Stratovania

Since Wednesday is my typical day for writing about video games, I considered writing something about games featuring bears, but I don't think I can get an entire post out of that. Banjo-Kazooie, a series of games starring a banjo-playing bear with a bird for a best friend, immediately came to mind, but I've never actually played it nor seen it played. What I've read about it makes it sound pretty cool, but I've never been particularly good at action games. Also worth a mention is Moosh, the winged bear from the Zelda Oracle games. He's portrayed as rather cowardly and not too bright, but how can you not find a flying bear who attacks by butt-slamming his enemies to be cool?



One thing I wonder about is why bears are so prominent in our culture, particularly in works for children. I grew up on the Winnie-the-Pooh stories, and had my own stuffed Pooh, who was actually orange until my mom covered him with beige fur. I also remember reading some of the Paddington books, although I can't remember a whole lot about them other than Paddington lived in London, claimed to originally be from Peru, and was obsessed with orange marmalade. And then there are the Berenstain Bears, whose occasional overtly Christian messages make me wonder if there was a Jesus Bear in their universe. Even the Three Bears are really just innocent victims of breaking and entering. They do eat Goldilocks in earlier versions of the tale, but more recent ones tend to have the girl escaping, presumably having learned her lesson about entering other people's (or bears') houses uninvited. Does this prominence stem from the popularity of teddy bears? The toy, as you probably know, was named after Theodore Roosevelt, due to a 1902 anecdote and subsequent cartoon in which Roosevelt refused to kill a captured bear for sport, but instead ordered a mercy killing. There were toy bears prior to this, but the first actual TEDDY bear, with its cute and upright appearance, was made by Morris Michtom. Well, that's what the story says, anyway; we all know that the truth is rarely that neat. The teddy bear on which the character of Pooh is based was made in England by J.K. Farnell, and I would assume his formal name "Edward Bear" is due to how "Teddy" can be a nickname for Edward as well as for Theodore. Teddy bears have gone through many variations over the years (my own lifetime has seen both Teddy Ruxpin and the Care Bears, and probably other sorts of teddies I'm forgetting), but they remain ubiquitous.



Even the Roosevelt story doesn't totally explain why bears have been deemed good toys and story protagonists for children, but they ARE pretty cute and furry, especially as cubs. They're also associated with hugs, and while a bear hug isn't something you'd want to experience, they perhaps give them impression that bears could give friendly hugs as well as deadly ones, if they really wanted to. Besides, the animals live on four different continents, so they'd be familiar to kids in many different parts of the world.

We all know the chant in the MGM Wizard of Oz about lions and tigers and bears, and anyone who's either read the Oz books or my previous entries on them knows that a lion and a tiger are prominent characters in the series. It's a little while before we see a bear as a protagonist, though, and it's actually a plush toy bear stuffed with curled hair. In The Lost Princess of Oz, the Frogman and Cayke the Cookie Cook come across Bear Center, a town of toy bears who live in hollow trees in an isolated Winkie forest. Their king is known simply as the Lavender Bear, and he's somewhat embarrassed by the sillier aspects of his own composition, like the squeaker in his chest and the fact that he's merely lavender instead of royal purple in color. This carries over to some of the other bears as well, including their sentry Corporal Waddle, who is armed with a popgun. On the other hand, the king has some magical powers, the most prominent being a wand that allows him to project images of whatever he wants. Also, he is the keeper of the Little Pink Bear, a being that might or might not be alive. The Pink Bear operates by means of a crank, and can move on its own and correctly answer any question regarding the past or present. The Lavender and Pink Bears both join Cayke and the Frogman in their quest for the Magic Dishpan, and eventually join forces with Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz. The Little Pink Bear proves invaluable with its ability to answer questions, although Dorothy and her companions initially dismiss its weirder answers. More recently, Bill Campbell and Irwin Terry gave the king his own book, The Lavender Bear of Oz, in which some of his subjects are bear-napped by babies from Merryland.



Several other bears appear in the Oz series, including King Gugu's adviser Bru and a blue bear rug that's inadvertently animated with the Powder of Life. The story behind the latter is that a relative of Dr. Pipt's named Dyna had a pet bear that choked to death on a fishbone (another exception to the no-death rule, I suppose), and made a rug out of the body. When the Crooked Magician faked his own death, Dyna inherited some of the Powder of Life, but thought it was moth-powder. Sprinkling some of it on the bearskin rug made it come to life, but it was unable to speak. Kind of odd considering that other magically animated beings in Oz can talk with painted or carved mouths, but maybe it just took some time for the rug to figure out how to speak. When we see the rug again in dennisanfuso's The Astonishing Tale of the Gump of Oz, it can talk a little bit, but in a hoarse voice. Ruth Plumly Thompson doesn't reuse any of Baum's bears, but she does introduce two of her own ursine protagonists, Grumpy and Snufferbux. If all goes according to plan, we'll take a look at the two of them tomorrow.