Bamse

Bamse

Publication information
Publisher Williams förlag (1/73-5/76),
Semic Press (6-10/76),
Atlantic förlag (1/77-4/82),
Rune A-serier (5/82-7/88),
BAMSE Förlaget (8/88-7/90),
Egmont Kärnan (8/90-)
First appearance 1966
Created by Rune Andréasson
In-story information
Species Brown Bear
Notable aliases "The world's strongest bear"
Abilities Gets strong when eating "thunder-honey"

Bamse – Världens starkaste björn ("The world's strongest bear") is a Swedish cartoon created by Rune Andréasson. The highly popular children's cartoon first emerged as a series of television short films as well as a weekly half page Sunday strip in 1966, before being published periodically in its own comic magazine since 1973.

Andréasson did all the artwork himself until 1975 and wrote all comics until 1990. Francisco Tora did all the illustrations from 1976 until he was joined by Bo Michanek in 1983. In the early 1990s several new writers and illustrators were hired, including Claes Reimerthi and Tony Cronstam. Andréasson continued to do the magazine cover illustrations until 1992.

The series somewhat changed direction when Bamse had children, specifically triplets, in 1982. In 1986 he had a fourth child, Lille Skutt having one at the same time. Family life is now in focus, and here also the basic values shine through, like that of gender equality. In 1989 Skalman noticed that Bamse's fourth child Brumma had Aspergers[1], which again brought up the subject of equality. The children did develop in real-time within the magazine, but seem to have been fixed in age since around 1990. They are now around seven years old, in a narratively advantageous eternal state as first-graders.

Both the early Sunday strips and the early magazines have today been reprinted as glossy hard-bound volumes.

In 1998 the themepark Bamses Värld ("Bamse's World" or "The World of Bamse") started as an attraction at the Kolmården Zoo. Here you can see a theater, eat pancakes and enter houses as Bamse's house, Little Hop's house, Shell-man's house and some more.

Bamse is sometimes confused with Rasmus Klump, another bear who plays the starring role in a cartoon and wears similar clothes.

Contents

Characters

Protagonists

Antagonists

Moral values and criticism

The magazine has educational goals. On special "school" pages, the characters educate the reader about animals, foreign cultures, the Universe, and other subjects. They often deal with superstition, and Skalman's sceptical views ("I only believe what I know") wins over those of his more naive friends. On the other hand, beings like trolls, tomtar and dragons exist on a very real plane in most of the stories.

Bamse and his friends are very clear about their values. They are strongly opposed to racism, bullying and violence. Bamse is not only the strongest bear in the world, but also the kindest, often repeating his slogan "Nobody is the better for being beaten".

The original villain, a black wolf simply called Vargen ("The Wolf"), became a friend of Bamse after consistently being treated kindly. The only villain that is depicted as unredeemable is Krösus Sork ("Croesus Vole"), a crude capitalist who will do practically anything for money.

Films and other media

Six animated black and white short films were produced for television in 1966. In 1972, seven more animated shorts were shown in colour. In 1981, another two shorts were released. And in 1991, a direct-to-video movie became available.

The later colour films have aired frequently on TV in Sweden and have been released on VHS and DVD. The black and white films had been unavailable to the general public for a long time, but were released on DVD by late 2006. The color movies were low budget productions with actor Olof Thunberg narrating and voicing all characters, but they are considered to be classics and the musical theme is easily recognized by most Swedes.

In 1993, a Game Boy game (in Swedish) was published[2] loosely based on the Bamse characters. The game received generally poor reviews. The game was in fact little more than a sprite replacement of Beam Software's Baby T-Rex, which does explain the game's setting and the "Bamse version" is not the only time this happened but the game went through the same procedure for other regions featuring other characters. The "Bamse version" however has not been officially released outside Sweden.

In October 2006, forty years after Bamse was created, Ola Andréasson, the son of creator Rune Andréasson, announced that an animated feature film will be made, featuring better animation, a full voice cast and having a budget of SEK 25 million. The movie's release date is undetermined, although an estimated date of 2012 has been proposed.[3]

Translations

In the 1960s there were a few translations of the series "Bamses skola", where the characters were given English names[4]:

In this translation the dunderhonung was given the name magic honey. However, in the 1980s, Andréasson referred to it in English as thunder-honey, which is the literal translation also used in the Netherlands and Belgium (donderhoning).

References

  1. ^ anton Hultberg Hansen. Stiletten (STI, Stiftarna av Independent Living i Sverige): 17. http://www.stil.se/uploadedFiles/Stiletten5_2007.pdf. 
  2. ^ Bamsesamlarna.com - För dig som samlar på Bamse och andra serier av Rune Andréasson
  3. ^ Resumé: Bamses nya Tre Vänner (In Swedish)
  4. ^ Bamsesamlarna.com - För dig som samlar på Bamse och andra serier av Rune Andréasson

External links