As one of the many Care Bears fans who was born in 1980, I watched the first Care Bear series when I was a kid. I never thought there would be a better version than that one. Care Bears: Welcome to Care-a-Lot is THE BEST!!!
This series of The Care Bears portrays the bears as more realistic and relatable than they've ever been before. Each bear has a unique personality to match its name, unlike our generation's many versions of bears that all have the same generic super-sweet personality and often even the same voices, with only their names and appearance to tell them apart. I love Funshine's new active personality. I also love that this version, more than any other version, demonstrates the importance of Grumpy Bear, the way he teaches kids that it's ok to feel sad and to express sadness. I do wish that Bedtime Bear, Wish Bear, and Good Luck Bear had bigger roles in this series, but they are in a few episodes, and the bears we get as regulars are the best we've ever had.
And of course I LOVE LOVE LOVE how the bears are drawn in 3D style and look like fluffy teddy bears!!! <3
One of the best things about this series is that the episodes are pretty funny. I'm not a person who laughs aloud often, but I laugh aloud at episodes of this series almost every episode!
There are only two problems with the Welcome to Care-A-Lot version.
The first is Wonderheart's voice. Her word pronunciation is that trying-to-be-cute kind of thing. You know the type, the people who say "yee-ew-oh" instead of "you" and who say "tee-yew-oh" instead of "too" or "two". It sounds like the director was trying to make the voice actor force Wonderheart to be cuter, but they majorly failed. Wonderheart's personality of curiosity makes her cute enough, but that terrible pronunciation of words ruins her cuteness and makes her just annoying. Ignoring her voice and pronunciation, she's a good character, and when I'm able to ignore those things I enjoy her part in the show.
The second problem is the awful fake-southern accent of Sweet Dreams Bear. They've got her doing the Hollywood style fake-southern, that type of accent that no southerner actually uses but that everyone in Hollywood seems to THINK is how southerners talk because they've seen decades of horribly incorrect fake southern accents on other movies and have just copied that instead of listening to how we actually talk in the south. Fortunately Sweet Dreams Bear is in only one episode.
Other than that, I'm not a fan of the human kid characters, in general. The kids are drawn in strange outfits, and most have pretty bad actors. And the episode when Phoebe sings -- definitely skip that episode. That girl sings with such bad nasal congestion that you'll feel the mucous in your own throat just listening to her. There are a few human-kid episodes that are good, like the one when Grumpy helps Joy after her best friend moves away. That's one of my favorite episodes.
Those are the only problems with the show, and the problems are pretty minor. Everything else about this series is THE BEST! <3.
