| Adventures of the Gummi Bears | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Genre | |
| Created by | |
| Directed by |
|
| Voices of | |
| Theme music composer | Silversher & Silversher |
| Opening theme | "Gummi Bears Theme" byJoseph Williams |
| Ending theme | "Gummi Bears Theme" (Instrumental + Shortened) |
| Composers |
|
| Country of origin | United States |
| Original language | English |
| No. of seasons | 6 |
| No. of episodes | 65 (95 segments)(list of episodes) |
| Production | |
| Producers |
|
| Running time | 23 minutes |
| Production company | Walt Disney Television Animation[a] |
| Original release | |
| Network | NBC |
| Release | September 14, 1985 (1985-09-14) – December 17, 1988 (1988-12-17) |
| Network | ABC |
| Release | September 9, 1989 (1989-09-09) – January 6, 1990 (1990-01-06) |
| Network | Syndication (The Disney Afternoon) |
| Release | September 10, 1990 (1990-09-10) – February 22, 1991 (1991-02-22) |
Adventures of the Gummi Bears is an American animatedhigh fantasy television series created byJymn Magon and produced byWalt Disney Television Animation.[1] The series, loosely inspired bygummy bear candies,[2] takes place in afantasy world of medieval lands and magic, and focuses on the lives of six mystical beings known as Gummi Bears. The series focuses on the exploits of the main characters, as they tackle a series of problems, as well as aid their human friends and thwart the plans of various evil characters. Episodes consisted of either a single story, or two 11-minute stories.
The lavishly budgeted series became iconic for not only spearheading the style of Disney animated series that followed, but also startingan era of artistic improvement in television animation spurred on its success with competitors forced to improve their own artistic standards to avoid unfavorable comparisons.[3] The theme music was written byMichael and Patty Silversher and performed byJoseph Williams.[4] The animated series first premiered in the United States, running for six seasons between 1985 and 1991,[5] with the show later sold to other countries including theUnited Kingdom.
Adventures of the Gummi Bears takes place in amedievalfairy tale world and focuses on a group of six "Gummi Bears", a race ofanthropomorphic bears with great skills in magic and technology. The group lives in the underground secret settlement of Gummi Glen within the forest of the kingdom of Dunwyn. Long ago, the Gummi Bears had a powerful and highly developed civilization, but were persecuted by human armies who sought access to the Gummi Bears' knowledge and ultimately drove almost all Gummi Bears north. Most of the Gummi Bears then settled on a continent unknown to humans and were forgotten over time. They are now generally considered alegend by humans, but few know that they still exist. Throughout the Gummi Bears' search for their heritage, oldruins and intact buildings with some high-tech devices are repeatedly discovered.
Despite their efforts to continue living free from human influence and safe from threats, the bears of Gummi Glen gradually encounter several humans. Contrary to all fears andprejudices, the encounters do not always result in confrontation and fighting; while most humans dismiss every encounter as an illusion and put it out of their mind, some humans (especially children) try to befriend the Gummi Bears. Only those who still believe in and know about the Gummi Bears and their magic try to capture them. The Gummi Bears' closest friends among humans are Princess Calla, the daughter of King Gregor and heir to Dunwyn's throne, and Cavin, thesquire of Gregor's chief knight Sir Tuxford.
The Gummi Bears owe their name to a magic potion named "gummiberry juice", which allows them to bounce like arubber ball. Gummiberry juice is made by Grammi Gummi using an ancient and secret recipe from the Gummiberries that grow in the Dunwyn forest. The gummiberry juice gives humans and monsters superhuman strength for a short time, but unlike Gummi Bears, it only works on humans once a day. The evil and power-hungry Duke Igthorn is constantly trying to obtain the formula of the potion and the remaining secrets of the Gummi Bears with his servant Toadwart and his private army of simple-minded ogres. He seeks to conquer Dunwyn, dethrone the king and establish a reign of terror. The Gummi Bears often have to intervene – albeit secretly – to protect the king, their friends and their secrets from the machinations of Igthorn and other enemies.
| Season | Segments | Episodes | Originally released | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| First released | Last released | Network | ||||
| 1 | 21 | 13 | September 14, 1985 (1985-09-14) | December 21, 1985 (1985-12-21) | NBC | |
| 2 | 12 | 8 | September 13, 1986 (1986-09-13) | November 29, 1986 (1986-11-29) | ||
| 3 | 14 | 8 | September 12, 1987 (1987-09-12) | December 12, 1987 (1987-12-12) | ||
| 4 | 16 | 10 | September 10, 1988 (1988-09-10) | December 17, 1988 (1988-12-17) | ||
| 5 | 13 | 9 | September 9, 1989 (1989-09-09) | January 6, 1990 (1990-01-06) | ABC | |
| 6 | 19 | 19 | September 10, 1990 (1990-09-10) | February 22, 1991 (1991-02-22) | Syndication (The Disney Afternoon) | |
The series premiered onNBC on September 14, 1985, and aired there for four seasons. The series moved toABC (later acquired by Disney in 1996) for one season from 1989 to 1990, airing alongsideThe New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh as theGummi Bears-Winnie the Pooh Hour, and concluded on September 6, 1991, as part of thesyndicated programming blockThe Disney Afternoon.[7] The series was later rebroadcast on the Disney Afternoon block and rerun on that block through September of 1991. In later years, reruns were shown onThe Disney Channel from October 7, 1991[8] to at least January 1997,[9] and later onToon Disney, with its most recent televised airing occurring on December 28, 2001.
SeveralVHS cassettes of the series were released internationally.[10][11] Of those, eight cassettes containing 32 episodes are listed below. The first four cassettes ("Welcome to Gummiglen!", "Creature Feature", "Hot Little Tot!", and "A Sky Full of Gummies!"), which contain 20 episodes, were released in English[10][11] in the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand. These four cassettes were also released in some European countries (including Poland,[12][13][14] the Netherlands[15] and Germany). The other four cassettes, as well as the ones not listed below, were released exclusively in other European countries (including the Netherlands,[11][16][17] Poland,[18][19] Finland,[20][21] and Italy[11][22]).
| VHS name | Episode titles | Release date |
|---|---|---|
| Adventures of the Gummi Bears (Volume 1): Welcome to Gummiglen! | "A New Beginning" "Zummi Makes it Hot" "The Sinister Sculptor" "Someday My Prints Will Come" "Can I Keep Him?" | September 11, 1996 |
| Adventures of the Gummi Bears (Volume 2): Creature Feature | "The Fence Sitter" "Night of the Gargoyle" "Loopy, Go Home" "A-Hunting We Will Go" "The Secret of the Juice" | September 11, 1996 |
| Adventures of the Gummi Bears (Volume 3): Hot Little Tot! | "Sweet and Sour Gruffi" "Duel of the Wizards" "What You See is Me" "Bubble Trouble" "Toadie's Wild Ride" "Gummi in a Strange Land" | September 11, 1996 |
| Adventures of the Gummi Bears (Volume 4): A Sky Full of Gummies! | "A Gummi in a Gilded Cage" "The Oracle" "When You Wish Upon a Stone" "A Gummi by Any Other Name" | September 11, 1996 |
| Adventures of the Gummi Bears (Volume 5): The Crimson Avenger | "The Crimson Avenger" "You Snooze, You Loose" "Over the River and Through the Trolls" | September 10, 1997 |
| Adventures of the Gummi Bears (Volume 6): Wild Ride | "Toadie's Wild Ride" "Sweet and Sour Gruffi" "Duel of the Wizards" "What You See is Me" | September 10, 1997 |
| Adventures of the Gummi Bears (Volume 7): Up, Up, and Away | "Up, Up, and Away" "Faster Than a Speeding Tummi" | September 10, 1997 |
| Adventures of the Gummi Bears (Volume 8): For Whom the Spell Holds | "For Whom the Spell Holds" "Little Bears Lost" "Guess Who's Gumming to Dinner?" | September 10, 1997 |
Seasons 1 to 3 of the series were released on DVD on November 14, 2006,[23] whenWalt Disney Home Entertainment releasedDisney's Adventures of the Gummi Bears: Volume 1 onDVD inRegion 1. The 3-disc set features seasons 1 to 3 and does not contain any bonus features, save forsubtitles for the hearing impaired.
| DVD name | Ep# | Release date |
|---|---|---|
| Disney's Adventures of the Gummi Bears: Volume 1 | 47 | November 14, 2006 |
To date, the series has never officially been released on DVD in the UK, but since November 2016, the show has been available on the UK Disney streaming website DisneyLife.
In Australia, Disney released nine volumes, which have now long been discontinued. They are all in complete storyline production order, but the first volume starts from episode 19 in series 2. Episodes 1-18 have not been released on DVD in Australia and are only available on the USA Region 1 collection, but theRegion 4 Australian DVDs do finish off the series and go right up to episode 65 of the series' final two-part double episode adventure.
The series became available to stream onDisney+ as of November 12, 2019.[24]
Gummi Bears was adapted into a daily newspaper comic, which ran from September 1, 1986, to April 1, 1989. The strip was written by Lee Nordling and illustrated by Rich Hoover.[25]
 | This articleneeds additional citations forverification. Please helpimprove this article byadding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Adventures of the Gummi Bears" – news ·newspapers ·books ·scholar ·JSTOR(February 2013) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
Disney's Adventures of the Gummi Bears was Disney's first major serialized animated television series (it was released back to back with another show,The Wuzzles, which lasted only 13 episodes), and is often credited as having helped jump start the television animation boom of the late 1980s and 1990s.[3][26] Consequently, it also became the forerunner to Disney's famousDisney Afternoon timeslot, which gave way to other famous serialized Disney television series, such asDuckTales,Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers andGargoyles. Although many of these subsequently-created shows exceededGummi Bears in budget and length, the show is often credited as a sort ofprototype for all of the animation which followed it.[27]
The show was so successful in the United Kingdom that the episodes "A New Beginning" and "Faster Than a Speeding Tummi" were released as theatrical featurettes there in 1986 and 1987, alongsideThe Great Mouse Detective and a re-release of Disney'sPinocchio.[27]
Appearances of Gummi Bears in other media include one of Gruffi Gummi in aD-TV music video of theElvis Presley song "Teddy Bear", in 1986.
The show's popularity led to a re-theming ofDisneyland'sMotor Boat Cruise, along with a small part of Disneyland that became known as "Disney Afternoon Avenue". The Motor Boat Cruise became the "Motor Boat Cruise to Gummi Glen" and plywood characters from the show made gummiberry juice along the waterway. The Gummi Bears have been featured asmeetable characters who greet guests in Disney theme parks.[citation needed]
.svg)
