#bear-a-dise

[ID: a drawing of mitzi mozzarella in a floral dress based on her bear-a-dice outfit. it has a silver sash at the middle and silver cuffs. her hair is tied with ribbons of the same pattern, and she has a flower crown. she's standing with her hands behind her back and smiling. /end ID]

There’s a couple that I can think of...

First off, as we touched on last night, there’s the Moonrockers!

The characters are Ozone (Dook), Orc (Fatz), Princess Haley (Mitzi), Quasar (Beach Bear), Rock Baby (Choo Choo, no known pictures of this little guy), and Moon Bat (Antioch, the eyeball thing in the upper left hand corner). Unfortunately, the full showtape has never been released. Perhaps one day, though!

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And then, there’s the Hard Luck Bears Jamboree, which once had three shows that operated at the Gulliver’s chain of amusement parks in the UK! As of 2017, all three of these shows were put out of commission, and I believe some of the characters have fallen into the hands of fans, if I’m not mistaken. Each location had a slightly different variant of the show, but the premise was the same.

(Pardon the water mark on the picture...)

The characters were all made into bears using masks from the original Country Bear Jubilee/Hard Luck Bears show. The variations are as follows: Rolfe has a Repete Thornsberry mask, Dook has a Billy Boy mask, Fatz has a brown-painted Billy Bill mask, and Mitzi has a modified Pete Thornsberry mask with makeup. 

Earl, Choo Choo, Beach Bear, the Sun, the moon, Billy Bob, and Looney Bird remain unchanged. I couldn’t find any mention of Antioch, so it’s unknown if this show had him or not.

The showtapes for this show were created by the parks franchise themselves rather than being created by CEI... and it shows in production quality, unfortunately.

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Then, there’s the show featured at the Hannah Banana restaurant in the UK. Not too much is known about this show, from what I can find, but she was a character created specifically for this restaurant, which unfortunately is no longer around. Hannah Banana was a modified Mitzi Mozzarella, whose mask was created by Jenn Waitt (a big name in the fandom of olde), who also programmed the segments played at the restaurant. Hannah Banana also performed alongside Billy Bob and Looney Bird.

There’s footage of her when she was created at CEI, but putting it in the body of this post would mess with the formatting, so I’ll post that separately.

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Up next is Billy Bob’s Bear-a-dise Tropical Jamboree. Some of you guys might remember this from when Aaron Fechter did some pretty extensive work on the show a few years back. With this show, it’s a mini-stage, a format originally used in restaurants either with a smaller floorplan or in smaller towns that couldn’t fit/afford a full Rock-afire show. The show features Mitzi, Fatz, Billy Bob, and Looney Bird. Not too much is changed, except originally, pre-renovation, the characters wore Hawaiian/beachy outfits to give the show a summery vibe (with the exception of Looney Bird, who instead resides in a container of tanning oil rather than motor oil). Now, it’s only Mitzi and Looney Bird who have modifications, as during the restoration, Aaron gave Fatz and Billy Bob their original outfits back.

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Next, we have Major Magic’s! There are a few different characters to touch on here, so here we go:

First up is Killa the Gorilla. This is a modified Fatz that was used in a location to replace Rock the Crock after problems arose with the face mold that was used to create Rock. Major Magic’s had, at one point, bought out a Showbiz location, so they had a Showbiz show at their fingertips, and utilized it to create Killa with some minor tweaks to Fatz. Very little photo/video evidence exists of Killa.

Then, there’s Barbara Stringband! From what I can tell, most Barbaras created were created independently by Major Magic’s, but this one particular Barbara was created from a Billy Bob since they had him on-hand. They simply removed his fiberglass belly and lengthened his neck to create Barbara. However, weirdly enough, Barbara was later converted BACK to Billy Bob for the restaurant Billy Bob’s Pizzatron, keeping the skinny figure and lengthened neck.

Another character created from a Rock-afire for Major Magic’s was this alleged Beach Bear retrofit (featured alongside the Barbara from the previous image). Not much is known about him... I can’t really find anything except the post that alleges that this was once a Beach Bear, so I can’t really even confirm that it IS him, although the basic structure is reminiscent of Beach Bear (i.e. a bear sitting on something playing guitar). However, this character was once again retrofitted back to Beach Bear for Billy Bob’s Pizzatron, keeping the strange, bulky mask.

Sorry for the crappy image of his return to Beach Bear... all that exists is the promo video of Billy Bob’s Pizzatron, so I had to take a screenshot from that.

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Anyway, there’s some RAE retrofits off the top of my head!! Anyone have any more to add?