Beary Funny

Wocka Wocka!

The only time this bear is bad news is when his jokes are flat.

Perhaps it's because of the proliferation of the Teddy Bear as a child's toy, but bears are often portrayed as Boisterous Bruisers or sometimes just Big Fun, and aren't really looking to eat people so much as just looking to eat. (Truth in Television; most bears are omnivorous and will gladly eat nuts and berries; also, while grizzlies are aggressive, their favorite food is salmon.) Seems most common in Western Animation, although circus bears are common in Real Life.

Ursine Aliens can invoke this trope. Contrast Bears Are Bad News. Compare Beary Friendly, which examples here can also be.

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Examples:

Advertising

• Coca-Cola's famous commercials featuring polar bears that they bring out every year around the holidays. In late 2011, they even released special-edition red-on-white cans (instead of the traditional white-on-red) as part of a "Save the Polar Bears" campaign.
• Rival Pepsi has used bears for a Super Bowl commercial on a couple of occasions.
• FedEx studied recent Super Bowl commercials to come up with the ten factors needed for the best commercial ever. It involved Burt Reynolds getting kicked in the nuts by a talking, dancing bear (product message optional).
• Charmin toilet paper ads, featuring a family of bears who live in the woods—with a house and bathroom, and therefore also need good quality toilet paper.
• The Sugar Bear (originally three Sugar Bears), the mascot from the Sugar Golden Crisp cereal boxes, though most ads tried to play him as a cool, jazzy-style character.
• For many years, Hamm's Beer had a bear to hawk the beer. One early example of these commercials can be found here.
• Hofmeister had the Hofmeister bear, a light hearted, sweet-natured, cockney wide boy
• Canadian beer company Labbatt's used a talking black bear in several commercials during the early 00's.

Anime and Manga

• Shirokuma Cafe has Panda and Polar Bear as two of its core characters. Polar Bear is the owner of the titular cafe and is a Pungeon Master. Panda is a rather lazy Cloudcuckoolander who is a regular patron. Though Grizzly, while a serious character, many of the running gags involve Polar Bear annoying Grizzly and waking him up from hibernation just to ask pointless questions.

Comic Books

• In the French graphic novel Pyrénée the Wild Child title character is a girl raised by a bear in the mountains. The bear is mostly seen as a big furry dope, but there's one scene where they get into a serious argument and he only just manages to hold back from killing her.
• Tom Poes: Olivier B. Bommel is a bear who lives in a castle. Despite always calling himself brave, cunning and strong he always chickens out whenever danger is about and it's always his Sidekick Tom Poes who has to save him.

Comic Strips

• The Far Side depicted bears sympathetically, even (or especially) when they go after humans.

Eastern Animation

• In the Russian animation Masha and the Bear, the eponymous bear is less of bad news and more of Butt-Monkey, thanks to the naughty little girl Masha.

Films — Animation

• Baloo in The Jungle Book epitomizes the "lovable lug" archetype for bears. Baloo was also friends with Mowgli in the original Kipling story, although a less comedic character, but his Disney version is probably the most well-known.
• Little John in Disney's Robin Hood (1973) splits his time pretty evenly between making cracks of his own and serving as Robin's straight man. It helps that he's basically the same character as the aforementioned Baloo (and voiced by the same guy).
• Boog the bear from Open Season. At the film's opening, He rides a unicycle for crackers for one thing.
• Bongo the Bear from the first segment of Fun and Fancy Free is a friendly, somewhat bumbling circus bear.
• Cubby from Peter Pan is a human, but he wears a bear suit as clothing, and he's the Fat Comic Relief of the Lost Boys.
• Muk and Luk from Balto are cute, playful polar bear cub twins.
• Zozi from Bartok the Magnificent.
• The second half of the film Brave had Queen Elinor and the triplets being turned into bears played for comedy except when Queen Elinor slowly loses her mind.
• Po, the title character of Kung Fu Panda is initially a bumbling Kung Fu Fan Boy and a bit of a Butt-Monkey. He becomes an Ascended Fanboy and competent Kung Fu warrior, but never loses his comedic side. He's voiced by Jack Black, to boot.
• Averted with teddy bear Lotso in Toy Story 3. He is a manipulative, evil Big Bad.
• Corporal from Penguins of Madagascar is a Dumb Muscle polar bear whose obsession with cute animals is Played for Laughs.

Films — Live-Action

• The bears in the movie based on the Country Bear Jamboree, The Country Bears.
• In Sadko, The Big Guy proves his strength by wrestling a bear. When the Mystery Science Theater 3000 crew riffed on the film, they turned this scene into the bear staging an intervention and giving the guy a hug.
• In The Love Bug, during the big race, Thorndyke's car bogs down in a lake. While his partner, Havershaw, struggles to push the car out of the water, a bear somehow gets into the car in Havershaw's place. Hilarity Ensues.
• The title character of Ted is a living teddy bear who's a foul-mouthed wisecracker.
• In The Great Race, while Leslie, Maggie, Professor Fate, and Max are trapped in the middle of an arctic blizzard, a polar bear manages to sneak into the back seat of Fate's and scare him and Max into Leslie's car until the bear decides to leave just as casually as it came.
• In Adventures Of The Wilderness Family the bear cubs the family adopts get into all kinds of mischief and chase Boomer's mule around as a Running Gag. The massive black bear, Samson is also Beary Friendly but has a comically huge appetite. His introduction includes him keeping the family up all night eating their cookies, finally leaving when he empties their shelves.
• Paddington (2014) squeezes in as many bear-related puns as possible.
• Br'er Bear from Song of the South. He's a villain, but a humorous one.
• Combined with Bears Are Bad News in The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra in a very funny scene where the characters discuss a farmer being "horribly mutilated", possibly by a bear.
  Paul: But can a bear do that? Horribly mutilate someone, I mean?
  Ranger Brad: Dr. Armstrong, in my time as a park ranger I guess I've seen bears do some things that even a bear wouldn't do.
• Gooby: Gooby is portrayed as a goofy, clumsy yet well-meaning bear buddy that seems to get himself into trouble a lot.

Literature

• Winnie the Pooh, being based upon a teddy bear, is lovably dim and goodhearted, and is often thinking about honey.
• The Berenstain Bears: Punny Name aside, if one isn't the type to find anthropomorphic bears inherently funny there is the occasional laugh in the siutations the characters get into.
• Paddington Bear Poor Paddington tries to be a proper gentleman, but a combination of misunderstandings and bad luck keep landing him in strange situations.

• While the Hoka can be bad for the mental health of those dealing with them, they're very well-meaning, kind-hearted beings.
• Gahan Wilson's Harry, the Fat Bear Spy, who'd much rather go to the beach and eat macaroons than do espionage work.
• The Boogie Woogie Bears: The Boogie Woogie Bears are a family of bears who get into various situations with comical results.
• Who Wet My Pants: Reuben is a bear, and his pants-wetting and subsequent obliviousness and accusations are Played for Laughs.

Live-Action TV

• A running gag on The Andy Williams Show would involve the Cookie Bear (actually a man in a bear costume) coming up and asking Andy for a cookie, and Andy would chase Cookie Bear away, saying "No you can't have a cookie, not now, not ever!" In one Christmas special episode, Andy finally decides to give him a cookie, and then when a poor boy shows up lamenting that he never gets anything for Christmas, the Cookie Bear decides to give his cookie to the young boy.
• The bear at the zoo in Grey's Anatomy was a running joke. Mostly because it was so boring
• Kintaros of Kamen Rider Den-O is partially based on a bear; for the most part he Does Not Know His Own Strength, a bit clumsy, and a Gentle Giant all in one package.
• Brutus the Bear on the nature show America the Wild. He was raised in captivity, has absolutely no sense for survival in the wild and is just a cuddly klutz whose human likes to take out to the wilderness to try to demonstrate both the natural power of bears and the complete ineptitude of Brutus (who can't even fish properly!)
• Saturday Night Live: According to Dana Carvey, Christopher Walken likes sketches with bear suits because "Bear suits are funny. And bears as well."
• Black Mirror episode "The Waldo Moment" has the eponymous character; an animated bear that was used in a topical comedy show. The episode focuses on Waldo entering a real-life election and things soon turn darker.
• A sabotage on Cutthroat Kitchen during their "Camp Cutthroat" outdoors special Invoked a cross of this and Bears Are Bad News. The sabotaged chef could not touch any of the food themselves, but had to relay all prep and cooking instructions to "Bob the Bear" (a stagehand in a bear costume). The sabotage itself was "bears are bad news," but the way the sabotaged chef and "Bob the Bear" handled it (treating the bear like an oversized, clumsy kid with a short attention span) turned it into this quickly.

Puppet Shows

• The Muppets seemed to be quite fond of showing off ursine characters in this manner:
  • Fozzie Bear from The Muppet Show. He also has his own comedy routine (albeit consisting of bad jokes), and furthermore has been pals with Kermit and other Muppets.
  • Bobo, a more recent addition to Kermit's entourage. He looks more like a real bear, and in some cases, particularly in recent Muppet movies, such as Muppets from Space and The Muppets (2011), he is depicted as a well-meaning assistant to the Big Bad in the movie in question, one who ends up allying with the heroes.
  • Baby Bear from Sesame Street.
  • Bear in the Big Blue House.
  • Samson from Sesamstrasse, the German version of Sesame Street. American audiences got to see him as part of Sesame Street Stays Up Late, an international special from 1993.
  • Mr. Willowby's Christmas Tree: The local bears are jolly creatures who spend the special celebrating a bear holiday called the Midwinter Honeypot Waltz.
• The Bear in the Flying Carousel from Teletubbies, unlike that other bear from that show.

Theme Parks

• Disney Theme Parks:
  • The Country Bear Jamboree at Disneyland and Disney World. Bears playing musical instruments! And singing! Want to know why the Country Bear Jamboree is preserved when Disney could easily have replaced it with a more modern updated version? It's widely believed that Walt himself walked into the office of the Imagineer working on the designs and was in hysterics from the pictures of some of the proposed characters and the general idea himself. He then told the man to keep working on the funny bears and said "good-bye." Walt passed away that weekend. Legend has it that the Country Bears were the last happy moment in the life of a man who brought so many happy moments to so many people.
  • Also, in the original circus segment of the Main Street Electrical Parade, one of the floats was a bear balancing on one foot on a set of barrels while having hoops looping around its arms and legs and balancing a honey pot on its head.

Video Games

• Teddie in Persona 4. Though he's not exactly a bear, he's actually a Shadow that takes form of a stuffed bear plush to endear himself with humans, and through interaction with party members, he grew a human body and thus his bear form is just his 'suit'. Otherwise, he fits the trope like a tee, with additions of tons of bear puns. Shadow Teddie, on the other hand... This is Lampshaded in the fighting game.
  Mitsuru: Really, the only thing you have in common with bears is just the ears...
• Banjo from Banjo-Kazooie definitely counts. Unlike his pal Kazooie, he's incredibly friendly and kindhearted.
• Ōkami features a sleepy bear who is usually napping, Snot Bubble and all, while standing on some object. Though Susano mistakes him for a "foul beast" and attacks him at one point, all it does is wake the bear (briefly) up.
• The Brothers Bear from Donkey Kong Country 3: Dixie Kong's Double Trouble!.
  • In Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze, the penultimate boss, Bashmaster, the Unbreakable, is a rather odd example, given that he is a ferocious polar bear who wields a giant hammer with ice spikes on one end. When he is first seen, Bashmaster is casually reclining on an ice floe, licking a popsicle, only for DK and/or another Kong to fall on the floe and accidentally knock the popsicle out of the bear's paw and into a purple pool of fruit juice the ice floe is floating on, where the popsicle is eaten by a school of piranhas. This prompts Bashmaster to angrily turn on DK and/or another Kong, who put(s) on a hilarious guilty smile before the battle begins. Then, as the battle goes one, every time you hit Bashmaster, he falls into the pool, which slowly stains his white fur purple!
• Claire the Bear of The Sims has a flower by her ear, digs through trash cans, interacts with certain appropriate objects (such as teddy bears, bear-skin rugs, and beehives) in silly ways, walks on tiptoes, and does not interact directly with Sims at all.
• Tekken features Kuma, a tamed, intelligent bear who practices karate. While he can be vicious when motivated, he's typically a silly character who haplessly chases his unrequited love, a female panda. Notably, his most powerful attack is a deadly fart.
• Danganronpa has Monokuma, in a Laughably Evil combination of this and Bears Are Bad News.

Web Animation

• In episode 11 of Teen Girl Squad, What's-Her-Face and the Ugly One sing a "warbly campfire song" about a "chumbly wumbly bear".
• DSBT InsaniT: Bear is a little teddy bear in a comedy series, its a given.
• In the "Medimoji" series of web animations by ZDoggMD, the lab tech is the teddy bear emoji. (At the time, there was no rat or mouse emoji for the iPhone.) He is a friendly bear, although often stressed out by the challenges of working in a hospital lab: nurses who fail to label specimens correctly, or blame the lab for when they're too hemolyzed to use, doctors who order tests without understanding what's required for them (or even whether they're really necessary), and people (emojis?) who don't understand what the clinical lab does or why it's important.

Webcomics

• Sore Thumbs has a blue midget bear named Coleman as its Animal Mascot. While Coleman still can be vicious, he's also a constant source of comic relief, talks in half-growls, and is small enough to pass for a teddy bear when standing still.
• When some bar-bear-ian Were-bears turned up in Exiern they unleashed a Hurricane of Puns, utterly un-bear-able in the watching crowd.
• Milk And Mocha are an Official Couple that get into amusing Slice of Life scenarios. They're also bears.

Web Original

• Beary, Benzaie's son/brother who also happens to be a plush polar bear, and usually winds up as The Woobie thanks to the way Benzaie treats him.

• This Reddit comment, responding to a question about life in Wyoming.
  you come see wyoming sometime. bring peanut butter. i am completely normal human.
• Juuichi from Morenatsu, despite his usual expression (his twin brother even more so).

Western Animation

• Baloo retains his laid-back, lazy personality in TaleSpin. The other bear characters, particularly Rebecca, usually play the Straight Man to his antics.
• The Dummi Bears, an obvious spoof of the Care Bears from Rugrats, though their name is an homage to...
• Adventures of the Gummi Bears: The Gummi Bears, though they have a wide variety of personalities and everyone is a bear, all have elements of this.
  • Gruffi is the Comically Serious and occasional Butt-Monkey.
  • Zummi is an Absent-Minded Professor.
  • Grammi is the Apron Matron and Gruffi's Sitcom Arch-Nemesis.
  • Tummi is the somewhat ditzy Big Eater.
  • Sunni and Cubbi are a Cheerful Child pair whose interactions with and without the other can cause some serious hilarity.
  • Sixth Ranger Gusto is a lovably eccentric artist.
• In the Teen Titans (2003) episode "Bunny Raven, or How to Make a Titanimal Disappear", Cyborg gets turned into a dancing bear, in a tutu. Due to the magical properties of the realm they were trapped in, every time he removed the tutu, a new one winked into existence to replace it, resulting in a giant pile of discarded tutus.

• Humphrey the Bear from the Classic Disney Shorts is a Big Eater who gets in hilarious situations while trying to steal food (usually from Donald Duck).

• Tim, Arianna, and their son from The Cleveland Show, the only anthropomorphic cartoon animals on an otherwise completely straightforward Dom Com, and at least part of the joke is that nobody seems to notice that they're, well, bears.

• In The Simpsons, Homer Simpson thinks the ballet is a bear wearing a fez and riding around a tiny car.

• Both the original ThunderCats (1985) and the reboot ThunderCats (2011) has Cute Machines the Ro-Bear Berbils, helpful, rainbow-hued robotic teddy bears who love to build and repair things.
• Hanna-Barbera seems to like this trope. Cases in point:
  • Yogi Bear, with his antics to steal "pic-a-nic" baskets.
  • The Hair Bear Bunch.
  • Breezly Bruin, a character from 1964 who always tried to get into an arctic army base.
  • The Hillbilly Bears.
  • The CB Bears.
• Walter Lantz's Beary family, consisting of Bumbling Dad Charlie Beary, nagging housewife Bessie, Dumbass Teenage Son Charlie Junior, and little daughter Suzy. Oh, and their pet goose.
• The Tex Avery Oscar-nominated "The Legend of Rockabye Point'' ostensibly starred Chilly Willy, but was all about the hungry polar bear vying for a haul of fish guarded by a vicious dog.
• Cartoons from MGM would typically display ursine characters in this manner. To wit:
  • Barney Bear is an unlucky, long-suffering bear in the vein of Donald Duck.
    • One short with Barney is called "Barney's Hungry Cousin", which involves another, skinnier, goofier-looking bear that goes to great lengths to steal Barney's picnic food.
  • George and Junior, created by Tex Avery.
  • Another cartoon directed by Tex Avery was called "Rock-a-Bye Bear", in which a dog is house-sitting for a bear in hibernation; but this bear will instantly wake up at the sound of a pin drop and pummel the dog while yelling "QUIET!! SHADDUP! QUIET!!" and warns that if the watchdog makes any more noise, he will replace him with another watchdog. Hilarity Ensues as a rival dog attempts to wake the bear up so he can steal the watchdog's job.
  • There is also a Tom and Jerry cartoon called "Down Beat Bear", which involves a dancing bear that will start dancing to music at will whenever he hears the slightest bit of it — and picks Tom as his reluctant dance partner.
  • And from the Chuck Jones period of the 1960s, we have The Bear That Wasn't, a short cartoon about a bear that gets stuck working in a factory after he's mistaken for "a silly man in a fur coat who needs a shave".
• The Looney Tunes cartoons have The Three Bears, also the creation of Chuck Jones, debuting in "Bugs Bunny and the Three Bears", with Papa delivering Dope Slaps to his dimwitted son Junior, and Mama chasing Bugs after he gives flattering remarks about her looks.
  • Elmer Fudd and Bugs Bunny have their share of run-ins with bears in "Wabbit Twouble" and "Hare Remover".
  • Bugs would also star in "Big Top Bunny" with Bruno the Slobokian circus bear.
• The stars of Cartoon Network's We Bare Bears are Grizzly, Panda, and Ice Bear, a trio of socially-awkward ursines trying to live like humans.
• The very first Mr. Magoo cartoon was "Ragtime Bear", in which Magoo, due to his nearsightedness, mistakes a bear that loves banjo music for his nephew Waldo.
• In one episode of Freakazoid!, the main plot is briefly interrupted by Cosgrove asking Freakazoid if he wants to go see a bear riding a motorcycle. One Jump Cut later and they're already at the circus.

Real Life

• Trained bears are common performers at circuses, enough so that they named a trope.
• And, of course, pandas have often been portrayed as humorous in fiction, even though they're really just as dangerous as other bears are.
• Wrestler vs. bear matches were a common gimmick match in Professional Wrestling up until the late 70's, when the practice was ended for the sake of the safety of both the bear and the wrestler. Stu Hart, patron of the famous Hart family, wrestled a bear on several occasions^note While the crowd may have found this funny the guy in the ring with a bear certainly wasn't laughing. Not to mention that if the bear decides he's not gonna job you're kinda screwed.
• Behold: Bears racing monkeys on bicycles. Is it not awesome?
• The Polite Bears!
• The rescued bears at the Montana Grizzly Encounter sanctuary don't need to hibernate in winter because the staff feeds them all year round, so they have plenty of opportunities to play in the snow. Some of them have learned to make snowballs and even managed to hit visitors with them!

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