Bamse

Bamse is a fictional little light brown bear dressed up in a blue overall with gold buttons and a silly blue cap.

He's the idol of every Swede in ages 0 to 8 years (with tops of 30 to 80 in some sad cases). Together with his friends skalman, lille skutt and his grandma farmor pa hoga berget they live in their valley.

Their sworn enemy, vargen (the wolf) lives in the forest. He's gotten an award of meanyness and he's the worst criminal to ever walk the earth.

Probably the most popular communist in Sweden.
The Bamse comics always emphasize equal rights and cooperation, and Bamse (whose dunderhonung makes him very strong) always helps those that are weaker than him. One of the recurring bad guys is Krösus Sork, a greedy capitalist who is always scheming on making more profits by selling goods of poor quality etc. When Carl Bildt, the conservative former prime minister of Sweden, wore a Bamse-tie, the conservative party's youth organsition protested that he was endorsing a communist symbol.

A comic book bear (also featured in some animated movies for TV) created by Rune Andreasson; the perfect upbringing edutainment and alternative to Donald Duck for middle class bohemians to feed their kids with.

Bamse has like much other entertainment for children been very anxious to follow the time-changing norms and vogues of what is completely politically correct.

In the beginning the rumble-honey-empowered Bamse could beat up the villains the Wolf and Tjocke and Smocke quite heavily when they had done something bad. After complaints from sensitive mothers he now seldom uses his power in violent ways.

In the late seventies and early eighties, when Swedish social democracy had its glorious days under prime minister Olof Palme, and strong left-political winds blew especially in cultural circles, the socialistic tendencies in Bamse mentioned in a node above were quite marked, with stories recurrently having the sensmoral of "cooperating is good." The capitalist Krösus sork, the Bamse antipode to Scrooge McDuck, is made the real evil guy, whereas the lumpen-proletarians the Wolf and Tjocke and Smocke are pictured in a more compassioning and understanding way. The Wolf even evolves to become sort of "nice" when he is given social acceptance by the the rest of the community. In one "Bamse's school" strip, Mao's cultural revolution was described in favorable terms. Also the comic book didn't have any advertisements in it, and the Bamse figures were only allowed to be depicted or used in connection to truly "good" products like toothbrushes. (Nowadays the comic has advertisements and Bamse is featured most everywhere.)

In the nineties Bamse and Lille skutt got themselves one girl child each, so that the comic became more gender balanced.

A Bamse strip that got controversial was The magician's red flower: it was (unfairly) seen as being "drug-glorifying" by some people.

A unique thing for comics is that the characters in Bamse don't stay the the same age for eternity, they grow older in approximately real time. In the beginning Bamse was a bachelor who had wild adventures with his friends Lille Skutt ("Little Jump," a rabbit) and Skalman ("Shell-man," a turtle). After a while he got together with the female bear Brummelisa. At present they have four kids.

The quality of the Bamse comics sank rather low when Andreasson retired himself. (He has now died.)