Trivia / Bear in the Big Blue House

• Acting for Two: A number of characters shared puppeteers/voice actors. Tyler Bunch puppeteered/voiced the major characters Treelo, Pop and Doc Hogg. There was also Peter Linz, who pulled double duty on Tutter and Pip, as well as a number of guest characters. Meanwhile, Vicki Eibner, who performed Ojo, also puppeteered/voiced a number of other less prominent characters on the show. Due to the heavy use of song numbers on the program, this also often resulting in the same performer either singing to another of their characters, or sometimes even singing in harmony with one of them.
• Cross-Dressing Voices:
  • In the Dutch dub, Treelo is voiced by a female actress (Christa Lips).
  • In the Hungarian dub, Ojo is voiced by a male actor (Szabolcs Sesztak).
• Deleted Scene:
  • According to this, the episode "Call It a Day" was created as a result of a contest to make an episode out of material from deleted scenes, hence why there are a total of six different writers credited for it. The episode's plot involves Bear hosting a sleepover at the Big Blue House and recalling stuff that happened involving the various characters earlier in the day.
  • This here describes other deleted material, in most cases brief alternate camera angles or other short segments cut for time.
• Dueling Shows: With The Wubbulous World of Dr. Seuss in said show's second season, due to Nickelodeon allegedly being prompted by low ratings and BitBBH to revamp Dr. Seuss for Nick Jr., only to cancel it after just two seasons as ratings fared no better than in Season 1.
• Edited for Syndication: Much of the video releases of the specials (i.e. A Beary Bear Christmas) have scenes missing for reasons unknown. It seems to vary by release, and it seems that these scenes were cut only on later batches of the video releases.
• Executive Meddling: Specifically averted with the potty-training episode "When You've Got to Go". As Mitchell Kriegman tells it, by the time he conceived this episode, the show was so well-respected by executives at the Disney Channel and he was so trusted that it almost felt like he was pretty much getting away with murder. Still, not wanting to try to slip this episode by anyone, Kriegman specifically mentioned to the brass that he wanted the show to tackle toilet-training, but nobody seemed very interested. Finally, after the rough cut of the episode had been made, he called up an executive and insisted that they needed to see it first. Upon seeing it, the executive panicked and said that it either couldn't air or that it had be neutered down so much that it basically wouldn't be what it was anymore. Backed up by his staff and educational experts, Kriegman finally convinced the brass to at least take the episode to test market. They did so and the response was through the roof, by far the greatest they have ever gotten for any episode of the show. The rest was history and the episode went to air with only a couple of very minor changes. The ratings were huge and it became far and away the most popular and well-known episode of the show, with the DVD release remaining in print as of September 2021, despite the show being off-the-air for many years.
• Fandom Life Cycle: The show was at stage 4 when it was still airing. Now it's at Stage 6a, with its fanbase primarily consisting of those who grew up watching the show.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes:
  • Want A Beary Bear Christmas on DVD? Prepare to import it from the UK^note Amazon US does have this listed, but warns that it's a Region-2 DVD and will not play on (most) North American DVD players. Apparently, it only got a single VHS release in 2000.
  • The series in general got quite a few home media releases, but that doesn't mean all of the episodes were made available. By 2015, the show itself stopped airing on Playhouse Disney/Disney Junior worldwide.
  • During a Defunctland charity livestream in December 2021, Noel MacNeal stated with vague wording that 2022 would be a good year, and that Disney+ subscribers would need to be patient for something coming soon. Come September 15th of 2022, MacNeal posts a TikTok video confirming that the series would be available on Disney+ starting October 19th.
  • Breakfast with Bear, being a series of segments aired between programming, was never officially released on any media.
  • Surprise Party was the only Bear in the Big Blue House Live show released on commercial home video, even though there were two others, as well as the interactive stage show Bear in the Big Blue House: Live on Stage.
• Kids' Meal Toy: In 1999, it got toys at Subway. Among the toys issued were a plastic figure of Bear that danced the "Cha-Cha" when a button was pressed, a Big Blue House viewfinder, Tutter's Cheese Chase, and a Pip and Pop Tub Fun roll along vehicle. Customers could also enter to win the contest "Party with Bear", where up to 25 children would win a live appearance of Bear and various products.
• Live on Stage!: Had several shows of this type. Three of these were released under the banner Bear in the Big Blue House Live created by VEE Entertainment, one of these being "Surprise Party!" and adapted the episode "Mouse Party". The other two in this line were "On the Road with Bear in the Big Blue House" and "A First Time for Everything". As for the other two, one was part of Playhouse Disney: Live on Stage! from 2001 to 2008 and the other was its own separate live show that ran from 1999 to 2001 called Bear in the Big Blue House: Live on Stage. This has more info.
• Market-Based Title:
  • The home video release of A Beary Bear Christmas was released in the UK as A Very Beary Christmas. In the US the release retained the same name as the special.
  • In Japan, the show is called Knock Knock! Welcome to the Bear House.
• Missing Episode: As of 2024, nine episodes of the series are missing from Disney+. They are: "Why Bears Can't Fly", "Music to My Ears", "Working Like a Bear", "The Ojolympics", "Love Is All You Need", "And to All a Good Night", "I For-Got Rhythm!?", Part 2 of "A Berry Bear Christmas", and "A Strange Bird". However, it is possible that they might be added in the future.
• Never Work with Children or Animals: When Bear went out to visit real children at their homes for Breakfast with Bear, their reactions ranged from delight, to saying no more than a few words, to hogging the spotlight and barely giving him time to talk.
• Newbie Boom: The show saw a huge resurgence in the fall of 2022 when Disney+ made it (barring a handful of missing episodes) available for streaming.
• Pop-Culture Urban Legends: It's been long rumored that the death of Lynne Thigpen (voice of Luna) had a hand in the reason the series ended. In 2021, Noel MacNeal debunked this rumor on his TikTok, claiming it was cancelled because the crew thought they had made enough episodes as it was.
• Re-Cut: In the original airing of "The Big Little Visitor", when Bear describes families to the viewers, he says that "families come in all shapes, colors, and sizes" and "families live together". In late 2002, these particular pieces of dialogue were rewritten to better represent the wide diversity of families. The former line was rewritten as "it's really kind of hard to define a word like family" and the latter was rewritten as "no two families are alike". The original airing can be seen on Disney+.
• Referenced by...:
  • Caddicarus has reviewed the Licensed Game for the PlayStation by Ubisoft in his "The Horrifying World of PS1 Games For Babies" video.
  • SiIvaGunner: "Magnetic Orbs Bonus - Sonic the Hedgehog 3 & Knuckles" is a 16-bit remix of "Brush Brush Bree".
  • The Season's My Reason: Treelo appears in the penultimate chapter when he's dumped onto Chef Forgifta's head when Seraphina demands that "Anyone who's fought on the side of the good, come to us now!" and then spends the rest of the time riding on Isabela Madrigal's back. In the Epilogue, Treelo is the first to be returned to his universe and climbs down his favorite tree in the backyard of Bear's house and points out a "pretty flower". Upon Bear confirming it is, Theresa says that finding a lily means you'll have a sucessful life.
• Screwed by the Network: The show was almost cancelled after its 65th episode in 1998, then it went on a three-year-long hiatus after its third season. It finally returned for a fourth season in 2002, but was cancelled a year later because the cast thought they had made enough episodes. Fans asked for more, despite the show being a long runner with over a hundred episodes. However, Disney instead created the ill-thought-out, No Export for You Spin-Off short series Breakfast With Bear in 2005, which was eventually shortly canceled without a reason. Breakfast With Bear was more of a programming block than a program, with the only returning character being Bear and the segments featuring him helping real kids with their morning routines. These would be shown in-between airings of other Playhouse Disney programming.
• Short Run in Peru: As mentioned before, the final episodes of the show aired in various markets outside the US three years before they were finally aired in the US.
• What Could Have Been:
  • According to the cast, the song "What If?" from A Berry Bear Christmas was written to end with Bear himself singing about wondering what would happen if there was no Big Blue House. This was vetoed by show creator Mitchell Kriegman as a bit too much, as Bear was the rock that viewers were to rely on. So having Tutter worry about this was as far as they could go.
  • Another interview with the cast reveals that Tutter was supposed to be female and given the name Mouse, and that Ojo was going to be a bear named Jojo, whose design and name were different. This is why the latter doesn't appear in the first few episodes, as her name and design were changed at the last minute.
  • In the original pilot, Pip and Pop were brown as opposed to purple and named Pummel and Pop, looking quite similar to another ferret-like puppet character from a 90's preschool show, Warloworth "Quite Handsome" Weasel. They were also performed by Joey Mazzarino^note  who also performed several characters on Sesame Street such as Murray and Horatio the Elephant and David Rudman^note  The current performer of Cookie Monster, Scooter, Janice and Beaker.
  • Yet another interview reveals that "And to All a Good Night" was supposed to be the Grand Finale for the series as they did not think it was going to be renewed, which is why everyone sings the Goodbye Song at the end, which would've made the show end at the standard 65-episode mark that most kids' shows had back then. However, the show wound up getting renewed because it was starting to become more popular among kids, resulting in a third season being produced.
  • According to this interview with Noel MacNeal , the show was originally called The Big House and the titular house talked.
  • Leslie Carrera-Rudolph was almost a cast member for the series, but she had commitments with The Wubbulous World of Dr. Seuss.
  • This song, "A Mighty Work of Art", was commissioned for the series but never officially produced.
  • Before the Henson Company sold the franchise to Disney, Mitchell Kriegman wrote a script for Bear's Big Movie. Sadly, it never went into production.
• Word of Saint Paul:
  • Noel MacNeal (Bear) confirmed that Bear and Ursa's relationship was, in fact, romantic.
  • When asked why Ojo was the only character whose home was never specified in the show, Noel half-jokingly said that Ojo's mom is probably a working single mother who lets Ojo hang out at Bear's house when she's not home as a form of free babysitting.

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