Gloomy Bear

After Afro Ken (pictured above), who (like most of us, face it) changes his afro to resemble and befriend the object or thing he most admires, my latest obsession is Gloomy Bear.




The story, as it was told to me, was like the fable with the frog and the scorpion; the moral was about the fact that no matter what the scorpion said, he would always be true to his nature as a scorpion. So when you're a kid, and you adopt a baby cub, don't be thinking that it's not going to eat you when it grows up. Simple.

Combine that with the Japanese toy market's predilection for kawaii (cuteness), and you get Gloomy Bear. How subversive, Mrs. Jones!

Here's what I've read online about it:

Designer toys like Gloomy Bear (pictured), created by Japan’s Mori Chack, are both cute and scary. Maybe that’s because in Japanese, the words “cute” (kawaii) and “scary” (kowai) are only a vowel apart. (cbc.ca article 5/11/05, http://www.cbc.ca/arts/photoessay/designertoys/)

An interview with Mori Chack, creator of Gloomy Bear, in Playtimes magazine.

In Japan, Gloomy is pronounced, “gurumi”, the last part of “nuigurumi” which means stuffed toy. Most stuffed toys are cute and cuddly, why did you make Gloomy violent but still retaining that trademark Japanese ‘kawaii’-ness?

It’s a combination of the meaning of the word, “GLOOMY”, as in “dark” and “obscure” as well as a twist on the Japanese word, “nui-gurumi”. I’d like to emphasize not only the meaning of the word, but the sound and catchiness of it. But if the word, “GLOOMY” also holds relevant meaning, it sticks in your mind. So it was the ideal name for the character. (playtimes magazine article, v1 issue 8, http://www.playtimes-magazine.com/vol01issue08.htm)

So many puns, no wonder Gloomy Bear got violent.