Käpt'n Blaubär (
Captain Bluebear) is a hybrid puppet/animated show created by
Walter Moers as a recurring segment for the German
Edutainment Show Die Sendung mit der Maus. It stars
a blue bear who is a retired seaman, living on his beached ship with his three grandchildren
(one green, one yellow, one pink) and his old first mate Hein Blöd.
Every episode starts with a puppet sequence, during which the Captain's grandchildren usually discover a strange object on the cramped ship which they start to ask their grandfather about. When he starts telling the story behind the object, his tale is shown in an animated sequence, often switching back to a puppet sequence when the grandchildren add their opinion on the tale. Almost every episode starts with a ridiculous premise about transporting a cargo of
Visual Puns, and it usually gets crazier with every passing moment. Usually an episode ends with the grandchildren accusing their grandfather of just having made everything up.
Kapt'n Blaubär has been adapted into other media; in 1999 he starred in Walter Moers' first
novel of Zamonia, which told of his youth (and which was later on adapted into a
stage musical, and the same year there was also a full-length
animated movie that focused on the present-day Blaubär and his fight against his archnemesis, Prof. Dr. Feinfinger.
The Captain Bluebear TV series provides examples of:
- Amazing Technicolour Wildlife: The Captain himself and his three grandkids.
- Barefoot Cartoon Animals
- Breakout Character/Spin-Off: Käpt'n Blaubär started as a segment in Die Sendung mit der Maus, but got so immensely popular that he later got his own show.
- Captain Colorbeard: Or Captain Color Bear, in this case.
- Cloudcuckoolander: Hein Blöd. His name literally means Hein Stupid.
- Cool Boat: Käpt'n Blaubär's home is a ship sitting on a cliff above the sea. While not spectacular by itself, it's crammed up to the deck with weird stuff.
- A Day in the Limelight: In one episode, Hein Blöd tells a story instead of starring in one told by the captain.
- Father Neptune: Käpt'n Blaubär is of course one.
- Everyone Calls Him : Hein calls him Käpt'n while the little bears call him Opa ("grampa").
- Gone Horribly Right: Sometimes the little bears try to prove their grandfather wrong by trying out the supposed magical devices he found on his travels. Quite often it turns out they really do work as claimed.
- Indy Ploy: The little bears often point out severe flaws in the captain's stories, which he then resolves by just making stuff up as he goes.
- Just So Story: Some of his stories.
- Meaningful Name: Hein Blöd. Blöd is german for stupid.
- The Munchausen: The Captain.
- No Name Given: Käpt'n Blaubär's name is never given, and his grandchildren are always identified as die Bärchen (the little bears).
- Poirot Speak: Both the captain and Hein Blöd speak with a heavy north German accent, but use Standard German vocabulary unless the meaning of a word is obvious by context — regional accents in Germany can be incomprehensible to people from other parts of the country and often can vary considerably in their vocabulary.
- Raised by Grandparents: The little bears arrive at the ship in the first episode, but are never shown to leave again, even temporarily. It's unclear whether they are living permanently with their grandfather or are just regularly staying over. No other relatives are ever mentioned.
- Refuge in Audacity
- Retired Badass: The captain, obviously.
- Tall Tale: The Captain's stories ... or are they?
- Visual Pun: Both the cargo and the destination of the captain's voyages are most often visual puns.
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