YMMV / The Berenstain Bears

• Accidental Aesop: In keeping with Mama and Papa's Parents as People portrayal, the stories contain quite a few parenting lessons spliced in with the ones meant for children. Examples include "Don't hit your children," "Don’t scold them for bad habits," "Don’t indulge their tantrums," and "You can inform your children about the dangers of the world without scaring them."
• Alternate Aesop Interpretation:
  • "Trouble at School" delivers the moral "It's never too late to correct a mistake." It's supposed to mean "even though you've put off correcting your errors, a new attempt to apologize and atone for them can still be appreciated", but it could easily be misread as "if you commit a crime, don't apologize for it until it's convenient, upon which all will be forgiven."
  • "No Girls Allowed" is intended to teach An Aesop about how one should be a good sport. Instead, it's more easily read as "Don't get mad - get even" and "You shouldn't exclude girls because the adults will always side with them and never try to talk to you."
  • "Trouble with Teasing" is supposed to be about standing up to bullies and sticking with victims, but it also suggests that lying to teachers to try and get revenge is okay and "Wrestle bullies who tease you".
  • "Count your Blessings" tries to teach the aesop of "You should be thankful for what you have", but the fact that Mama and Papa want to give Brother and Sister more stuff at the end (for being thankful during a storm) suggests "Your parents will be proud of you being thankful by giving you what you want anyway".
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Is Mama Bear an example of "mother knows best" or is she really an arrogant jerkass who enjoys insulting and humiliating her husband? For instance, she often acts as though he needs to be taught the same childish lessons as the cubs.
  • Some have speculated that Papa Bear's racism towards the panda bears in "New Neighbors" is due to him being a Vietnam War veteran.
• Aluminum Christmas Trees: In the cartoon version of "Get the Gimmies", the cubs want purple ketchup. This may seem like a made-up food, but it actually existed once (though was unpopular).
• Angst? What Angst?: In the TV version of "The Trouble at School", Mama and Papa show almost no concern when Brother confesses all of his misdeeds, which include ignoring all his homework when he was sick, facing the consequences when it turns out he has a test the day he goes back and subsequently getting a zero on it, hiding it from his parents when he was instructed to have them sign it, and skipping school the next day. Yet, when he finally confesses, his parents have maybe two sentences worth of "scolding" him (if you could even call it that) before pulling an Easily Forgiven and switching into a more upbeat tone. In fact, they show more concern in "The Homework Hassle" where Brother only does one of those things (letting his homework pile up).
• Anvilicious: The entire reason for the series' existence is to impart moral lessons. The PBS Kids version seems to be a lot better about this, but several of the Mike Berenstain-created books lean heavily on an overtly Christian message, which can almost come across as proselytizing.
• Audience-Alienating Premise: Many readers were turned off when The Berenstain Bears entered the Living Lights arc and introduced heavy Christian morals, especially since The Berenstain Bears started as irreligious.
• Beam Me Up, Scotty!: In the book "The New Neighbours", Papa Bear is often misremembered as claiming his panda bear neighbors "aren't real bears". He never claims this— he claims to dislike the pandas for being "different", then later when they plant bamboo, he claims it's a "spite fence", but he never accuses them of not being real bears.
• Do Not Do This Cool Thing:
  • Many people think that the "junk food" in "The Berenstain Bears and Too Much Junk Food" looks colorful and delicious, despite the Aesop of junk food being bad for you. To quote one Real Life child looking at the inside cover:
    "Mamma bear sad. Mamma Bear needs to eat some candy."
  • The sleepover party that got Sister Bear in trouble in one of the books (a chaotic mess where the cubs destroyed the house and had the police contacted) looks pretty awesome.
  • The In-Universe nightmare-inducing Space Grizzlies toy line and movie from "The Bad Dream" actually looked like a pretty cool franchise (sort of like Monster in My Pocket meets Star Wars).
  • In "The Berenstain Bears Get the Gimmies", Brother and Sister actually get some really cool knick-knacks despite the book having a message on not being demanding.
• Epileptic Trees: There is a bizarre theory that those out there who recall the name as being "the Berenstein bears" are actually transplants from an alternate universe (This is actually because a surprising amount of material, such as VHSes and TV guides, used the misspelled name instead of the actual name).
• Harsher in Hindsight: One episode of the 1980s cartoon involved Weasel McGreed creating a flower that traps bees to cut off the town's honey supply. This was before Colony Collapse Disorder became a major problem with consequences more disastrous than a low honey supply.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • The book version of "The Slumber Party" opens up with the story explaining that you never know who is on the phone until you answer it. Needless to say, that's no longer true with the rise of caller IDs. Then again, there's no guarantee that it's who the caller ID says it is...
  • "The Berenstain Bears and the Attic Treasures", released in 1990, has the Bears going through their attic to decide what to sell (and wind up not selling any of it). At one point, they find their old baby furniture and are initially sure they can get rid of it until the cubs object — what if they wind up having another baby and needing it then? Ten years later, Mama was revealed to be pregnant again in the 2000 book "The Birds, the Bees, and the Berenstain Bears", with baby Honey Bear being introduced in "The Berenstain Bears and Baby Makes Five" the same year.
• I Am Not Shazam: The bears' surname is Bear, not Berenstain. And, despite the common mispronunciation, it's not "Bernstein", either. Nor is it "Berenstein", despite what some people will tell you.
• Informed Wrongness: Sister's nail-biting in "The Bad Habit", a mildly annoying nervous tic at worst, is made out to be a much bigger problem than it really is. Though to be fair, she nibbles them so far down that they get sore.
• Jerkass Woobie:
  • Tuffy, when her Freudian Excuse for being a bully (she has Abusive Parents) is revealed.
  • Too-Tall has his moments as well. For instance, in the book with the message on safety gear, his punishment for teasing the Bear cubs about wearing safety gear was to hit his head.
  • Sister Bear in "No Girls Allowed" — she was showing off a lot, which caused them to ban girls from their club, but she still bursts out crying once she discovers she's banned.
• Mandela Effect: One of the most famous examples would have to be the debate over whether the title is spelled as Berenstain or Berenstein. While it's officially Berenstain, there is a large number of people who misremember it as Berenstein (partly because it's the more common spelling in general, partly because a large amount of official media legitimately misspells it, and it certainly doesn't help that the font choice on the cover makes the cursive 'a' look rather close to an 'e'), which has led to a (tongue-in-cheek) conspiracy theory that the people who remember the latter spelling were transported from an alternate universe.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Mama Bear's frustration with the cubs' messy room in the 1985 Animated Adaptation.
  • To a lesser extent, the "Help!" "Can't sleep!" argument on "In the Dark" from the same adaptation.
  • The idea that it's really BerenstEin Bears, and there is some kind of time-travelling conspiracy to blame for the fact that every official source ever is spelling it wrong. (This is actually because a surprising amount of material, such as VHSes and TV guides, used the misspelled name instead of the actual name).
  • "HORSE T. ONIONFUCK I'M THE MAYOR" ^ExplanationA misheard variant of Horace Q. Honeypot's line in the 1985 series intro, originating from Saberspark's Top 10 Worst Cartoon Intros.
• Moral Event Horizon: Weasel McGreed crosses this in "Hot Air Election" where he straight-up tries to kill the Bear family by having them fall from a great height in a rigged hot-air balloon. Even Raffish Ralph thought his plan was too evil and refused to go along with it.
• Narm: In "Too Much Birthday" Sister Bear gets too overwhelmed by her birthday party (between being teased by the other kids, being uncomfortable on the pony rides and rented merry-go-round, and not being allowed to keep a prize she won while playing pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey, among other things) and ends up bursting into tears at her birthday cake. It's clearly meant to be an unhappy moment, but the combination of Sister's appearance as she starts crying combined with the other kids continuing to sing obliviously◊ makes the scene not land quite right. In contrast, the Animated Adaptation of the episode has Sister crying less exaggeratedly and the other kids seem much more concerned over how distraught she is.
• Never Live It Down: Mama Bear's worst moment is considered to be in "The Messy Room", where she gets mad at Brother and Sister for not tidying their room. Understandable, but then she outright threatens to throw away their toys if they don't put them away while doing so as they can only watch in agony, something which many fans are still mad about.
• No Problem with Licensed Games: Berenstain Bears' Camping Adventure for the Sega Genesis stands out as a pretty solid and surprisingly well-designed and challenging Platform Game starring Brother and Sister Bear.
• Only the Creator Does It Right: The books' shift towards Christian themes starting in 2008 has been seen as a black mark on their reputation by fans, and most of it is attributed to Stan and Jan's son, Mike Berenstain. While Jan was an Episcopal Christian, Stan was Jewish, and they met halfway during the writing process to make the books appeal to most demographics. On the other hand, Mike became a devout Christian following his marriage, and health complications and their untimely passing caused Stan and Jan to not have as much influence over the stories anymore, with fans believing them to be the backbone behind the book's broad demographic range.
• Periphery Demographic: The books were not originally written with a Christian audience in mind, but they became some of the series' biggest fans due to their old-fashioned, G-rated morality. Mike Berenstain, who took over writing the books after his father Stan died, noticed this when he started receiving fan mail from Christian parents and partnered with a Christian publisher to write new books with explicitly religious messages.
• The Problem with Licensed Games: The Game Boy Color game Extreme Sports with the Berenstain Bears. Lazy graphics, bad sound effects, and one-note and unmemorable sports mini-games.
• Realism-Induced Horror: Surprisingly enough the horrors are there even with a Sugar Bowl world:
  • In-universe in "And the Bad Dream", where in the film "The Magic Toe-Shoes" that Sister sees, a ballerina loves dancing but keeps wobbling on her feet. She laments that she's never going to be able to pursue her dream career. Her instructor fortunately has a solution and restores her confidence.
  • "The Mad, Mad Toy Crazy" depicts how the Beary Bubbies fad is going too far. When the Bears go to a mall to get rare toys, they see two parents have been fighting while waiting in line for hours, and the police are hauling them away. They gloss over it, but it's implied riots may have happened over the toys.
  • "Learn About Strangers" features an in-universe example, of Papa Bear reading the news to Sister about a cub being kidnapped, and a suspect being questioned. That, plus the fairy tale he reads her (in which a goose learns her lesson about stranger danger by being eaten), leaves her awake at night thinking about how talking to a stranger can lead to a child vanishing into thin air, maybe even being eaten. Sister the next day is a walking ball of nerves until Mama intervenes.
  • "Computer Trouble" has Sister create a social media account on Pawbook (Bear Country’s version of Facebook), only for a classroom bully to find her and post a hurtful message on her newsfeed.
  • "Lost in Cyberspace" has Teacher Bob talk about how random strangers on the Internet will take advantage of your personal information to lure you into a trap and kidnap you. Lizzie is shaken despite pointing out that her dad is the chief of police. She also finds other criminals by accident in a poetry chatroom and runs to school in a panic after realizing the poems are code for extortionist plans (that involve bombing no less).
  • "No Guns Allowed" features a serious discussion about cubs bringing guns to school. Too-Tall scares the kids in the climax by bringing a water pistol to squirt Ferdy. Lizzie calls her dad, and everyone is worried Too-Tall wanted to actually kill Ferdy. Even though Ferdy uses their rubberband gun on Too-Tall, making him lose their feud by default, Brother and Sister are still shaken.
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • The voice of Mama Bear in the Living Books adaptation of Get In A Fight was provided by Jodi Carlisle, who would later voice Marianne Thornberry.
  • In the Nelvana series, Brother is voiced by none other than a young Michael Cera.
• The Scrappy: Lenny in the 2002 series. He often brags to Brother and Sister but has no problem pointing out the shortcomings of others.
• Seasonal Rot: Beginning in 2008, the books started to focus more on explicitly Christian morals and teachings, which had never been present in the earlier stories. Titles such as "The Berenstain Bears Say Their Prayers" and "The Berenstain Bears Follow God's Word" have been met with much mockery and confusion.
• Strawman Has a Point:
  • "The Berenstain Bears Show Some Respect" has the cubs acting bratty by contradicting their parents and grandparents when the family is looking for a picnic spot. While we're meant to see their complaints as rude and unwarranted, a lot of their comments are quite valid. For instance, Mama suggests a spot by the pond because that's where she and Papa had their first date, to which Brother responds with "That was ages ago. It's full of mosquitoes now." While he could have said it more politely, having a picnic in a location with lots of mosquitoes around is annoying at best and dangerous at worst, no matter how the location was in the past.
    • The entire family acts as though the grandparents' suggestions for picnic spots are awful, but once they're called out on it, they let them have the final say. Gramps proceeds to lead them... back to the house, to eat in the backyard. While it's easily accessible and not mosquito-ridden, this defeats the entire purpose of going on a summer picnic.
  • In the animated special "The Berenstain Bears' Easter Surprise", Boss Bunny retires from his role as the Easter Bunny. When he is confronted about it by his son and Brother Bear, it's clear to see that he's too old and out of shape to continue the job. While all it takes to get him going is some fresh air, considering everything he has to do to make Easter possible, it's still taxing.
• Take That, Scrappy!: At least, how one writer for The New York Times put it: in a review for the 1980s show, the author expressed disdain for the cast as a whole, but particularly paid attention to Mama Bear being overly stern and seemingly caring more about how her house looks than the well being of her children. Thus, he saw the cubs demolishing the lamp in "The Truth" as one of these moments.
• Tear Jerker:
  • In "Lose A Friend", Sister's goldfish dies. It's really quite sad to see Sister so broken about its death, not to mention that pet death is sad on its own.
  • In "Too Much Pressure", Mama becomes so overwhelmed with driving Brother and Sister to their activities that when the car stalls on their way to one, she breaks down and cries. Since Mama is generally the most level-headed of the family, this is very upsetting to see. To push it further, the 2002 TV series adaptation of said story has the cubs crying along with her.
  • Sister getting upset and crying in the stories "Too Much Birthday" (due to all the mishaps at her birthday party overwhelming her) and "No Girls Allowed" (due to the boys intentionally excluding her from their new clubhouse, even if she was acting like a Jerkass to them when beating them at games), especially so in the 1980s cartoon adaptations.
  • In the 1980s cartoon episode "The Cat's Meow", Cousin Freddy growing increasingly desperate to find his dog Snuff can hit home hard for anyone who has had a pet go missing. Fortunately, it turns out Snuff was protecting a fox from some hunters and after succeeding in doing so, returns to his owner, giving the episode a happy ending.
  • In "The Bully" we are treated to Sister coming home a sobbing wreck after having been beaten up by a bully named Tuffy at school without any good reason for it. Her parents take it about as well as any parent would, and Brother is so angry that he decides to teach Sister some self-defense moves in case Tuffy ever attacks her again. When that moment does come Sister defends herself by giving Tuffy a bloody nose, and Tuffy breaks down in tears as they are both taken to the principal's office. To Sister's surprise, Tuffy admits that she's not upset about being hit, but is scared about what her parents will do, saying "[she] won't be able to sit for a long time". Sister finds herself feeling sorry for Tuffy, realizing that her tormentor probably has it a lot worse at home.
• Unintentionally Sympathetic:
  • Brother for failing the test in "Trouble with school". We are supposed to see that Brother fell behind in math because he never learned how to divide... and the school was operating under the assumption he would learn it just from the homework, as he returns from an extended sick break and is expected to take a division test the same day. Regardless of whether or not Brother was expected to do homework, he was never allowed to even show he could do division, let alone learn it.
  • Papa in the 1980s TV episode "The Great Honey Pipeline". After going back on his word to stay away from the wild honey, the cubs and a skunk teach him a lesson by having the skunk spray him through the pipeline; Papa then has to live outside in a tent because of the stink as well as punishment. While meant as karma and An Aesop about not breaking your word, forcing Papa to live outside in a tent because of something that wasn't really his fault seems to be a bit excessive.
  • The boys in "No Girls Allowed". The intended moral is "Be a good sport" - except way more attention is given to show how much of a bad winner Sister is as opposed to the boys being poor sports. If anything? Their frowns at Sister seem to be more at her behaviour rather than annoyance that they lost to a girl. It's entirely reasonable they wouldn't want to play with her when she is such a poor sport. What makes this a little worse is that Sister is shown being told "There are bad winners, too" but very little is done to actually correct this while more is done to reassure her that what the boys did was wrong. The 80s episode's also bad at this too - since Sister's shown to be way way more boastful.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic:
  • The readers are generally supposed to sympathise with Mama - however, some people saw her as a little too stern and seemed to care more about how her house looked rather than the well-being of her cubs. Others thought her parenting methods were a bit odd (such as bribing sister with money to get her to stop biting her nails, teaching manners through positive punishment), while others simply find it annoying how she's almost always portrayed as being in the right, and snaps at her husband a lot. (See Alternative Character Interpretation)
  • The entire family in "Too Much Teasing". Brother being teased by Too-tall and the Gang of Bullies is supposed to be seen as karmic justice for him teasing Sister and using the "Just Joking" Justification. Except that Mama and Papa's correction is... to tease each other, tell Brother to knock it off, and say Sister shouldn't be so sensitive. They apparently don't show any sympathy for Brother being teased to the point where he tries to fake sick to get a single day off from the torment. Sister relishes in this - making her seem very much like a Jerkass. While some of this can be justified by Sister being about 5-7 years old, the narration itself seems a little mean spirited.
• Unintentional Period Piece: Some of the attempts to keep the Berenstain Bears up-to-date come off as being dated nowadays. This is true of the books written in The '80s and The '90s. Some specific examples are:
  • "Trouble with Money" (1983) has Brother and Sister spending money on a game in a video arcade back when arcades were more common than today.
  • "Learn about Strangers" (1985) was very much in the "Stranger Danger" craze.
  • "The In-Crowd" (1989) has the front cover with several girl cubs break-dancing in front of a boombox.
  • "The Bad Dream" (1988) and "Mad Mad Mad Toy Craze" (1999) have the toys in the books resembling Masters of the Universe in the former and Beanie Babies in the latter.
  • "Lost in Cyberspace" (1999) still has the bigger bulky computers, a contrast to the more sleek and thinner models used today.
    • Similarly in "Computer Trouble" (2010), the Bear family is still shown to use big, bulky, and boxy desktop computers, complete with CRT monitors, something very hard to find in real life at the time the book was written, in favor of said sleeker and thinner computers. They even go as far as using Pawbook (Facebook) and eBear (eBay) on said computers!
• Values Dissonance:
  • One of their very first books was "The Bike Lesson", which was meant to teach bike safety. However, due to it being published in the 1960s, it never says a word about helmets, allowing Papa to keep suffering Amusing Injuries. The much later book "Safe and Sound" made up for this.
  • "The Berenstain Bears and the Bully" has Sister punching Tuffy, the titular bully, in the nose and only getting let off with a warning. The book was intended to teach kids self-defense but it was published back in 1993 before many American schools adopted a "zero-tolerance" policy. Under those circumstances, a kid would likely be punished along with their aggressor or possibly face suspension/expulsion. Additionally, Tuffy is seen throwing rocks at a baby bird - nowadays, Tuffy would be put in therapy as soon as a teacher saw her doing that (she is put in therapy with the hope that she'll get help for her home life, but that happens at the end of the book and it's not as a response to throwing the rocks).
  • When Brother teases Sister, Mama and Papa tell Brother to knock it off, but also tell Sister to not be so sensitive. Fairly standard when the book was written (1995), but nowadays comes off as flat out victim blaming.
  • The Southern Star adaptation of "In the Dark" has Papa telling Brother that he'll get some form of Corporal Punishment (most likely a spanking) if he scares Sister again. Even in 1986, spanking was largely a hot-button issue, and nowadays the mere dialogue by itself wouldn't fly well in a series aimed at children.
    Papa: If there's any more "ooh, ooh, ooh", it's gonna be followed by a little "ow, ow, ow".
• Values Resonance: A few things from the series still stand up decades after their first publication.
  • "Mama's New Job" takes an even-keeled approach to Mama no longer wanting to be solely the homemaker. The book notes that she spends most of her time either doing chores or helping out her family with their activities, while she would rather have more time to experiment with quilt patterns. After some neighbors offer to buy her quilts at one of Papa's events, Mama realizes it's Actually a Good Idea. She has some money saved up and rents a shop space, to sell her knitting. While her family at first worries she won't have time to be a mom, look at their response on day one: Mama comes home late because business was such a success that she couldn't stop selling quilts. In response, Papa Bear makes a delicious dinner while the kids tell Mama to prop up her feet and rest. Brother and Sister handle their activities and inform Mama about how their days went. She's so touched by how supportive they are that a few weeks later, she's able to treat them to dinner at a fast-food restaurant. The family notes that the extra money is nice, but Mama being happy is even nicer.
  • In "And Too Much Pressure": the Bear Family is overwhelmed by a schedule full of extracurricular enrichment activities for Brother and Sister (nine activities between them at the least) and it keeps Mama Bear busy... and stressed to the point where she neglects to have Papa Bear take care of her spark plugs, the family is too busy to have dinner with Gran and Gramps, the whole family has nightmares (or just can't sleep in Mama's case), the cubs can't help out at the house or enjoy downtime, and then the car not starting is the last straw that causes Mama to cry. This book is more resonant now, as parents are expected to make sure their children have a large share of enrichment activities, and colleges all but require high school students to have volunteer work, extracurriculars, good grades, and possibly a part-time job to get accepted. Additionally, young members of the workforce are vulnerable to burnout due to "hustle culture", which focuses more on their work and less on their physical and mental needs.
  • "Mad Mad Mad Toy Craze" may have been one big polemic against Beanie Babies, but ironically it aged very well given the bubble around cryptocurrency, block chains, and NFTs in The New '20s.
• Viewer Pronunciation Confusion: Doubling as Viewer Name Confusion, many people think "Berenstain" (pronounced "berren-stayn") is pronounced "berren-styne" or "berren-steen" due to false memories of the title being spelled "Berenstein".
• Woolseyism: In the Nelvana episode "Go to School", Sister mixes up 'synonym' and 'cinnamon' while studying vocabulary for the third grade. This near-homophone is lost in Spanish ('sinónimo' and 'canela'), so in the Spanish dub, Brother clarifies that 'cinnamon' is 'canela' in English.

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