Bear in the Big Blue House (found unaired pilot of Disney Channel puppet series; 1997)

The show’s original logo.

Status: Found

Date found: 17 Dec 2022

Found by: tygerbug

In 1997, a 13-minute pilot episode of the popular Playhouse Disney show Bear in the Big Blue House was made to test the show. While the series remains widely circulated, the pilot episode had yet to surface until 2022.

A clip of it was put up online in David Gumpel's director's reel in 2006, which was of an early version of the song "Need a Little Help Today" but all that remains of this is a mere screenshot from the clip, showing Pip and Pop's (then named Pummel and Pop) original designs with gopher puppets sourced from The Muppet Show and the original kitchen design.

According to Noel MacNeal (voice of Bear), the test pilot played out essentially the same as the first season episode "Water, Water Everywhere" and featured the otter duo by their original names: Pummel and Pop (the former of which was changed to Pip because Disney thought it sounded too violent), as well as Tutter (here as a girl simply named Mouse). Additionally, the song "Need a Little Help Today" (which was carried over to "Water, Water Everywhere") was featured in the episode. Additionally, Ojo was meant to be Bear's niece.

Apart from this information, very little is known about this pilot, although at least one promotional image (which can be seen above) for the show was produced using the same set.

On December 17th, 2022, MySpleen user Tygerberg uploaded a collection of unaired and rare TV pilots to the tracker. Among them was the "Water, Water Everywhere" pilot.