Captain Bluebear

Captain Bluebear (German: Käpt'n Blaubär) is a fictional character created by novelist and comic artist Walter Moers. Bluebear, an anthropomorphic talking bear with blue fur who originally appeared in the German children's television program Die Sendung mit der Maus, has since then appeared in a film, a novel, a stage musical and various other media, all of which chronicle the character's life as a sailor and adventurer. Outside of Germany, Captain Bluebear is best known for being the protagonist of Moers' novel The 13½ Lives of Captain Bluebear.

The name pokes fun at the relative homophony between the German vowel "e" and umlaut "ä", when pronounced in a more colloquial, everyday style of language. In a compound noun the suffix "e" from "-beere" (Erdbeere/strawberry, Himbeere/raspberry, etc.) would very often not be pronounced at all: Bär/Beer(e) - 'bear/berry' ... 'bluebear/blueberry'

Captain Bluebear originally appeared in Käpt'n Blaubärs Seemannsgarn (“Captain Bluebear's Sailor's Yarn”), a regular segment in the educational children's television series Die Sendung mit der Maus. Other regular characters of the Seemannsgarn episodes are Bluebear's sailor companion Hein Blöd (an anthropomorphic rat whose name translates as “Harry Dim”) and his three grandchildren (little bears who have yellow, green and pink fur), all of which live with Bluebear in a ship stranded on a cliff. One episode would usually consist of Bluebear telling a cock-and-bull story to his grandchildren, with the frame narrative being made with animated puppets and Bluebear's story itself being a traditionally animated short film. The stories always take the form of a tall tale and usually have Captain Bluebear overcome some unbelievable obstacle or a seemingly all-powerful adversary who threatens to sink the Captain's ship. The little bears habitually doubt the veracity of their grandfather's tales, while Hein Blöd acts as a buffoon character.

The episodes sometimes contained allusions to other popular characters of German children's television like the Sandmännchen, and also to other aspects of Walter Moers' work, e.g. in some episodes one of the little bears wears a pin-back button of Moers' adult comic character Little Asshole. Bluebear, Hein Blöd and the three little bears later became part of other children's TV shows as well, such as Käpt’n Blaubär Club and Blaubär und Blöd.

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