Care Bears: Their Significance to the LGBTQA+ Community

By Bryony Reeves

In this blog post, Bryony Reeves introduces ‘Care Bears’ and discusses the pivotal role they can play in enabling people of a young age and those in the LGBTQA+ community to engage meaningfully and safely with perceived, contentious issues on and around identity, gender, sexuality, self-awareness, self-expression, and self-representation in this day and age.

This research was motivated by the collection of Care Bears that Bryony photographed and digitised using 3D digitisation techniques in the context of the Curating, Researching, Digitising and Exhibiting Leicestershire Museum Collections Placement.

In addition to offering students distinctive professional development competencies and skills coveted by graduate job employers, the Placement is also providing students with first-hand experience of working on an exciting and real-world project at the intersection of the heritage sector, the digital media industries, and local government context. 

According to Dave Polter (Bullard, 2016, n.p), an illustrator for American Greetings and helped design the bears, had stated that ‘bears are the ultimate anthropomorphic character’ (Bullard, 2016, n.p) and you cannot help but agree with him.

The Start of the Care Bears

Illustrated by Elena Kucharik and Dave Polter (Bullard, 2016), Care bears were ‘an instant hit with the marketing firms’ (Bullard, 2016) and slowly dominated the scene. In an interview with the co-presidents of the characters Jack Chojnacki and Ralph Shaffer, they explained how these lovable bears were created. Shaffer explained how ‘something in my head just took those graphics and flopped them over on the bear’s stomach.’ (Smitek, 2017, n.p) and these characters were born.

The patents for these bears, filed in 1982, 1983 and 1984 [for our bears] all show the bears in their original design: the patents were granted for ‘the application of putting graphics on a bear’s stomach. Nobody had ever done that before.’ (Smitek, 2017, n.p). The simple but revolutionary idea for these bears had sparked something for the toy industry, and would never be the same again.

Looking at these patents shows that the idea originally was clearly perfect, with minimal changes in design over the years. The recognisable design features the tuft of hair as well as the icon in the centre of the belly! ‘It’s really important to note the incredible detail’ (Smitek, 2017, n.p) especially to see the noses and paw pads for their feet as little hearts.

Their first animated appearance was in the TV show The Care Bears in the Land without Feelings (1983), where the bears end up in this land and have to save children who have been turned into careless monsters from the evil ruler Professor Cold Heart.

A hit with the children of the 80’s, a film was created. The first movie, The Care Bears Movie (1985), featured the 10 original bears (see the image capturing the Care Bear Index from 2011 below) as well as some of their cousins who again must save some children from evil.

This film was a massive success, making in its opening $3,725,001 (Box Office Mojo, Unknown), and overall, $22,934,622 (Box Office Mojo, Unknown)!

The ‘little creature that represented human emotions. It helped parents talk to their kids about their emotions, and friendship and love,’ (Smitek, 2017, n.p) something that in a growing world of hate and prejudice is so important, and the media surrounding the bears only helped further their message of care.

Ralph Shaffer, who came up with the design of the bears, joked; ‘When The Care Bears Movie came out, Disney people were talking about how they were being beaten by people who were really new to this game’ (Smitek, 2017, n.p). 

Collections

Within the collection at the Leicestershire Museum Collections, there are four bears: Birthday Bear, Funshine bear, True Love Bear, and Baby Tugs bear!

These bears within the collection are plastic figurines, both Birthday bear and Funshine bear have movable parts which make the toy more exciting. Each of these bears symbolise the true ethos of the Care Bears - children’s toys full of fun, love and (it's in the name) care! 

The Birthday Bear depicted above, a yellow bear with a cupcake on its tummy, is an early 1980s toy and was a part of a collection in 1983 with other Care Bears (@guardiancardshop, 2025).

These items were possible and included an object that was held in the right hand of the bear. In this instance, the Birthday Bear has a flag (see image below) reading 'Happy Birthday' on both sides. For this set of toys ‘each Care Bear came with one accessory which they could hold, although they were also sold with no accessories.’ (Anonymous, 2016, n.p). On the box that came with this poseable bear, which is unfortunately not within the collection at Leicester, we are able to see that these bears were important for children's emotions.

Writing that says, '[t]hey are always keeping an eye on things and whenever you want to share your feelings with others, they come down to help!' (Kenner, 1982, n.p) and '[o]ne look at their tummies helps you understand why they're so good at helping you express your feelings!' (Kenner, 1982, n.p) are on the box. This was done to help emphasise to children that this toy has value, and so do you.

For a young child, or even an adult, going through a tough time with their identity and expression, having an outlet that validates how you feel is incredibly important. Young queer individuals and communities need to feel this to truly be themselves. The Care bears help to understand emotions, and express them in a positive way, which would, and has, supported people in the LGBTQA+ community. 

Birthday bear in media was one character that was voiced ambiguously (Villarreal, 2021) representing to young children that there are no gender norms, you can be authentically yourself regardless of your sex. While it is the case that ‘lots of animated cartoons have their male characters voiced by women’ (Villarreal, 2021, n.p), it also reinforces the idea that expression and identity are genderless, to be who you are is enough.

This is a strong idea that holds meaning in the LGBTQA+ community, for many they were not allowed or even discouraged to be themselves which has harmed them, but this prejudice has blossomed into a supportive, uplifting and caring community, one that is reflected in the Care Bears.

Funshine Bear (our yellow bear with a smiling sun on its belly), rides a pink skateboard, surfing a cloud in a representation of his spirit. As described on the Care Bears website he is ‘Blissfully sure everything’ll be fine’ (Care Bears ™, 2025, n.p) and is always trying to be cool. The skateboard was also available in blue (@9257alder, 2025), however it is undetermined which colour was available first.

This bear was ‘originally conceived as a female character but is now listed as male’ (Villarreal, 2021, n.p), and is considered to be transgender or gender fluid. In early versions of Funshine, they were presented as female (Villarreal, 2021), then after 2004 they were depicted as male (Bullard, 2016).

Across the years of the Care Bears' existence, many other bears ‘have all switched from being male to female, vice versa and back again without any explanation or acknowledgment from the rest of the cast’ (Bullard, 2016, n.p).

This is significant as it presents that ‘perhaps there’s more than just one trans Care Bear’ (Villarreal, 2021, n.p) or more than one bear who was gender fluid.

It has been suggested that individuals on social media have only attributed some Care Bears as trans or non-binary as ‘a way of noting the characters’ shifting gender throughout their existence and as a way of acknowledging genderfluidity while increasing trans visibility in a children’s cartoon’. (Villarreal, 2021, n.p).