The Scare Bears
- CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR...Books Three and Four
Scare Package
The Scare Bears are one of my earliest creations—the entry concerning them is in one of my first notebooks and actually reads “Scare/Fear Bears”. When I needed a shipload of pirates in Book Three I dug into my research and realised I’d never used this fun concept. As you can see I toyed (ha ha) with calling them the Fear Bears but “Scare” only involves adding the S. My names can often be complex (cf. Panoddhio!) so I couldn’t resist something relatively simple, but which completely alters the meaning of the original name.
The Care Bears began as a greeting card but subsequently conquered all media (cartoons, feature film, books, video games, comics, music…) and the plush toy market. Each bear is a different colour with a “belly badge” that outlines its one-note personality. The originals have names like Cheer Bear, Friend Bear, Love-a-lot Bear, Tenderheart Bear, and Wish Bear. Their adventures focus on the typical domain of saccharine characters—cartoonishly evil villains foiled through team-work and love. In other words, I saw them as sitting ducks for lampooning.
Who Scares?
The Scare Bears are described as being “the size of a yonderer child, with fluffy round ears and big eyes” and “not unlike … Paddington Bear”. I wanted this to conjure up not only the standard image of anthropomorphic teddy bears from our fiction—there are dozens!—but also the Ewoks from Star Wars. I’m not an Ewok-fan. In fact, I think I dislike them even more than the Care Bears! Personality-wise the Scare Bears are drunk, dirty, blood-thirsty little creatures. So yes, they’re basically Ewoks with colour-coded names.
That code is COLOUR + BEAR. I love colour/colour names so coming up with them was fun, especially Gingerbear who I initially wedged into Book Three. But he got lost in the shuffle so I saved him so he could feature in Book Four.
The Crew
Blackbear – described as being “as black as a starless sky”, Blackbear is the bawdy, but not necessarily evil, Captain. That said, part of his operation involves slave-trading so perhaps he is evil after all… He is an obvious reference to Blackbeardthe real pirate who was the template for the modern pirate archetype. There are also literal ursine species known as “black bears” and I figured there had to be some reason we came up such a thuddingly obvious name for this sub-grouping.
Bluebear – a violent and volatile “cornflower blue” bear, reflecting the bloodthirsty tales about the character of Bluebeard. Big Bear taunts Bluebear into killing him, knowing he will come back to life, banking that it will be outside the cage they’re trapped in.
Gingerbear – a “copper” bear who we learn is Blackbear’s nephew. Black declares he “‘ad to give ‘im a job…family”. Poor Gingerbear was always a doomed soul, mainly so that I could write this immortal line—”Chester pounced on him and spilled Gingerbear all over the floor”.
The other Scare Bears mentioned are:
Limebear
Yellowbear – a “lemon” coloured bear.
Carminebear
Grapebear
Tealbear
Orangebear
Unnamed – a “bright pink” bear. There was a wonderful Pinkbear/Pinkberry joke to be had but alas, it has gone unmade (for now).
Unnamed – a bear who is “mustard in colour”
Bonus Round
Just how disgusting are these critters? When their captives request water they don’t receive it but instead “a stream of steaming yellow liquid that smelled suspiciously like asparagus [that] rained down upon the prisoners”.
