Hi, are you busy? It's me, Death. You probably know me from such works as the Dinosaurs, the Passenger Pigeon and all your childhood pets. Which is actually what I want to talk with you about today. No, not the dog that your parents said ran away but actually died; I want to talk about childhood. More specifically, I want to talk about that thing that defines each individuals childhood more than anything else; cartoons.

 Growing up, children are exposed to any number of different inputs that teach them about the way world works, from human interaction to basic laws of physics. Certainly parents are the most important source of knowledge for a child, but cartoons are right up there at number two. Children, their brains unsullied by hormones and "facts" taught to them in school are capable in a way that no adult is of sorting through all the entertainment dross on television and getting right to the meat. This manifests itself in their decided preference for the bright colors and loud noises of cartoons. In the same way, children are able to attack the rigorous building blocks of the food pyramid to find that the most important food group is, in fact, candy. The tendency to extract the best from the world produced by adults leads children to spend countless hours laughing maniacally to the antics of anthropomorphized animals with guns and dynamite while scarfing down unholy amounts of sugar.

 In other words, kids know what they're doing. It was therefore only a matter of time before this rare genius was recognized for what it is by the brains behind network television and a cartoon was created that brought together everything that is good and right in the world. A show that promotes world peace while offering an endless font of marketing opportunities. This program, this perfection came from the good people at Disney and was known as "Disney's Adventures of the Gummi Bears." While certainly there are other fine animated programs both past and present, all, even I, Death, must bow down to the sheer awesome might displayed by the Gummi Bears.

 On the most basic level, this was a television show about fanciful midget-sized bear people that lived in a hidden world near a bustling castle in middle ages. This castle is presumably in England since as we all know, all of the middle ages was set in England. Evidence for this can be found in the fact that all people from the middle ages in movies have English accents, even if they are French, or Italian or some other national group. Also, the human beings in the show all speak English. Frankly, setting the story in an English speaking nation was a very important move by the shows creators since most American children speak English and it may have been difficult to develop the series into a hit if children had to learn, say Russian in order to understand what the cute little critters were saying. On top of that, Russian sounds like you're swearing all the time and parents might have gotten concerned if their children started swearing in Russian suddenly thanks to a Disney cartoon.

 In any case, the happy little talking bear things lived in their semi-magical world near a big beautiful, clean castle filled with nice humans. Even though the people in the castle seem nice, the Gummi Bears don't want them to know that they exist and so the only human beings that are aware of the magical critters are a stable boy named Cabin, or Cavin or Calvin or Dorkface or something and the rebellious but hot Princess named Princess. There are also some kings and knights and things, but that's not important except that all the humans get to wear armor and carry swords since it's the middle ages. Really, that's the only reason to set anything in the middle ages, so that everyone on the show gets a sword and they can smack each other around with them. Everyone can get into that, even Mom and Dad. Plus, what's more fun, hitting Johnny with a plain old stick, or your very own Gummi Bears Sword ^tm? There are also bad guys and they're ugly and ogres and dangerous even though they get beaten every week by a stable boy with an unspellable name and midgets dressed in bear suits.

 So that's the basic show. But now I want to talk about the bears and the genius. First off, the name of the show and the main characters is the Gummi Bears. While this is spelled differently than the candy Gummy Bears, it is strangely pronounced the same. On top of that, each of the cartoon Gummi Bears is the same color as one of the flavors of the candy Gummy Bears. There's Cubby who's the red flavored candy, and Sunny who's the yellow candy. Grammy is orange. Then there's Gruffy, who has brown fur which is confusing in the candy metaphor at first, but he wears a green hat so he must be the green candy. Finally, there's Crotchety Gummi. He's the old wizard bear who can never get a spell right. Did I mention that he's old? That means he's going to die soon and he has gray fur. Thus, he represents the stale flavor of Gummy Bear. Or maybe the white ones, but I don't believe that since he has gray fur. Fortunately, the Gummi Bears don't look much like the Gummy Bears because you'd be able to kind of see through them and watch their organs as they wander around the cartoon. I think that would be neat, but kids seem to cry a lot when they see internal organs. But still, right away, the show's producers have targeted kids so that they WILL buy Gummy Bears candy and watch the Gummi Bear show. No relation between the two Mom and Dad; they're spelled differently!

 Now, outside of the Gummi Bears, there's the stable boy and Princess. Dorkface really wants to get with Princess because, well, she's hot and he's a stable boy. So there's this whole sexual tension thing that runs throughout the whole series where the kiddies are left wondering when Dorkface and Princess will confess their true feelings for each other and get it on. Which brings me to the most depressing aspect of the show. The Gummi Bears only have two women and one man. On top of that, they're supposed to be the only Gummi Bears left alive in the whole world. Now both Grammy and Crotchety are old, so they're probably bumping uglies even though they won't be producing more of their own kind anytime soon. Now, Cubby and Sunny are the young bears that kids are supposed to identify with, so they'll eventually grow up and get to screw like bunnies just to keep the species alive. All of this seems fine except that Gruffy, competent, strong, young adult Gruffy remains entirely sexually frustrated. There is no mate for Gruffy. He is left to wax the dolphin by himself until he dies of old age. I really felt for Gruffy. I identified with Gruffy. I thought it was a terrible injustice that Gruffy didn't have a counterpart. Someone like Sexy Gummi to hang out with.

 And so, we see that the Gummi Bears is the greatest cartoon show to ever exist. Except that Gruffy never got laid. And that Disney never made a drink called Gummi Berry juice. I always wanted to drink some of that stuff.

 Thank you for your time. Oh, and if you have some Gummi Berry juice, give it over and we might be able to work something out about that dying thing.
 
 
 
 

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