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Bamse – Världens starkaste björn (Swedish for 'Bamse – The World's Strongest Bear') is a Swedish cartoon created by Rune Andréasson. The highly popular children's cartoon first emerged as a series of television short films as well as a weekly half-page Sunday strip in 1966, before being published periodically in its own comic magazine since 1973.
Andréasson did all the artwork himself until 1975 and wrote all the comics until 1990. Francisco Tora did all the illustrations from 1976 until he was joined by Bo Michanek in 1983. Several new writers and illustrators were hired in the early 1990s, including Claes Reimerthi, Olof Siverbo, Johan Wanloo and Tony Cronstam. Andréasson continued to do the magazine cover illustrations until 1992.
The series somewhat changed direction when Bamse had children, specifically triplets, in 1982. He had a fourth child in 1986, and his friend Lille Skutt had one at the same time; this saw the series focus more on family, while also discussing other values such as gender equality. In 1989, the character Skalman noticed that Bamse's fourth child Brumma had some intellectual disability, later defined as her being on the Autism spectrum, which again brought up the subject of equality. The children did develop in real time within the magazine, but seem to have been fixed in age since around 1990. They are now around nine years old, in a narratively advantageous eternal state as third-graders.
Both the early Sunday strips and the early magazines have since been reprinted as glossy hardbound volumes.
In 1998, the theme park Bamses Värld ('Bamse's World') started as an attraction at the Kolmården Wildlife Park, with theater performances, restaurants and houses from the comic.
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