Disney's Gummi Bears

[Talon87]

Disney's Adventures of the Gummi Bears used to be one of my favorite cartoons when I was 5-7 years old. I even recorded this episode using the family VCR and used to watch it once every two years or so, whenever I'd rediscover the tape and find all these Saturday morning television programs on it from 1991. Anyway, just now I felt like listening to the opening theme song again, so I did; and then I saw that episode (the one I just linked); and then I felt like sharing it but we didn't have a suitable thread for such a purpose. So ... I made this thread. ^^; Not much else to say. But if people want to really go to town discussing the Gummi Bears, by all means, go for it. And if you want to start from the beginning, it looks like someone's uploaded the first episode here.

[Loki]

I god damn love Gummi Bears. I remember watching it as a kid and cheering them on. Then the final episodes were coming up and what happens? The bus breaks down and I get home after it aired. I missed it. Then they replaced the show with Aladdin or some such. No reruns. Nope. Need the space for a new show. was so angry with Disney Afternoons for so long after that.

Eventually Disney finally started putting out the DVDs but never finished the final few seasons. So here I am, 20 years later and I still don't know how Gummi Bears ended.

[Doppleganger]

I never watched it. I never got Disney channel and most of my Saturday Morning attention was drawn to Fox Kids or KidsWB!, and in late elementary school Buena Vista TV (who ran Pokemon at 3:00 PM following school).

That and Care Bears are among the shows everyone knows that I never saw. Ooh, and Duck Tales.

[Talon87]

Originally Posted by Doppleganger

I never watched it.

It used to air on ABC in the very early 1990s as part of what was called The Disney Afternoon. It was a 2-hour block that featured (during its peak):

• DuckTales
• Disney's Adventures of the Gummi Bears
• Tale Spin
• Chip & Dale's Rescue Rangers

Then as series like the Gummi Bears were retired, new things would show up. Some of these 2nd gen features included:

• Darkwing Duck
• Bonkers
• Goof Troop

Declining ratings + a big push to revive the NYC/LA/etc. cheapo courtroom TV programs pretty much signed the death sentence for programming block in the mid-to-late '90s, resulting in most ABC stations airing The People's Court (which had been very popular in the '80s but retired in the early '90s) and canceling The Disney Afternoon. The block moved, iirc, into syndication, but it was pretty haphazard, and it didn't take long for pretty much all of those Disney cartoons to wind up canceled. (At least on network TV. I can't speak for cable television and how long they survived on The Disney Channel, etc.)

Around this same time is when Disney's 3rd gen cartoons of the '90s started to appear. Recess was my sister's and my personal favorite, but there were a couple of others too that I'm forgetting. Disney/ABC also made a huge push around this time to reclaim the Saturday morning time block from Fox and Warner Bros., something it had enjoyed in the early 1990s (with programs like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles leading the charge), so this is when, as you might recall, Disney did their whole "One Saturday Morning" schtick, terrible theme song and all.

Long story short, cable television shouldn't factor into the equation if you were born (I guess I'd say) in 1987 or before. 'Cause Gummi Bears was still on the air up through at least the Autumn of 1991.

[Loki]

Congress passed a law about how children's after school programming which restricted non-educational shows. This caused Disney to basically drop everything and courtroom shows just filled the void.

[Talon87]

Originally Posted by Raptor Jesus

Congress passed a law about how children's after school programming which restricted non-educational shows. This caused Disney to basically drop everything and courtroom shows just filled the void.

The More You Know™! :o Cool. Didn't know or else forgot that. Makes sense though. This was around the same time that they did the whole TV ratings push and put ratings-sensing chips inside of TV sets. (Not 4 stars, 5 stars ratings, but E for Everyone, MA for Mature ratings.)

[Loki]

Children's Television Act to be precise. Signed into law in like 1990, but Congress was generally very vague about all the important details of enacting the law and it wasn't until like 1993 before they came down hard on everyone and declared what was educational or not. Suddenly a few channels had like 2 hours to fill and no cartoons they could legally show, which lead to Court Dramas. God I hated that.

[Talon87]

Yeah. 'Cause it's totally an educational and moral improvement for your typical ten-year old child to go from watching Darkwing Duck to watching Judge Judy weekday afternoons at 4.

[Loki]

That's congress!

[deoxys]

Shit, what a blast from the past.

Used to watch it along with DuckTales, Bonkers, Rescue Rangers, and Darkwing Duck when I'd visit my grandmas as a youngun. She had cable and we didn't, so I'd visit often. To say hi to my grandma, of course, but also because Disney and Nick cartoons were the best, at the time.