Who else remembers "The Hair Bear Bunch"?

[wellinghall]

In The Wonderland Zoo, there are certain bears who,
Stay at home every night, never quarrel or fight,
Hey! We don't even bite!

So don't yell,
Help! Help! Here come the bears,
Help! Help! Here come the bears,
Help! Help! Here come the bears, Lets split!

So don't yell,
Help! Help! Here come the bears,
Help! Help! Here come the bears,
Help! Help! Here come the bears, Lets split!
Help! It's The Hair Bear Bunch!

http://www.cfhf.net/lyrics/hair.htm

Comments

[pellegrina.livejournal.com]

I remember Care Bears but not Hair Bears...

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

But then, I am a bit older than you ...

[pellegrina.livejournal.com]

Only a bit, but in the '70s and '80s there was also a significant time lag before things (especially children's TV) made it to Italy, not to mention that not everything did make it to Italy at all. Children's television had a lot of black and white repeats from earlier decades (e.g. Rin Tin Tin), Hanna Barbera and Japanese anime (points at icon).

[the-marquis.livejournal.com]

I always loved their invisible motorcycle!

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

I do. Arguably the campest of Hanna-Barbera's cartoon characters, although personally I've always had my doubts about Fred the jock from Scooby-Doo.

Clearly part of the pink conspiracy to make homosexuality socially acceptable among that generation...

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

Wasn't Fred getting it on with Daphne?

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

Oh yes!

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

There is this too.

And - ah, so that's what your icon is.

[the-marquis.livejournal.com]

I always thought that Fred & Daphne were an item, you always suspected that thy deliberately got separated from the other three to get some snogging time alone, Velma could have been the bookish proto-lesbian, or just bookish and carrying a torch for Fred or Shaggy.

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

Oh, Velma was definitely a proto-lesbian (although I probably didn't think of her in those terms at the time).

*needs cartoon icons*

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

I remember the title, but don't remember a single thing about it, and the lyrics don't ring a bell, and the images thrown up by a Google images search don't seem familiar to me. Maybe it was on ITV...? ;-)

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

I really can't remember. I have a vaguely BBC-ish memory of it, but no more than that.

As I said to pellegrina, my memories of it are probably from the first, very early 70s, showing of it in this country; and I don't know how often / how late it was repeated; so maybe you were really too young for it. (But is philmophlegm that much older than you?)

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

No, he's younger than me. However, my childhood TV viewing was odd, resulting in me missing out on several things that everyone else of my generation remembers. I did watch BBC children's TV after school, and before I started school I watched both BBC and ITV's lunch time pre-school programmes, but I never watched Saturday morning TV, or pretty much anything on ITV after school.

[parrot-knight.livejournal.com]

ISTR reading somewhere that Velma was described as a lesbian in the Scooby Doo writers' guide!

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

Oh, thank you for your email about the weekend, by the way. I will get around to replying to it, honest!

[parrot-knight.livejournal.com]

I didn't think that the Hair Bear Bunch appeared on British television until about 1976 or 1977, well after the series was made. I wasn't familiar with them when they were included on the Tempo story LP Spin a Magic Tune, which featured a series of uncharacteristic renderings of Warner Brothers and Hanna-Barbera characters, so perhaps they were shown on ITV before they reached the BBC.

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

That's just the obvious impression you're meant to form. Fred must be the classic case of over-compensating. (Except for that cravat and those flares. I mean come on, Quentin Crisp modelled his entire image on Fred!)

As for Velma, that writers' guide is from the point of view of sixties American men: She has short hair and no boyfriend, therefore she's a lesbian. Nah, Velma's straight (and I reckon a bit of a goer...)

[parrot-knight.livejournal.com]

The viewer is always entitled to draw their own conclusions!

[skordh.livejournal.com]

Me too! Square Bear was my favourite.

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

You may be right; you usually are, when it comes to such things!