We’re starting off 2020 with a classic that Julia had on VHS: The Care Bears Battle the Freeze Machine. This was a 1984 TV special, that also became one of the best selling children’s videos of its year for some reason.
Image description: a bunch of Care Bears standing in a row perform the Care Bear Stare, which is to say they shoot colored beams out of their tummies.
Here’s Julia’s hazy summary:
“There's a boy named Derek who has no friends and decides to be mean to people because he is lonely. Professor Coldheart gives him a freeze machine, which is like a telescope that literally ices people, so he's basically like proto-incel evil Elsa from Frozen, but with no magic powers so he has to lean on evil technology? He freezes kids when he sees them having fun, like playing baseball or whatever. Eventually the care bears (and I think also maybe the care bear cousins) emit rainbow care bear feeeeelings at him and he decides he should be nice and unfreeze everyone, and they all are friends after that, I guess?”
WOW was Julia wrong! Starting with the fact that there is no one named Derek in this, and continuing on from there.
We take an exploratory journey into the Care Bears mythos, wonder about who the Self Care Bears would be (Self- advocacy Bear, Healthy Boundaries Bear, Recognizing Toxic Relationships Bear, Treat Yourself Bear, Consent Bear…). What other Self Care Bears do you think there might be?
We also discuss the underrated and unsung hero of this, Frostbite. #JusticeForFrostbite!
Now, a thing to note here is that we both found this video on the internet and it was a copy of the contents on the same VHS Julia had as a kid. The actual cartoon is only half of the full video length. Geoffrey stopped there, but Julia watched through the second half, in which someone reads two Care Bears books and the screen shows static pictures of the illustrations. We talk about those a bit, too, so if you are trying to play the home game and you’re a completist, you gotta find a video that is closer to an hour than half an hour.
We also have some important questions. Like, is Birthday Bear a valuable contributor to the Care Bear community, or unnecessary? And who would win in a fight, the Care Bears, or the goblins from Troll 2?
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