Boonie Cubs (熊熊乐园) made its debut on television in 2017 and is the first spin-off to be based on the Chinese animated series Boonie Bears.
It stars younger versions of Briar, Bramble, and their friends as they attend Pine Tree Kindergarten and learn of a variety of topics, from basic social skills to how animals live their lives - with the help of Olivia the wise owl lady and Coach Mac the bear.
The series has five seasons as of 2022, of which the first three have received full English dubs. The fifth season, Boonie Squad (熊熊帮帮团), goes in a different direction compared to the rest of the series, featuring the characters using magic when they didn't in the previous seasons.
Boonie Cubs contains the following tropes:
- Adapted Out: Boss Li doesn't appear (for a given value of "appear", anyway), since his role as Vick's boss in the main series doesn't have a purpose here.
- All Just a Dream: Season 2 episode 51 is revealed to be Babu's dream. This means that the monster Nian really isn't real in the Boonie Bears/Boonie Cubs universe, as Babu would have been led to believe.
- Alliterative Name: Sort of, with Olivia the owl.
- Amazing Technicolor Wildlife: Olivia, the animals' teacher, is a light blue and white owl.
- Canon Foreigner: The series introduces a number of characters who have no main-series equivalents, such as Olivia the owl and Coach Mac the bear.
- Chasing a Butterfly: In episode 1, chasing a butterfly through the illuminated tunnel is what leads Vick to the plain where the Pine Tree Kindergarten is.
- Counting Sheep: In Season 2 episode 23, Violet tries this to combat her insomnia, but imagines Billy the goat ringing the school bell among the sheep and fears that she might be late for school, only to realize she's just imagining it.
- Edutainment Show: The spin-off is one, teaching children about - as an official English trailer for the series puts it - "friendship, love, and kindness".
- Eyelid Pull Taunt: In the first episode, Briar gives Vick this taunt when he asks for his axe back and Briar refuses to return it, saying "finders keepers".
- Every Episode Ending: Every episode ends with one of the bears summing up the lesson given in the episode, sometimes (though not always) asking the audience to tell their mom and dad what they just learned, and telling them good-bye.
- Exhausted Eye Bags: In Season 2 episode 23, Violet and Luna Lu have eye bags by the time they get to school, as they barely got any sleep the previous night.
- Foreign Exchange Student: Violet the rabbit is one, being transferred to Pine Tree Kindergarten from the UK.
- Gossip Evolution: In episode 32, Tiki and Babu mistake Coach Mac for a monster and tell this story to Billy. Warren overhears the story without reaching the point where they explain it's just the coach, and he ends up jumping to the conclusion that there really is a monster and spreads the rumor to everyone, creating an entity called the "Gulu Monster" (named after the "gulululululu" sound it makes, which is actually Coach Mac's Growling Gut) that develops different features from wings to invisibility as people spread the rumor about it.
- Hiccup Hijinks: In Season 2 episode 2, Briar gets hiccups as the students are practicing for a recital, leading his friends to help cure them with numerous methods. They eventually agree to time the singing so that Briar's hiccups occur in an interim that makes it unnoticeable, after Logger Vick notices his hiccups happen in set intervals.
- High-Class Glass: Violet's dad wears a monocle as part of his high-class British appearance.
- Improvised Umbrella: In episode 22, Billy gives the kids some large leaves to use as umbrellas when it starts to rain.
- Insomnia Episode: Season 2 episode 23 is about Luna Lu having a sleepover with Violet, who finds herself unable to sleep. They both stay up the whole night, with Violet especially finding ways to fall asleep.
- Lohengrin and Mendelssohn: In Season 2 episode 17, the kids sing the tune of "Here Comes the Bride" during the renewal of Violet's parents' wedding vows for their anniversary.
- Onion Tears: Season 3 episode 8 is about Bramble mixing up his and Bramble's mother's food baskets and having veggies brought over to a picnic instead of the fruit basket their mother prepared for them. The animal friends find an onion inside the basket and wonder why it's making them cry, not realizing that it's an onion.
- Out-of-Context Eavesdropping: In episode 32, this is what kickstarts the plot; Warren overhears Tiki and Babu describing a monster to Billy and immediately assumes there's actually a monster on the loose and inadvertently spreads a rumor about it before he can hear that it's just Coach Mac, whom Tiki and Babu mistook for a monster.
- The Owl-Knowing One: Olivia, the animals' teacher at Pine Tree Kindergarten, is a wise owl lady who always has some wisdom to share with her students.
- Playing Sick: In episode 25, as part of his attempts to get his mother away from Olivia so that she doesn't learn of his less-than-ideal behavior at Pine Tree Kindergarten, Briar fakes having a stomach ache. This costs him the opportunity to eat one of the pastries they're having.
- Spin-Off Babies: It stars the younger version of the cast in an alternate universe.
- Token Human: Vick is the only human who attends Pine Tree Kindergarten, a school of animals.
- A Weighty Aesop: In Season 2 episode 40, Briar and Bramble meet a wild goose named Bob who wants to fly with the other geese, but can't due to the potato crisps he's been eating making him too fat to fly. This is used to teach a lesson about eating healthy foods, and Bob gets the lesson and promises to do a better job at eating healthy by the end of the episode.
- "Where? Where?": In episode 1, Vick mistakes Olivia for a monster, and Olivia responds "Where?" before realizing he thinks she's the monster and reassuring him she's not going to hurt him.
- White Bunny: Violet the rabbit and her parents have white fur.
- Wish Upon a Shooting Star: In Season 2 episode 22, Olivia explains the concept to her students as she also teaches them about how the shooting stars in the meteor shower aren't gonna hurt them.
