Care Bears
fictional character group
Care Bears are multi-colored bears, painted in 1981 by artist Elena Kucharik to be used on greeting cards from American Greetings. They were turned into plush teddy bears and featured in the animated TV specials The Care Bears in the Land Without Feelings (1983) and The Care Bears Battle the Freeze Machine (1984) before headlining their own television series called Care Bears from 1985 to 1988. They also had multiple feature films, including The Care Bears Movie (1985), Care Bears Movie II: A New Generation (1986), and The Care Bears Adventure in Wonderland (1987).
Each Care Bear is a different color or shade and has a unique image on their stomach (referred to in various media as "tummy symbols" or "belly badges") that represents their personality or specialty. The Care Bears family also include the Care Bear Cousins, which feature different animals, such as a lion, sheep, penguin, elephant, rabbit, raccoon, dog, cat, monkey, pig and horse created in the same style as the Care Bears.
In 2002, new plush versions of the bears were manufactured by Play Along Toys. This relaunch of the franchise featured in three animated films: Care Bears: Journey to Joke-a-lot (2004), The Care Bears' Big Wish Movie (2005), and Care Bears: Oopsy Does It! (2007).
A revival TV series, Care Bears: Welcome to Care-a-Lot, premiered on The Hub on June 2, 2012, for one season. A continuation with the same characters, Care Bears & Cousins, was commissioned by Netflix and premiered in 2015.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 13, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1569886. The Library of Congress control number is sh97008030. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1981, 1983, 1984 and 1985.
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This entry incorporates text from “Care Bears” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.