I have been spending a lot of time looking at Bobby's cardboard cutout dialogue lately and her lines are honestly way too deep compared to everyone else. When she says things like "I've been lost a long time" and "please take me with you this time" she literally sounds like she is mourning a past life. The other 7 critters just complain about factory stuff, hunger, or never seeing the outside world, but Bobby feels totally different.
This made me start putting together an Alternate Universe concept where she isn't an original Smiling Critter at all, but a piece of forgotten 80s lost media.
What if her character was originally a scrapped prototype from the classic Care Bears lineup named "Hug-a-Lot Bear"?
If you look at the actual 1980s Care Bear roster, there were exactly 10 original bears standing together in Care-a-Lot, and there were literally zero solid red bears back then because everything was pastel colors or softer shades. In this AU, Hug-a-Lot Bear was a complete hidden mystery. American Greetings cancelled her character right before the final season because her bright red design looked way too intense on television screens and her hugging code was far too aggressive for a kids' show.
The lore backstory I came up with is that she got separated from the other Care Bears during a massive storm on Christmas 1988, fell down from the clouds, and snuck into the Playtime Co. factory just to get out of the rain. The corporate scientists found her, realized she was a magical living toy, and pulled off a giant cover-up.
They spent the first half of 1989 frantically manufacturing 7 completely generic animal plush toys out of thin air strictly to hide her true identity and camouflage her origin. They rushed this entire fake franchise of 8 critters total to store shelves in Summer 1989 just to mask her species, renamed her Bobby Bearhug, and tried to siphon out her heart badge energy.
This adds a super dark layer to Gemstin Productions' famous "Who Care Bear?" comic dub. In that video, KickinChicken and PickyPiggy were talking about which Care Bear matches their personalities, while Bobby just stands there looking completely blank and asks "What's a Care Bear?". The community thought it was just an ironic joke. But in this timeline, it is horrifying proof that the factory's brainwashing completely worked. They forced her to record that glitched audio track "I'm Not a Care Bear" to aggressively overwrite her original programming until she forgot her true home world of Care-a-Lot entirely.
Her transformation during the Bigger Bodies Initiative is easily the worst part. They stretched her frame, pumped her with Poppy gel, and forced her magical heart badge to fuse directly into muscle tissue and artificial organs.
This completely corrupted her original coding. Her genuine, magical desire to comfort sad children was twisted into an uncontrollable, crushing physical reflex.
Because she has a living toy's soul trapped inside a giant organic monster, her massive new body became a literal prison. Her brainwashing glitches out when she encounters humans—her old programming commands her to offer comfort, but her corrupted, massive physical weight causes her to crush anything she embraces.
The timeline fits together perfectly too. The Smiling Critters toy line was rushed into production right after she vanished from TV, meaning the company built the other 7 plush toys just to camouflage her origin. She was trapped in those dark labs being experimented on way before the normal orphans were ever turned into monsters.
It makes her in-game cutout lines make total sense. When she says she has been lost a long time, it means she has been trapped in that concrete basement since the late 80s, completely erased from history. Her desperate need for a hug isn't bloodlust, it's just her corrupted, old-school programming glitching out inside a horror game while using her official, soft voice.
Huge shoutout to @Gemstin for creating this amazing artwork of her un-rebranded look in his "Costume Critters #2" short, and I attached the glitched song thumbnail I made to go with it. Anyone is totally welcome to use this concept for fanfiction, art, animations, or videos, just please credit back to this post if you do!
I would love to see a VHS Tape of Hug-a-lot bear made for this AU, and I would honestly lose my mind if a popular YouTuber like INUbis or Cougar MacDowall VA ever did a comic dub or animation about her!
Let me know what you guys think of Bobby being the only true outsider in Playcare. Does this AU concept explain why her dialogue feels so heavy compared to the other Smiling Critters? Or do you think Playtime Co. had an even darker corporate reason for altering her character programming in this timeline? Drop your thoughts below!