YMMV / Care Bears (1980s)

• Accidental Aesop: The plot of "The Lost Gift", probably intended as a Green Aesop, ends up also resembling an economic crash - the bears believe that the tree is running out of resources, and so they take as much as they can, while they still can (similar to a banking panic), which leads to the tree actually running out of resources..
• Awesome Art: Rich, bright colouring, sumptuous backgrounds, and softly yet sincerely expressive characters add to a strong sense of affection.
• Awesome Music:
  • Some of the score, especially in scenes involving Shreeky and Beastly's mischief, is truly great.
  • The theme song is fun to listen to in its own right.
• Broken Base: Which '80s series was the definitive version, DiC or Nelvana? They both have their share of fans/defenders and individual strengths to back each version (the former tends to show up more in advertising, while the latter included more personality and Character Development, especially in regards to the Care Bear Cousins.)
• Crack Ship: Some fans pair Beastly and Shreeky together.
• Draco in Leather Pants: No Heart has fangirls. Wrap your head around that.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Mr. Beastly is pretty well-regarded as one of the funniest characters in the show. It helps that he's actually pretty Ugly Cute.
• Evil Is Cool:
  • No Heart, with his ethereally obscure features and silken yet thunderous voice, is satisfyingly formidable.
  • Shreeky is compellingly warped and edgy, with her slightly wild look and a voice which evokes both the Wicked Witch of the West and a Deadite.
• Heartwarming in Hindsight: Grams Bear refers to a lot of characters (usually Hugs and Tugs) as "darling". After a period of absence, she returned to the series in Welcome to Care-a-Lot, and what was her voice actor's name? Jennifer Darling!
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Beastly muses about how great being a king would be in "The Great Race". Cue Care Bears: Welcome to Care-a-Lot, with his role as King of the Beastlies, complete with a golden crown.
• Ho Yay: Professor Coldheart and Frostbite get this in "Runaway." After Frostbite gets sprayed by the warmth and kindness from the machine, he tries to kiss Professor Coldheart and after Professor Coldheart is temporarily turned nice, he dances with Frostbite.
• Jerkass Woobie: Beastly. Sure, he's evil, but can you really hate him for all the abuse No Heart puts him through?
• Nightmare Fuel: "The Fabulous Safety Game" can be this if you are a kid watching it. Grams Bear is happy to inform Tugs and Hugs that the most dangerous things in the world aren't found in fantastic places like the bottom of the deepest ocean and have nothing to do with Beastly, they are in your own house. Somewhat mitigated by the silly Imagine Spots of Tugs and Hugs when they imagine what the dangers of various household situations are, but the truth is still scary.
• Retroactive Recognition: Swift Heart is voiced by a young Tabitha St. Germain, using a similar voice to what she would later do for Pepper Clark.
• The Scrappy: Not only does Shreeky emit a long, loud ear-grating scream at least twice every episode she's in, her being No-Heart's niece destroys much of the mystery behind him and reduces him to a more comical figure.
• Seasonal Rot: While still entertaining to a degree, the final episodes (which took inspiration from Star Trek and Cavepeople respectively) really felt like they were scraping the bottom of the barrel for ideas. A notable example is "Grams' Cooking Corner", which is essentially an 11-minute cookie recipe.
• Values Dissonance: "The Big Star Round-Up" features a little girl named Gay. When the episode first aired (1986), this was completely normal, since it was associated with "happy"; nowadays, the word "Gay" is almost exclusively associated with homosexuality and the queer community, so naming a child that would, at best, raise a few eyebrows.
• Values Resonance: "The Lost Gift" has a lesson about not panicking and not taking more than what you need, which became even more relevant thanks to the panic buying of toilet paper around the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Some stores became just as chaotic, if not more, as the scene of the bears climbing all over the tree while frantically yelling and grabbing apples for themselves.
• The Woobie: Gentle Heart Lamb in "Birthday Bear's Blues" when No Heart finds her in the maze. He not only wants to kill her, but also eat her and her stare isn't strong enough to hold him back. Thank goodness the Care Bears find a way to save her.

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