---
title: "Care Bears Find a New Owner as Authentic Brands Buys the Franchise"
description: "Authentic Brands Group, the licensing giant behind Reebok and a roster of celebrity estates, has agreed to acquire Care Bears — the plush-toy and cartoon franchise that has generated billions in retail sales since the 1980s — in its first move into character-driven children's entertainment."
category: "Entertainment"
category_url: https://herald.la/category/entertainment
author: "Mei-Lin Tang"
published: 2026-06-30T15:48:00.000Z
updated: 2026-06-30T15:48:00.000Z
canonical: https://herald.la/article/care-bears-find-a-new-owner-as-authentic-brands-buys-the-franchise
tags: ["Care Bears", "Authentic Brands Group", "licensing", "acquisition", "nostalgia", "toys"]
---
# Care Bears Find a New Owner as Authentic Brands Buys the Franchise

Authentic Brands Group, the licensing giant behind Reebok and a roster of celebrity estates, has agreed to acquire Care Bears — the plush-toy and cartoon franchise that has generated billions in retail sales since the 1980s — in its first move into character-driven children's entertainment.

The bears with feelings on their bellies are changing hands.

## The deal

Authentic Brands Group said it has agreed to acquire the Care Bears intellectual property from the franchise's current owners, the investment firms IVEST Consumer Partners and Cloverlay, [Variety reported](https://variety.com/2026/biz/news/care-bears-sold-authentic-brands-group-1236799111/). Financial terms were not disclosed, and the deal is expected to close in the third quarter of 2026. For Authentic, the New York–based brand-management company best known for Reebok and the estates of stars like Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe, it is the first acquisition of a character-based entertainment franchise.

## What Care Bears is

Care Bears began in 1982 as characters drawn for American Greetings cards before exploding into plush toys, a syndicated cartoon and feature films that became fixtures of 1980s childhood. The property now spans more than 100 bear characters — each marked by a "belly badge" standing for an emotion — and reaches consumers in some 190 countries through a network of more than 500 licensing partners, according to figures cited in the announcement.

## Why Authentic

Authentic's model is built on owning a trademark and orchestrating a web of licensees rather than running factories or studios itself. Executives said they plan to do more than maintain the catalog: the company intends to develop new content through its in-house studio arm, stage live events and expand into gaming, layering fresh output onto a licensing engine already operating at scale. The purchase fits a broader Hollywood and toy-industry appetite for nostalgia brands with built-in audiences, as streamers and merchandisers compete for properties that carry generational memory.

## What comes next

With the deal set to close by the fall, the existing roster of licensees gives the new owner an immediate revenue base, while Authentic's studio gives it a path to new Care Bears animation or other media. Whether a licensing powerhouse can turn childhood sentiment into a durable modern franchise is the open question — but four decades and billions in sales suggest there is still an audience that cares.

## Sources

- [Care Bears sold to Authentic Brands Group](https://variety.com/2026/biz/news/care-bears-sold-authentic-brands-group-1236799111/)