When the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles faced the Care Bears

In Meta-Messages, we examine cases where meta-commentary has been used in comic books. The most recent example is the introduction of characters in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles role-playing game that were meant to mock the Care Bears.

There is a very interesting time in the history of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for me, and that is BEFORE the cartoon came out. When the cartoon came out in 1987, it was a box office hit. There are very few cartoons that were as successful as the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon was when it came out. It was one of those things where the characters suddenly went from being fairly low-key popular to being so famous that it was almost a fair question as to who was more famous, Donatello the turtle or Donatello the Renaissance sculptor!

At the same time, however, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were an INSTANT success in the comic book (and related) industry. So it’s kind of funny that Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird had overnight success ALREADY in the mid-1980s, after launching their own Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series in 1984 as a very limited print run comic book issue that the two men had saved up money for. They advertised the comic in comic book fanzines and the thing blew up. Their riffs on comic books by Frank Miller, Dave Sim and Chris Claremont (Daredevil And Ronin for the ninja part, Cerebellum for the Turtles part and New mutants for the Teenage Mutant installment) were a huge success… but that just goes to show how “success” can have two very different standards. When they started, they were definitely an instant success, but comparing them to post-1987 is like night and day.

In any case, one of their first attempts to license their characters was a role-playing game in 1985 in which Eastman and Laird were heavily involved, and in the process they ended up creating some characters to make fun of… the Care Bears?!?

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What problem did people have with the Care Bears in 1985?

As I explained in the previous meta post, in 1977, American Greeting Cards released a line of cards featuring an adorable little girl named Strawberry Shortcake…

Within just two years, Strawberry Shortcake had expanded its reach into the world of stickers, books and other such items. American Greeting Cards then signed a major deal with Kenner for Strawberry Shortcake toys and Kenner, who recently strengthened their power with the star Wars License, wanted to make a lightning start for Strawberry Shortcake and that meant spending $400,000 on a high-end animated film for television called The world of strawberry cake.

This 1980 cartoon was controversial at the time because, as you know, it was just a big commercial and none of the networks would air it. However, it was allowed to air as part of the syndication campaign, and its broadcast on television (as I noted in that old TV Legends Revealed) basically opened the floodgates for the flood of 1980s commercials disguised as cartoons.

Because of the success of Strawberry Shortcake, American Greetings did THE SAME with the Care Bears, turning them from greeting card characters into…

to stuffed animals…

to television films that are intended to advertise the toys.

Just as I noticed Charles Schulz getting annoyed about “Some Strawberry Shortcake,” a lot of people were making fun of the Care Bears in the mid-1980s, and two of those people were Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird.

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How were the Care Bears mocked in the role-playing game “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles”?

As mentioned, while Eastman and Laird were now “famous,” they weren’t THAT big yet, and when they were approached by Palladium Books about licensing their characters for a role-playing game, Eastman and Laird were not only on board, but heavily involved, including designing new artwork for the new characters created for the game, which was written by gaming legend Erick Wujcik, and co-creating the new characters with Wujcik. They even did a short comic for the original 1985 edition of the game, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and other oddities…

From the amazing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Wiki follows the explanation of who the Terror Bears were:

These vicious creatures were created through unethical experiments. As newborn bear cubs, they were exposed to a military virus. Instead of killing the bears, the virus interfered with their development. For years, the bears were held captive by callous scientists. During their first three years of life, they were treated as test subjects for testing with various types of biological poisons. This procedure involved injecting the bear cubs with massive doses of poison and hooking them up to uncomfortable electronic detectors to measure their suffering. It was not until their fourth year that a scientist discovered the bears’ unusual intelligence. At this point, they were transferred and subjected to even more brutal experiments as researchers tried to find out the extent of their intelligence and abilities.

Since their escape, the terror bears have lived in suburban areas. Wearing loose clothing and large hats, they use various parapsychological tricks on neighbors and store clerks to maintain their cover. The terror bears spend most of the day sleeping in separate rooms. In the late afternoon and early evening, they eat and watch television. Late at night, they go out into the streets and look for victims.

The Terror Bears are very afraid of being captured and returned to the secret laboratories where they were created. To prevent this, they are constantly on the run. They are not interested in killing, but enjoy tormenting people with their mental powers.

Here are Eastman and Laird’s drawings of the Terror Bears (from both the first game and the sequel the following year), which look like this

• Pain Bear
• Scaredy Bear
• Bear of Destiny
• Nightmare Bear

Hilarious stuff. I think Dark Horse made them as miniature figures once. And yes, technically they’re not COMIC characters, but let’s be honest, they’re drawings by Eastman and Laird, so that still counts!

If anyone has a suggestion for future meta messages, drop me a line at [email protected]