rich are irresponsible, destructive parasites, for instance, he is welcome to give away his money. But he won't - he'll just provide empty moral tales for people who are likely to remain largely unaware of just how rich the rich actually are in this country and just how it impoverishes the rest of us.)

Also, say what you will about actually existing communists, they produced some really good animation.
posted by Frowner at 2:33 PM on November 2, 2018 [6 favorites]

I think people are getting a little carried away here.

Eisner found out about gummi bears because his son liked them, and said "make a show about this," but gave other people creative control. The creators ignored the candy aspect and instead drew on the vaguely Bavarian drawings on the gummi bear packaging for setting and art direction. The end result was a show about little bears who live in slide through tunnels and drink juice that gives them the ability to bounce on their bottoms. They live in a vaguely medieval world, and live in a house based on Gepetto's workshop.

It's not the world's greatest show, but who cares? I was a kid and I loved it for the setting and the art design.
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 2:36 PM on November 2, 2018 [18 favorites]

Like, sometimes a children's TV show is just a children's TV show. "Mediocre" is a subjective term. I loved that show, and it made me very happy as a kid.
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 2:44 PM on November 2, 2018 [4 favorites]

So, it's been yanked from YouTube, but a few years back Alicia Keys performed the Gummi Bears theme on Jimmy Kimmel, and it was GLORIOUS. If anyone can find it, please please please post a link.
posted by panama joe at 2:47 PM on November 2, 2018 [7 favorites]

We went down a rabbit hole of 90's cartoon openings on you tube once, and found out that entire seasons of Gummi Bears are uploaded to the site. After watching most of the first season with Little Purr, it turns out that it holds up surprisingly well for a cartoon of that era, though maybe not as good as some of the other Disney afternoon lineups. They have a multi-season arc, and "mysterious cousins" over the ocean! Little Purr got distracted by other shows (looking at you Puffin Rock), but I'm interested in revising the series at some point. They do a lot of classical music backgrounds, which was getting phased out in that era, and the princess gets to go on adventures, which is nice. It's not a great show, but does not seem to be entirely visited by the suck fairy, like the original My Little Ponies, which is complete dreck.

We're enjoying the new Ducktails, although the character design had to grow on me. I am totally there for the Disney Afternoons universe as canon, though.
posted by Hermeowne Grangepurr at 2:52 PM on November 2, 2018

I think it's just easy (and fun!) to bag on Gummi Bears because next to Duck Tales, Darkwing Duck, Rescue Rangers, and Tailspin, it was kind of a weak link in the Disney chain. The theme song was written with the help of some kind of mind control necromancy, so its there in your head still, while Goof Troop was allowed to pass gracefully into cartoon history.

As far as kids shows from the period, it was far from bad, but I don't remember there being a whole lot to distinguish it either.
posted by Phobos the Space Potato at 2:54 PM on November 2, 2018 [1 favorite]

Oh wait, here it is.

Ladies and gentlemen, Alicia Keys singing the Gummi Bears Theme!
posted by panama joe at 3:01 PM on November 2, 2018 [11 favorites]

Oh, my Lord, I can remember most of the theme song without even trying, and I never consciously watched the show. "Magic and mystery are part of their history/Along with the secret of gummi-bear juice..."

Now, where did I leave my cardigan??? Brain cells have weird priorities, man.
posted by praemunire at 3:01 PM on November 2, 2018

The Gummi Bears were not high art, nor were they particularly edifying, but I had been watching stuff like The Mighty Hercules when I was younger still, so the Gummi Bears was, comparatively, really good animation and perfectly adequate storytelling.
posted by GuyZero at 3:02 PM on November 2, 2018 [5 favorites]

I was worried that I'd rewatch an episode and be severely disappointed, but no, it's fine. The background art is actually pretty great; lush paintings of woodlands and wood or stone buildings, all with a pretty organic feeling (and in TFA the creators mentioned that they wanted the settings to feel "organic"). The animation is about as OK as everything was then, but the character design is good. The voice actors are all the regular cast of Disney pros (like the beloved Lorenzo Music). The plot is whatever, but I'm also not a child. But just to prove I'm not totally biased by nostalgia (because I obviously am), I will not praise the plot of this, a show aimed at children several decades younger than I am.

All in all, I give Gummi Bears an A, because who cares, it's a dumb kid's TV show and I don't know how to review shit. But I do think the background art is great.

Also, ha ha I just realized I always associated the grumpy one with my uncle.
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 3:16 PM on November 2, 2018 [8 favorites]

We are all gonna be like 70 or 80 and maybe even older in the rest home and we are gonna remember these dumb cartoon theme songs and our grandkids are gonna think we’re senile and we probably will be but dammit we’re going to remember the stupid cartoons of our youth.

Take that YouTube.
posted by Huffy Puffy at 3:39 PM on November 2, 2018 [5 favorites]

ohymgod I'd forgotten there was the blonde gummi bear who reminds me of Tasha Yar
posted by 168 at 3:50 PM on November 2, 2018 [7 favorites]

> GuyZero:
"The Gummi Bears were not high art, nor were they particularly edifying, but I had been watching stuff like The Mighty Hercules when I was younger still, so the Gummi Bears was, comparatively, really good animation and perfectly adequate storytelling."

Gods! Thanks for the flashback.
posted by Samizdata at 3:57 PM on November 2, 2018 [1 favorite]

As I recall, the Disney Afternoon order of operations went like this (or at least it did on WGN in the Chicagoland area):

Gummi Bears was on first at like 3pm, followed by Rescue Rangers at 3:30pm, then Duck Tales, and finally Talespin, which was my favorite because of all the airplanes and vaguely 1940's art design.

Whenever a new show would debut, all the titles would move down and the first in the order would be phased out, which is why I have basically no memory of The Gummi Bears. I had grown out of the Disney Afternoon by the time Goof Troop came on and bumped off Rescue Rangers.

Nothing was better than being home sick from school and getting to see the WHOLE block from start to finish. Nothing was worse then racing home from school in the spring and turning on the TV only to find a Cubs game that had gone into extra innings.
posted by Hey Dean Yeager! at 4:01 PM on November 2, 2018 [8 favorites]

I think this was slightly before my time, but I watched reruns of these (I remember that stupid dog movie, but not the wuzzles). I remember being in 5th or 6th grade and watching gargoyles. One thing I remember about the Gummi bears was that it had a metaplot like Gargoyles did (which I really liked), unlike most shows what happened in previous episodes changed things.

I'm really sad it never got a 7th season.
posted by gryftir at 4:07 PM on November 2, 2018 [3 favorites]

I wonder if Disney talked to Haribo about the Gummi Bears cartoon or just surprised them with a massive free product placement.
posted by smelendez at 4:47 PM on November 2, 2018 [3 favorites]

Oh, my Lord, I can remember most of the theme song without even trying, and I never consciously watched the show. "Magic and mystery are part of their history/Along with the secret of gummi-bear juice..."

Now, where did I leave my cardigan??? Brain cells have weird priorities, man.

You know, my dad was like this but with hymns instead of cartoon songs. It's a mug's game trying to figure out which is worse.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 6:35 PM on November 2, 2018 [2 favorites]

For a while I thought I'd made up Gummi Bears because nobody I talked to remembered it. Does Disney own the Smurfs, too? Because the worlds could be neighboring countries.

While Duck Tales was good, I was really all about Gizmoduck as a kid. Not sure why now.
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 7:27 PM on November 2, 2018

It made me yearn to expropriate the rich because it was so mediocre and rich people shouldn't have the freedom to produce garbage on a whim, not because of its specific messaging

Yeah, I didn't mean my comment as a counterpoint! Just that watching the first few minutes of a show where two rich people are shown as bumbling idiots abusing others for their own whims and/or comfort was an interesting juxtaposition after just having learned about the genesis of that show. I read it (probably inaccurately, but) as a form of venting on the part of the writers.


That said, I was struck not just by the less-terrible-than-it-had-to-be writing, but also by how much more detailed the animation was than in a lot of cartoons today. High art it wasn't, but you could feel that they put some actual effort into it.

(That said, I was also struck by the terrible capitalization in "Disney's adventures of the Gummi Bears". Either make a show for impressionable kids, or don't.)
posted by trig at 11:36 PM on November 2, 2018

I was a nerdy little girl who had only male friends in kindergarten and we WERE the Rescue Rangers. We were in character more often than we played as ourselves. Well ok sometimes we were the Ninja Turtle plus April...the early 90s were a weirdly great time to be the token girl in one's grade school friend group.
posted by potrzebie at 4:40 AM on November 3, 2018 [5 favorites]

Unsubstantiated Fan Theory, but here goes: Gummi Bears was totally going to be a "Snow White and the Seven Dwarves"-based franchise the way "Talespin" was based on the Jungle Book, and the Rescue Rangers based upon the Rescue Rangers with comedic-short superstars Chip and Dale anchoring.

Vast and hidden subterranean empires that ran on clever medieval engineering? Check. Oblivious, primitive human kingdoms living above their undiscovered ruins until one of the humans is in deepest need? Check. Tolkien overtones everywhere? Check.

But the boss' kid comes home excited about a fad candy that hasn't been trademarked in the US, yet, and all of a sudden instead of dwarves, there are bears that bounce and the giant subterranean statue motifs are of bear-people, now.

It's still about a found-family that's the very last flickering ember of an entire advanced culture that once spanned continents, who manage to find at least two children in the aftermath of whatever cataclysm became them. It's their desperate fight for survival against supernaturally strong enemies who know they exist, and want to wring the last ounce of their power from them. It's about my brother replying to my Dad's every request with "Okie-dokie, Dukie!"

Duke Igthorn was a comedic character, because if he was as competent as Sher Khan in Talespin, the kids would never get to sleep.

The reason you don't remember Gummi Bears is that it was dark as fuck on a fundamental level. This awesome mis-matched family is fighting back the apocalyptic darkness that has overwhelmed an empire, and a madman with huge monsters is coming to enslave them and all of their friends.

Kids like plucky underdogs, but they also like it when the heroes have a fighting chance against all comers. The very premise of The Gummi Bears is that the good guys can and do lose, on a massive scale. It's message is of hope, but that can be lost in the gloom of the Gummi Caverns.

I saw it as a teen, so I loved the hell out of it.
posted by Slap*Happy at 6:03 AM on November 3, 2018 [10 favorites]

40 years old here, and I can sing every one of the Disney afternoon theme songs. Halp.

Meanwhile, my friends and I felt that the lesson imparted by the Gummi Bears was that when life gets hard, you should hit the bottle!
posted by TwoStride at 8:54 AM on November 3, 2018 [4 favorites]

fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit: I'm 95% certain that I remember at least one episode that was a smurf/gummi bears crossover. But I might be misremembering that - a quick google isn't showing anything, and I remember that smurfs ran either before of after Gummi Bears.

I can still remember when I first talked about Gummi Bears to my wife. She was sure that I was fucking with her head. Yes, a cartoon called Gummi Bears. But they're not candy, they're brilliantly coloured bears. And their super power is that when they drink a flask of gummi berry juice they can bounce on their butts for about a minute. No, I'm not making this up. Yes it existed. And it ran for years!
posted by nobeagle at 10:20 AM on November 3, 2018 [1 favorite]

Gadget is Jordan, HOLY SHIT

Oh, Jordan. [complex glyph for "wistful sigh"]
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 11:26 AM on November 3, 2018 [1 favorite]

How'd they manage to talk about the development of TaleSpin without mentioning Tales of the Gold Monkey?
posted by ckape at 2:27 PM on November 3, 2018

I suppose there's not going to be a better time to share the Japanese version of the theme, which I find strangely superior, presumably because the literal translation is more amusing to me:

Haruka tooi fushigi na mori. (Far away mysterious forest)
Mimi wo sumasete goran. (Please hear me)
Yuuki to ai to mahou ni michita (Full of courage, love and magic)
utagoe ga hora kikoeru. (Singing can be heard)

Gummi Bear. (Gummi Bears*)
Bokura no nakama Gummi Bear. (Our friends the Gummi Bears)
Saa kyou mo tobidasou. (Let's fly** again today)
Bouken ga matteru. (Adventure is waiting)

Hokori takaki kuma tachi no (The proud bear's…)
himitsu sore ha Gummi Berry Juice. (…secret; that's Gummi Berry Juice)
Oozora takaku tonde hanete (Big sky fly-bounce high)
seigi no tame ni tatakae. (Fight for the sake of justice)

* Japanese doesn't do plurals by changing noun forms, so sometimes uses singular versions of loan words even in a plural context.

** The same verb is used for jump and fly

Bonus: the theme's chorus in 20 different languages. Curiously some, such as French, also change the orchestration.
posted by Cogito at 12:28 AM on November 4, 2018 [3 favorites]

Also, Monterey Jack on the Rescue Rangers - as a slim and small pre-teen who was quiet and shy who wound up... uh... not being that at all as a teen, I liked his bombast, and competence while being goofy and friendly with those not as talented, and the fact he was a tiny little mouse in a human world who could and did out-muscle full-grown humans.

His reaction to cheese is hitting a little too close to home these days, tho.
posted by Slap*Happy at 4:25 AM on November 4, 2018 [2 favorites]

The Gummi Bears theme song is so exuberant and thrilling, it has endured in my brain for decades, ready to burst forth whenever I'm in a good mood and somehow not already beset by an earworm.

Oddly, so is "La Marseillaise."
posted by me3dia at 11:16 AM on November 5, 2018 [1 favorite]

I, too watched the Disney afternoon religiously, all the way through sixth grade, which is when Gargoyles was the newest show. I'm disappointed, actually, that they don't go into detail on Bonkers, here. Because it was, you know. Bonkers.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 12:34 PM on November 5, 2018

Gadget is Jordan, HOLY SHIT

And thus was born an entire generation of Furry Fans. (And that one weird Russian Cult that we don't talk about.)
posted by radwolf76 at 4:30 PM on November 5, 2018 [3 favorites]