Once the retailer saw that 26 of his leading suppliers were on board, he got pretty excited about it and committed space and advertising. Ĭhojnacki details "There were 26 licensees that all went to market together and each of them had anywhere from 10 to a thousand products. It took them a total of two years in development to reach the launch date.
Shaffer states that the team didn't just design the characters, they also meticulously lined up a range of big-name companies to licence the concept at the same time. Care Bears would launch simultaneously with thousands of licensed products, including books, bedding, children's clothing, housewares and more. With support from American Greetings CEO Morry Weiss, Chojnacki had a much more detailed scheme.
#Care bears 25 years sleepytime bear movie
Previously, American Greetings would release a new character and if it was popular with their target audience, other products and perhaps even a movie or television program would follow. Once the bears had been designed and Kenner had shown their undeniable interest in the concept, they still required a marketing plan. The patent was for the application of putting graphics on a bear's stomach. We also got a patent, which is rare and hard to do. We sort of copied the Steiff bear - by putting a heart-shaped button on the backside of the bears to make them official Care Bears. The end result almost mirrored the original pencil sketch. You could give her a piece of artwork, and she could translate it into a three-dimensional plush design. They were working under a genius plush designer, Sue Trentel. "We had a plush department with five expert designers all working on prototypes. Shaffer also detailed the process of prototyping the bears. Bears are the ultimate anthropomorphic character." "They look really young, but at the same time, you could have them say almost anything. Polter mentions the diversity of the bears' charm. Īrt taken from the official Care Bears Instagram. Balancing out the cast, this irritable bear became a fan favourite and has appeared as a main character in nearly every iteration of the franchise. Let's do a Grumpy Bear.'" Shaffer's instinct was spot-on. Let's do a counter to all this sweetness. "We had nine bears, each a different colour, representing nine different emotions - Bedtime Bear, Birthday Bear, Cheer Bear, Friend Bear, Funshine Bear, Good Luck Bear, Love-a-Lot Bear, Tenderheart Bear and Wish Bear," said Shaffer, but something wasn't quite right with the crew. Once the team was assembled, the development of the new concept continued. Īmerican Greetings contracted cartoonist Dave Polter and illustrator Elena Kucharik to help bring their idea to fruition. I drew that heart on that bear," Shaffer recalls. "I'm sitting here looking at a simple pencil sketch of a bear and thinking, 'What the hell am I going to do with the bears?' Something in my head just took those graphics and flopped them over on the bear's stomach. It'd been three months since our meeting with Kenner, and I was still trying to come up with something." Ĭlassic art featuring the original ten bears. We had done all this research, and I had all this artwork on symbolism lying on my desk.
We could only think of so many symbols, and then we ran out of gas. "You need a lot of designs to launch a new card line. In a 2017 interview with Cleveland Magazine, Shaffer remembers his initial grievances trying to design the characters. At the time, Kenner was known for its Star Wars figurines and wanted to get into the plush business with a line of teddy bears. Īmerican Greetings partnered with the toy manufacturer Kenner.
It was so closely guarded that they called their concept "Project II" during their two-year development ("Project I" being Strawberry Shortcake). TCFC kept their production of the Care Bears a closely guarded secret. TCFC was chiefly responsible for the development of the Care Bears franchise. They named it Those Characters from Cleveland. After they developed Strawberry Shortcake, American Greetings CEO Morry Weiss picked Jack Chojnacki and Ralph Shaffer to lead a separate character development subsidiary.
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