The Three Bears

But Henry, we haven’t any porridge for Goldilocks.

Who is The Three Bears? The Three Bears are a family that consists of Henry Bear (Papa Bear), Mama Bear and Junyer Bear. The Bears’ cartoons most significant impact was perhaps on Chuck Jones himself, as these films (along with the Hubie and Bertie and Charlie Dog shorts) represent some of Jones’s earliest work which were strictly intended to be funny.

Character Details for The Three Bears

If you are looking for a blueprint about the dysfunctional cartoon character family The Three Bears, then look no further. Check out the details below:

• Bugs Bunny and the Three Bears
• What’s Brewin’ Bruin?
• Bee-deviled Bruin, The
• Bear Feat
• A Bear for Punishment

• Mama Bear, “But Henry.”

Notes from Chuck’s Diary …

The Three Bears are fun characters to work with but hard characters to draw, because their form reflects their character in a way that Bugs’s or Daffy’s form does not. Papa Bear has to be ready to explode, and sometimes he does. Mama Bear must look like a slattern, and Junyer appears to be what he is — an oversized baby.

In their traditional role, the Three Bears are paid, in a way, to go out and be the Three Bears with Goldilocks, but they also have a home life, which is what we encounter in the cartoons. Not only does the bear family contrast with our idea of normality, the three bears are in contrast to each other as well. They are the negative of the ideal American family, a prefiguration by several years of such early dysfunctional-family television sitcoms as All in the Family. There is the small, angry father, the same dowdy mother, and the big, dumb child.

My own experience as a father inspired at least one of these cartoons. A Bear for Punishment, in which Baby Bear forces his father to submit to the dubious joys of being pampered on Father’s Day, is based on my own efforts to escape a Father’s Day breakfast of scrambled eggs lovingly prepared for me by my daughter, Linda when she was about six years old.