While traveling across Earth, the Bears help two lonely children named Kim and Jason, who lost their parents in a car accident, and also save Nicholas, a young magician's apprentice, from an evil spirit's influence.

Later on, the card company chose Nelvana to produce it and granted them rights to the characters, in addition to financing the film along with cereal manufacturer General Mills and television syndicator LBS Communications.

It has since been cited as inspiring a spate of toy-based animated and live-action features; the film was later followed by two sequels, A New Generation (1986) and Adventure in Wonderland (1987), neither surpassing the original financially or critically.

[31][22][24] To convince the production partnership of TCFC and Kenner Toys, Hirsh held a competition inspired by Pepsi-Cola's "Pepsi Challenge" commercials of the time, in which he tested clips from Nelvana and other vying studios and checked the "animation quality, music, sound effects, and colour" of each.

[1][10] Produced for at least US$2 million,[nb 1] the film was financed by American Greetings, the owners of the Care Bears franchise; General Mills, the toys' distributor; and television syndicator LBS Communications.

[44] With this project, Arna Selznick became the third of only four women ever to direct an animated feature;[13][nb 5] prior to this, she worked on several Nelvana productions, including Strawberry Shortcake and the Baby Without a Name.

[10][59] Nelvana faced several problems with their Korean contractors,[31] among them the language barrier between the Canadian crew and the overseas staff,[31] and the unwieldy processes through which the film reels were shipped to the West.

[62] Back in Canada, Hirsh tried to promote the unfinished feature before its deadline; unable to get available footage, he instead managed to show potential marketers some Leica reels and a few moments of completed colour animation.

The music does a lot to make the kingdom of Care-a-lot, where the goody-goody bears hang out on clouds monitoring life below on their Caring Meter, a slightly less irritable place.

"[35] According to the 1985 edition of Guinness Film Facts and Feats, the Samuel Goldwyn Company spent up to US$24 million on the publicity budget for The Care Bears Movie, the largest at that time.

"[73] Jeff Lipsky, vice-president of theatrical at Goldwyn, referred to the first one as "the cheery approach"; ads therein featured the Care Bears on clouds, and carried the tagline "A movie that'll make the whole family care-a-lot".

[79] Around opening time, Hirsh predicted that The Care Bears Movie would be its decade's response to Pinocchio and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, both from Walt Disney Productions.

[91] The story involves Strawberry Shortcake and a tiny group of creatures called the Berrykins as they work to clear their home of Strawberryland of the "world's favourite perfume", a pungent odour which was unleashed from a purple cloud.

[91] LBS Communications syndicated it on US television around the time of The Care Bears Movie's theatrical tenure; a video release from Family Home Entertainment soon followed.

[104] As a result, The Care Bears Movie's performance alarmed animators at the Disney Studios;[34] Don Bluth, a former recruit, dismissed the "public taste" factor that it demonstrated.

[107] While comparing The Black Cauldron with The Care Bears Movie, Eleanor Ringel of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution singled out the "putrid pastels" of Nelvana's production and commented that they "don't even deserve to be mentioned in the same review.

[114] It was tracked by Video Insider's children's chart (on August 30, 1985), as one of five toy-related titles on tape (along with two compilations of Hasbro's Transformers series; another with Hallmark Cards' Rainbow Brite; and the last with Strawberry Shortcake).

[115] In 1990, Video Treasures reissued it on videocassette;[116] on October 10, 1995, Hallmark Home Entertainment published another VHS edition as part of a six-title package from Goldwyn and Britain's Rank Organisation.

[138] The Care Bears Movie was released in the United Kingdom by Miracle Films[142] in August 1985,[143] and did well in matinee-only engagements;[44] a video edition from Vestron's local branch came out some months later.

It also became the highest-grossing animated film not produced by the Disney company,[164] surpassing the US$11 million of Atlantic Entertainment Group's 1983 release The Smurfs and the Magic Flute;[165] Don Bluth's An American Tail (1986) and The Land Before Time (1988) later took over this position.

Why even the Americans should bother to create this syrupy bear garden called Care-a-lot, dripping with singing quadrupeds who want to save the world from evil, is a mystery to anyone who has seen the fun and fibre that can be obtained from infinitely better children's stories, especially the droll moral fables in Winnie the Pooh."

[72] The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette said, "Who except a callous scrooge would carp about the fact that The Care Bears Movie espouses a psychopop philosophy of 'sharing our feelings' that seems drawn straight from the pages on one of those insufferable self-motivation tomes?

[187] The Los Angeles Times' Charles Solomon (in his 1989 book Enchanted Drawings: The History of Animation),[87] and Michael Janusonis of Rhode Island's Providence Journal,[188] faulted the plot.

[190] Critics questioned its purpose as a feature-length advertisement for Care Bears merchandise;[191] among them were Charles Solomon,[87] Paul Attanasio,[182] The Morning Call of Pennsylvania,[192] and Bill Cosford of The Miami Herald.

"[201] The mixed reception carried on in the years ahead: in her 1995 book Inside Kidvid, Loretta MacAlpine said of the film and its subsequent follow-ups, "If you can hack the sugarcoated attitudes of this group of cuddly bears, more power to you!

[206] In the words of Jerry Beck, "[The Care Bears Movie's] box-office gross signalled to Hollywood a renewed interest in animated features, albeit for children.

[41] Mentioning The Care Bears Movie as "the most recent example", Charles Solomon brought up the subject of feature-length toy adaptations in an April 1985 interview on Los Angeles' KUSC-FM.

"[209]: 131  In July 1985, Sarah Stiansen of United Press International (UPI) called The Care Bears Movie "another licensing innovation for TCFC", following the department's previous endeavours.

[218] In his Christian Science Monitor review, David Sterritt observed that The Care Bears Movie was mostly influenced by The Sorcerer's Apprentice, a 1797 poem by German author Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, along with "a trace of H. P. Lovecraft "that probably wasn't intended".

[225][226] John Sebastian's "Nobody Cares Like a Bear" received a Genie nomination for Best Original Song;[227] his performance was part of CBC's live telecast of the ceremony on March 20, 1986.