We Baby Bears is a Spinoff Babies series to We Bare Bears, centering on the younger versions of the three main characters. Originally announced for a Spring 2021
premiere, it would premiere on Cartoon Network on January 1, 2022.
In a more fantastical twist on the "Baby Bears" episodes of its parent series, this show has Baby Grizzly, Panda, and Ice Bear in their usual quest to find a home. However, one night, a shooting star hits their cardboard box and turns it into a magic transport that can take them to other worlds. Now no longer limited to Earth, the Baby Bears are traveling from one fantastic land to another, searching for a place they can call their own while making new friends and enemies along the way.
Tropes:
- Abandoned Pet in a Box: The bears live in a cardboard box with the phrase "Free Bears" written on the side of it. In the first episode, that box gains magical powers and becomes able to travel to far-off worlds.
- Adaptation Dye-Job: Panda's fur is purplish-blue, as contrasted to his original black-and-white appearance in the original series. Grizz's fur is also a lot brighter.
- Animesque: More so than the original show, full of Manga Effects like Face Faults, Wing Ding Eyes and the like. Grizz, Panda, and Ice Bear's appearances have more or less been chibified.
- Art Initiates Life: "Snow Place Like Home" places the bears in a snowy wonderland where whatever they build with snow comes to life. The same happens with a crayon in "A Real Crayon"
- Ass in a Lion Skin: In "Panda's Family", Panda meets two pandas who present themselves as his uncle and cousin. These two "pandas" are actually Madam Malin and Madeline, in another attempt to try and capture Panda, separating him from his brothers.
- Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: In "Big Trouble, Little Babies", the Bears use a growth potion to make themselves bigger so they can go on amusement park rides. Everything goes well until each of them try to be the tallest one, which has them use up all their potion. The fortune-telling machine that gave them the potion gives them one more bottle, which they fight over, becoming Kaiju-sized in the process and leveling the amusement park.
- Big Brother Instinct: Just like in the previous series, the baby bears are shown to be very protective and supportive of each other. Special mention goes to how supportive Grizz and Panda are to Ice Bear in "Baby Bear Genius."
- Black Comedy: Surprisingly frequent. Examples include a fish getting Stripped to the Bone by a swarm of stingrays, a Freeze-Frame Bonus of Baga Yaga's corpse impaled on a stalagemite, and Ice Bear creating an artificial black hole that promptly swallows an onlooker.
- The Cameo:
- Ranger Tabes is seen on the cover of a videotape box in "Boo-Dunnit".
- Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner (as well as a trail of freshly dug dirt) appear in Grizz' recounting of events in "Who Crashed the R.V.?"
- Chromatic Arrangement: The bears' eyes are red (Grizz), green (Panda) and blue (Ice Bear). They are also associated with these colors in the intro.
- "Could Have Avoided This!" Plot: It takes until the end of "A Tale if Two Ice Bears" for the cast to realize they could also clone Grizz and Panda so Ice Bear's clone will have a family.
- Crossover: In "Witches", the Bears use a spell book to summon Susie, Alice, and Betsy, the three main witches from Summer Camp Island.
- Denser and Wackier: We Bare Bears was a more grounded Slice of Life show, whereas this is a more overt fantasy show.
- Elemental Motifs: In the intro, each bear is associated with an element. Grizz appears over a background of flames, Panda is surrounded by flower petals (fitting for a vegetarian) and Ice Bear’s name is on a background resembling a broken chunk of ice. (Big surprise.)
- Expy: Squatter Otter’s face loosely resembles Charlie from “We Bare Bears”, and likely will develop an equally complex relationship with Panda throughout the series. They have a similar personality too.
- Four-Fingered Hands: Averted with the humans in this show, as they now have five fingers, in contrast to the original show which played it straight.
- Getting Smilies Painted on Your Soul: In "Happy Bouncy Fun Town", the king of the titular town makes everyone act happy with a song playing from the phonograph under his crown. Ice Bear, whose natural chillness makes him immune, defeats the king and convinces everyone to act like they feel instead of being forced to act happy all the time.
- "Groundhog Day" Loop: The Bears get stuck in one in "Fiesta Day" after Grizz wishes that it would be Fiesta Day every day.
- Halloween Episode: "Witches", in which the Bears travel to a world based on Halloween, summon witches with a spell book, and are hunted by a Witch Hunter.
- Inkblot Cartoon Style: In "Happy Bouncy Fun Town", the Bears travel to a world based on 1930s cartoons, where everyone has Pie Eyes, Rubber-Hose Limbs and White Gloves, and Everything Dances.
- Loose Canon: This show's continuity in regards to the original show is rather vague.
- Baby Ice Bear can talk, which wasn't really the case in the baby We Bare Bears episodes. Though to be fair we never really did get to see when he first started talking so it may take place afterward (at one point the other babies teaching Ice Bear to talk is mentioned).
- The magic box being a thing, which was never mentioned before, of course.
- Magical Girl: In "Who Crashed the R.V.?", Panda appears as a Wholesome Cross Dresser one in his anime-esque retelling of Squatter Otter's crashed R.V.
- Meaningful Name: Madam Malin from “Hashtag Number One Fan”. In French, the word “malin” not only translates into smart, clever, or shrewd, but also malign, malignant, malevolent, wily, and cunning. As a noun, “Le Malin” is another nickname for the devil.
- Mythology Gag:
- The Bears' adult designs (and Charlie) appear as toys in "The Little Mer-Bear", "Teddi Bear", and "The Big Wish".
- In "Tooth Fairy Tech", while trying to craft up a solution to their problem, Ice Bear admits his imagination got the better of him as he crafted up a golden idol of the Bear Stack.
- Not So Stoic: Baby Ice Bear emotes a lot more here than himself and his adult counterpart from the main series, sometimes even being shown genuinely terrified with his brothers when they are in danger.
- Poorly Disguised Pilot: The "Glitterwood Rocks" seven episode event. In it, the Bears decide to spend a week staying with Unica and her parents at their home in Glitterwood Forest, meeting many of the forest's colorful inhabitants and going adventures that help build up the setting.
- Random Transportation: The box takes the Baby Bears to one new world after another, with no way of knowing where they're actually going. This ends in Season 2, as Box is made more sentient and the Bears can ask them where the trio wants to go.
- "Rashomon"-Style: In "Who Crashed the R.V.?", Grizz, Panda, and Ice Bear offer their own narratives of the R.V. crash: Grizz in Looney Tunes-esque animation, Panda in anime style, and Ice Bear's narrative is in B&W manga style.
- Sapient House: Baba Yaga doesn't appear in "Baba Yaga House"note , but her house on hen's legs does. It clucks like a chicken and chases after Panda when he takes away her egg, which then hatches into a smaller house.
- Series Goal: The Baby Bears need to find a home by using the magical box to teleport into a new world. In Season 2, this is put on the back burner as the Bears have been having fun adventuring.
- Shout-Out:
- "Big Trouble Little Babies" features Grizz, Panda, and Ice Bear being turned gigantic thanks to a wish-granting fortune teller. They're also respectively wearing a wolf, lizard, and monkey-themed kigurumi at the time, which likens them to Ralph, Lizzy, and George from Rampage.
- In "Teddi Bear", the bears mention encountering a barber who turned people into meat pies.
- Shown Their Work:
- "Modern-ish Stone Age Family" makes references to feathered dinosaurs, with the box referring to dinosaurs as "beasts of scale and feather". The same episode features a pair of Archaeopteryx-looking paravians with dromaeosaurid-like killing claws on their feet and black plumage according to recent fossil finds.
- In Panda's flashback to when he was an infant in "Meat House", he is shown as what a newborn panda actually looks like, being blind, tiny, and hairless with pink skin.
- Similar Squad: In "The Big Wish", Ice Bear comes across a trio of cats who seemingly are having their own adventures with a magical box.
- Sinister Sentient Sun: The antagonist of "Snow Place Like Home".
- Suddenly Voiced: Baby Ice Bear in the original show was The Voiceless; here, he speaks in the same monotone as his adult counterpart and even provides as the Translator Buddy for the magic box.
- Weird Currency: In the first episode, the Bears land on a world of fairies. They cook them a feast using some mushrooms they found in a cave. The fairies are aghast, as those mushrooms were their currency, and they just destroyed all the money in their bank.
- Wholesome Cross Dresser: In "Who Crashed the R.V.?" Panda's anime-esque account depicts him as a Magical Girl.
- Wish Upon a Shooting Star: The Bears' box became magic when they made a wish on a shooting star to find a home. Now it can fly and teleport them to seemingly any world in search of one.
- Wishing Well: There's one in "Fiesta Day" that Grizz uses to wish it was Fiesta Day every day. When he needs to undo the wish, he goes down to the bottom to retrieve the coin but has to deal with piñata alligators living there.
- Written Sound Effect: In "Bears in the Dark", the noises the Bears hear inside the cave appear written in the background.
- You Must Be This Tall to Ride: In "Big Trouble, Little Babies", the Bears enter an amusement park but find that all the rides have height requirements, even the funnel cake booth. This leads to them using a growth potion to make themselves taller, which ends up getting out of hand.
