Take Care Bear is a fan addition to the Care Bears. Her author created Take Care Bear as a custom bear, then inserted her into the world of the 1980s cartoon. You may reckon her to be an O.C. Stand-in for the official Take Care Bear, a One-Shot Character from The Care Bears And The Big Sneeze, a coloring book from 1987.
Take Care Bear appeared in multiple stories, by her creator and by other authors. Her website is now offline, but the Internet Archive has saved fanfics of Take Care Bear
.
Take Care Bear's stories provide examples of:
- Halloween Episode: "Tricks and Treats in Care-A-Lot", in which Take Care Bear goes to the Halloween party and pranks Swift Heart. Yes, the animals wear costumes.
- O.C. Stand-in: Take Care Bear is an unusual case. Her author created Take Care Bear as a custom bear, not one of the canon Care Bears. This bear is a medical doctor, and her tummy symbol is an apple. Few fans knew that an official bear had the same name. Take Care Bear is a One-Shot Character in The Care Bears And The Big Sneeze, an obscure coloring book from 1987. This bear is a medical doctor, and her tummy symbol is an apple. (The 2004 toy line launched a new version of Take Care Bear.)
The similarity might be coincidence: "take care" is an idiom, and there is a proverb, "An apple a day keeps the doctor away." So it is plausible that the fan author, not aware of the coloring book, created a custom bear with the same name, job, and tummy symbol. The coloring-book bear has brown fur, but the fan-fiction bear has red fur. Fans may conflate two into one. Therefore, the fan-fiction Take Care Bear is an OC Stand In for the coloring-book bear. - Self-Insert Fic: Take Care Bear is both the character's name and her author's forum name. Take Care Bear and Gentle Heart Lamb are friends because her author owns a Gentle Heart plush.
- Spell My Name With An S: These stories have "Shrieky". The official spelling is "Shreeky".
