Short List: Bears

As we move through our main Top 40 At 40 categories, we also need to take a break every so often and touch on some categories where I didn't manage to find forty items to fill up the list, or it's sufficiently unexciting that a one-line explanation of each will do, and we can cover the whole lot in one go. Don't worry, we'll be back with number 35 of the 'music' list tomorrow.

So here we go with the Top 15 Bears. Obviously.

15. Polar Bears - Especially the ones who drink Coca-Cola.

14. Panda Bears - Not sure if they're really bears but I need to fill out the list.

13. Koala Bears - Definitely not bears, more closely related to wombats than bears. And wombats aren't bats, either. Who thought up these names?

12. Grizzly Bears - North American scary brown bear. Which is ironic since the word 'grizzly' means grey-haired.

11. Yogi Bear - North American public service educational cartoon teaching picnic basket theft to young audiences.

10. The Great Bear - Ursa Major, the constellation in the sky at night also known as 'The Plough' or 'The Big Dipper'. Which goes to show nobody really has a clue what it looks like. Frankly it looks like a bedpan if you ask me.

9. Gentle Ben - Kids TV show about a boy and his pet bear. Seriously.

8. Smokey Bear - Curiously angry US public service educational bear intent on telling people that only they can put out fires. Presumably because he is too busy eating people to help.

7. Bungle Bear - Full-body costume character from UK ITV 'Rainbow' kids show. Had no discernible or memorable characteristics or personality. But then he was a bear, so we should have been amazed just at the fact he could talk.

6. Chicago Bears - North American sports team who used to have a refrigerator playing for them or something.

5. Rupert The Bear - Cute British cartoon character, but his stories are published in the 'Daily Express' newspaper so he's probably a closet Nazi or something. And why does a bear need a scarf anyway?

4. Paddington Bear - As Told By Michael Hordern

3. Bear Grylls - I don't watch his shows but as I understand it he does programmes about surviving in uninhabitable places through the consumption of bodily by-products. Sounds compelling viewing to me.

2. Winnie The Pooh - Famous for many things but primarily as the inventor of Pooh Sticks.

1. Haribo Goldbears - Yes please.


Failed To Make The List:
The three bears from Goldilocks - while it's a fun, cosy story for humans the outcome is pretty disappointing from a bear perspective. The fact that they eat porridge instead of people does in itself show how rubbish these bears actually were.