The Berenstain Bears are the creation of Stan and Jan Berenstain and are the stars of a huge collection of children's books and videos. (Amazon.com mentions two more books coming out in July; right now there are 613 hits when one does a search on there.) Not having been to a children's section in a bookstore in a while, I don't know if they're still as popular as they were when I was a tyke learning to read (think mid-1980s), but at that time the local public library had almost every Berenstain Bears title. (And I probably read them all at one time or another before discovering Encyclopedia Brown...)

The basic concept:

There's a family of bears. They live in what looks like a tree with a door and windows in Bear Country. Aside from the fact that they're, well, bears that live in a tree, the Berenstein Bears aren't terribly distinguishable from humans - they walk on two feet, wear clothes, go to work or school, and, as just about every story involves, get into moral dilemmas.

Dramatis Personae:

Papa Bear - head of the household, carpenter, "often wrong but never in doubt"
Mama Bear - the wisest of the bears, president of the Bear Country Garden Club, and a champion quiltmaker
Brother Bear - the older child, big soccer (or football, as some would have it) fan, tends to get in a moderate amount of trouble
Sister Bear - the one always dressed in pink, the youngest, big into jumping rope and "Bearbie," also gets in a fair amount of trouble.

Now and then a few other recurring characters (like Cousin Fred) show up, but those are the basics. The basic plot is usually thus: one or more of the Bear family does something that isn't up to Mamma's standards (like keeping a messy room or hanging out with only the in-crowd). After some initial resistance to correcting such behavior, the involved individual(s) see reason.

While I'm sure that going back, titles like "The Mad, Mad, Mad Toy Craze" and "Too Much Junkfood" might not seem as thrilling and/or funny as they once did (and probably more than a little priggish), it strikes me that much like the Curious George books, the Berenstain Bears books usually do a nice job of explaining the wherefores of appropriate social and moral behavior without resorting to religion.

The Bears' official homepage (used here for memory refreshment) is at http://www.berenstainbears.com/.

Atari 2600 Game
Produced by: Coleco
Model#: 2658
Atari Rarity Guide: 9 Extremely Rare

Control the Berenstain Bears in this utter piece of "interactive" crap for the Atari 2600. The game is an extremely repetitive "storytelling" game for children. I am fairly sure that the only child who ever enjoyed this game was the smiling little boy on the back of the box, (this game was just that bad).

Berenstain Bears was an experiment in new gaming technology, (the new technology was called the KidVid controller). It had not only a cartridge, but also 3 audio cassettes and a tape player. The games action is more focused around the tape player than anything else. (insert tape 2, turn tape over, etc etc etc).

The tapes did not just add nifty sounds to the games. They were a required element. They actually connected to the cartridge via a cable. The game will not play without them.

This game was a huge failure for Coleco. It sold very poorly. They only made one other KidVid game and that was Smurfs Save the Day. Berenstain Bears did not actually come with the Kidvid controller, so you had to have bought the Smurfs game first, (which did come packed with the controller). This is the main reason that this game was such a bomb.

I cannot truly recommend this game to anyone. It's only merit is in its collector value.

This game is worth around $100 USD. (This game complete with tapes and a KidVid controller is worth about $300). (An unopened case of this game was found a few years ago, which drove it's previously higher price down a bit).