What Bear is Bear in the Big Blue House?

You’re in time-out, Bluey. Go do a wellness check on Steve, Blue’s Clues. There’s another blue-centric show for preschoolers now streaming, and it’s a ’90s gem. Bear in the Big Blue House, the puppet-based children’s show that aired on Playhouse Disney from 1997 to 2006, is on Disney+ as of October 19.

This is huge news for millennials and Gen-Z young adults who grew up with the show, which follows a large, Big Bird–size bear named Bear, who is best friends with the moon, owns gorgeous real estate, and lives with a coterie of cute creatures like bear cub Ojo, otters Pip and Pop, weird creature (apparently a lemur?) Treelo, and an extremely excitable mouse named Tutter. One housemate is the shadow of a girl separated from her body (which sounds like a Julio Torres bit on Los Espookys). Her segments deviate from the Jim Henson house style and use shadow-puppetry in the vein of Lotte Reiniger — if Lotte Reiniger ever made a short film about pooping in a toilet.

But any BITBBH stan knows that the best character is the moon (which sounds like another Julio Torres bit from Los Espookys). The show as a whole has cozy, mellow vibes in a children’s-media landscape that is so often chaotic, and the moon’s gentle vocals at the end of every episode drive the whole thing home. (Bear is also friends with the sun, who honestly gets slept on, but his vocals are undeniable.)

When Bear in the Big Blue House premiered, so many shows for children in this age range were either cloying like Barney or insipid like Teletubbies, which also debuted in 1997. Bear, on the other hand, plays like Sesame Street’s suburban sister — full of inventive puppetry and character design. So whether you’re a parent who wants to see Cocomelon murdered, a toxic nostalgist, or just an adult completist for all things Muppets-adjacent, you now have 118 episodes of Bear in the Big Blue House to enjoy. Anyway, here’s Tutter screaming for 47 seconds:

Noel MacNeal played Bear from "Bear in the Big Blue House." The incredibly popular kid's show aired on Disney from 1997 to 2006. Today, Noel is still a puppeteer and is working on his own show "The Show Me Show," which focuses on kids with autism and special needs. Following is a transcript of the video.

Noel MacNeal: Hi I am Noel MacNeal, I am a puppeteer, yes, it's a weird word.

Noel played the bear from "Bear in the Big Blue House." It aired on Disney from 1997 to 2006. 

MacNeal: This happened back in 1997 so I actually went in that morning to audition for another character for a game show that they were trying to develop. I got a call from Henson saying please come back 'cause we want you to audition for this other character. I went in and I put on what's called the helix, it's like the understructure with the hoop rings and the netting and this foam head and then I realized wait a minute it is quarter to five, this is a courtesy, you're not gonna get this, so I just said forget it you know what I'm just gonna have fun. Come Monday around six o'clock, just shy of six o'clock, that's when I got the call saying Noel you got the part and I was like what? And it's like yep, so that's how it happened.

Playing the bear was harder than it looked.

MacNeal: When you're inside you put your right arm up through the neck and into the head and you put your hand inside the mouth so that the lower thumb is his lower jaw and this is up here and it was like a little trigger for me to do his eyebrows. Then my left hand was in his left arm and there was a tiny little string, a monofilament that went up to a little ring in his neck that came down the other side to the right hand which was stuffed so whenever I moved this hand this one would move automatically especially when he was dancing.

Give a guess, how hot was it inside? I just put in a little thermometer one time so it got up to like about 92 degrees but it's dry heat and the season, especially the first season, they would crank up the air conditioning in the studio so it would be freezing and people would always complain about it but it had to offset the fact that the guy in the bear suit might pass out so they'd just crank up the air conditioning.

Mitchell Kriegman who created the show just had it so that Bear would just like sniff the camera. I came up with him really jamming it in and pulling it back out which kids always reacted to in fact one message I got was from a mom of a kid who was severely handicapped and had not really responded even by the age of two and she was watching the show and as soon as Bear like jammed his nose into the camera to sniff, that's when she jumped back and it was the first time she had actually reacted to the outside world and they were thrilled beyond measure so yeah, sniffing can benefit the world.

I've been getting lots of fan email from the parents and from the kids of autism and special needs who've grown up with Bear and how they said it's still comforting for them and I realized today there's no show like that where it's just sincere, it's just gentle, and it's just as comforting as Bear was, it's not too loud, it's not in your face, well except for when he sniffs the camera. So then I've been trying to develop my show called the Show Me Show for kids with autism and special needs to kinda fill that niche 'cause I know for a fact that the kid networks right now aren't gonna do that, so.

What kind of bear is bear in Bear in the Big Blue House?

Is bear from Bear in the Big Blue House a Muppet?

Who was in the bear costume in Bear in the Big Blue House?

Are bear and Ojo related?