Care Bear Stare



Pretty much the polar opposite of Mind Rape, one character bombards the other character's mind with peace, joy, love, puppies, rainbows and other such sweet stuff. Generally used by heroes against villains. Will sometimes cause damage to or drive off The Heartless, The Undead, Demons, and other enemies that it's allowed to damage because they don't really count/are Made of Evil. See Revive Kills Zombie. When used on good guys, may bolster morale and even heal good guys in body and spirit.

In some cases may work due to a combination of Evil Cannot Comprehend Good and Go Mad From the Revelation. Can be a practical use of Heart, and in some cases may even cause a Villainous BSOD and Brainwashing for The Greater Good.

Compare Mental Affair (the "adult" version of this), Getting Smilies Painted On Your Soul (no less forceful, but not as overt).

Compare and contrast Holy Hand Grenade and Heart Beat Down.

Named for the "attack" used by the Care Bears, naturally. The moral here being: "Never mess with a humanoid bear with a laser cannon in its chest."

Anime and Manga
"Itsuki: It sounds like someone's getting serious about this game."
 * In Zeta Gundam, Kamille Bidan gave a Mind Hug to Haman Khan, but all it did was tick her off.
 * By the way, this is the same kinda Mind Hug Amuro and Lalah had. The one that made them fall madly in love in three seconds, and her GHOST constantly appear to Amuro? Yeah. Haman SHRUGGED IT OFF!
 * In Gundam Unicorn, Banagher attempts this with Loni, but a combination of her deep-seated revenge issues and a malfunctioning psycommu renders it ineffective.
 * There's also Monzaemon, a teddy-bear-like Digimon whose main attack is the "Hearts Attack! With a hug!". It causes the opponent to float about in a heart-shaped bubble and giggle merrily.
 * His Evil Counterpart, Waru Monzaemon ("Waru" means "evil"), has the Heartbreak Attack, which causes the opponent to break down into a sobbing ball of Wangst for a few minutes.
 * Wedding Peach does this quite often to defeat enemies.
 * Kenzou Tenma of Monster tries doing this to Johan early on . It didn't work.
 * Amelia, Gourry and Zelgadis of Slayers tried this once on a member of the Mazoku race, which feeds on negative emotions. It was so effective that they had him writhing on the ground in pain.
 * Honda Tohru of Fruits Basket makes Akito do a double take towards the end of the manga. Akito chases Tohru to the edge of a cliff. Her weapon of choice is a knife, and Tohru looks like she has no chance to escape. What does she say?
 * She also does this to Akito in episode 26 of the anime.
 * Hilariously subverted in the Suzumiya Haruhi anime. After Kyon laments that he'd like to have even a bit of Haruhi's super-confidence, she gives him a Death Glare and then supposes she has sent "warm energy" into Kyon's body. Kyon, in his usual snarky attitude replies "No? I felt like my life was in danger.." Nothing else more completely illustrates how out-of-touch Haruhi is with
 * Although, interestingly, once the battle actually started, Kyon got into the game to the point that he was shouting his attack orders at the computer. And really, wouldn't Haruhi think it a bit strange if Kyon had immediately burst into full hot-blooded confidence as soon as she stared him down? A delayed reaction?

"Friendship Beamspam: Despite her total obliviousness to it, Nanoha has the strange and unexplainable ability to befriend anyone she causes physical harm to, ever since an incident wherein she slapped someone in first grade and they became her best friend. Studies and tests have confirmed this ability, though even Multiversal technology is at a loss to explain how or why it works. Is it radiation from the lasers? Some sort of Aura? No one knows, but it can generally be assumed that physical harm dealt by Nanoha will result in her making a new friend, with the degree of physical damage directly proportional to the level of friendship. How this translates to Aurics in the Multiverse has yet to be tested. (Consent Required where applicable.)"
 * Sailor Moon has a few attacks that simply "heal" or "purify" monsters or transformed humans. These are spliced in with all the lethal attacks she uses.
 * Sailor Chibi Moon attacks with "Pink Super Heart Attack". In the anime, it rarely works - and when it does, it tends to be more of a nuisance used for humor. She eventually joins Sailor Moon in a lethal attack during SuperS. And in the manga, her attacks are all lethal despite having names like "Pink Sugar Heart Attack".
 * Subverted in Yu Yu Hakusho, by The mind hug was implanted into her at a very young age, giving her conflicting feelings of joy and happiness with her father whenever there were thoughts of death and revenge, leaving him safe from her, but unprepared for Hiei's attack, who took this situation and made her a "sweet" birthday present, if we read "sweet" to mean "thoughtful, but still some pretty damn creepy." But they're Youkai, so it works.
 * Manga example : In Majuutsukai no Shojo, the heroine Kashe gets a mental link to a demon that experiences positive emotions as negative and negative as positive and is eating her soul. When she figures this out, she inverts the process and gleefully tortures it into submission by focusing on her good feelings.
 * Another manga example: In Kare Kano volume 16, Rika and Tsubasa literally Care Bear Stare  into submission.
 * In the early episodes of Ah My Goddess (episode 2 to be exact), Belldandy does this a lot to Keiichi.
 * Fans joke about Nanoha's attacks being this, to the point that "befriend" has become a synonym for "utterly defeat". Multiverse Crisis MUSH has turned it into an actual ability:


 * Tsutomu to Nataru in Birdy the Mighty Decode 02.
 * The "Love Beam" was the specialty of Getalong in Flint the Time Detective. It helped calm down berserk Time Shifters, and occasionally prevent other fights/arguments from happening.
 * The title character's dancing seems to do something like this in Princess Tutu.
 * The various Forte/Fortissimo attacks from Heartcatch Precure are like this, as the attacks end up purifying the Heart Flowers of an affected human, freeing them from their problems. Erika Kurumi/Cure Marine has the dubious honor of being hit with it twice, the second time showing that it does bring about a calming effect on them and when a Giant Snackie is hit with one, he just turns his suit white, but he still works for the bad guys.
 * The manga version of Trigun features an incredibly long climax whose final resolution involves Vash giving every plant on the planet, in the form of Knives' Body Horror collective thing, a Care Bear Stare via bullet. He reminds all of them
 * It affects Knives, too.

Comic Books

 * In Teen Titans #58, Miss Martian fights her evil inner conscience by assaulting it with puppies.
 * The DC character Faith has been described as a psychic "warm and fuzzy generator". Her mere presence makes people feel good and get along better.
 * The Avengers have a former member, Starfox, who has the power to project good feelings. He mostly uses this to get laid. This is only to be expected, given his real name is Eros.
 * She Hulk tries to bring him up on charges of rape, since Starfox is essentially Roofieman. The resolution of that arc is that he never knowingly used his powers to that extent on anyone who wasn't already up for casual sex, but that Thanos had injured him so that he temporarily lost conscious control of them.
 * In the first arc of his old solo series, Deadpool has to save the world from a creature that would make everyone perfectly happy... so joyous in fact, that they wouldn't have free will. 'Pool is pretty mad that his big heroic act involves killing the bringer of pure bliss.
 * It must be said he killed said Bliss-bringer by
 * Well, that's certainly... an effective method for Deadpool.
 * In the Maximum Carnage crossover, Spider Man and his friends built a Care Bear Stare raygun and used it to mellow out most of the villains that had teamed up with Carnage. But since Carnage had never experienced such positive emotions before, the effect on him was more akin to Mind Rape.
 * Zatanna once used the Mind Hug in order to Mind Rape someone. She "reprogrammed" Doctor Light, a vicious rapist, trying to pull out a good side that wasn't really there. What she succeeded in doing was creating an inept villain, but the idea was there.
 * Depending on your interpretation she either had slightly more success or much greater failure when she attempted the same thing in the pages of The Flash. Barry Allen asked her to try to make The Top, a recurring villain of his, an actual hero. It worked, at first. But Top now had a conscience and couldn't deal with the horrible things he had done. He went nuts and started trying to do the same to other Flash villains. It didn't end well.
 * In Lucifer, fallen cherub Gaudium, backed into a corner by a mind-raping people-eating monster, defeats it by radiating "joy and love and peace. Just like it says on the label"
 * Used by name on Illyria in Angel: After the Fall.
 * To be more precise the psychic floating fish Betta George flooded Illyria's original form with Wesley and Spike's memories of Fred.
 * In X-Men Professor X has used his psychic powers to deliver a super mind hug, built of all the positive thoughts he could find to drive off Scary Dogmatic Aliens.
 * He did it again in The Ultimate Universe to stun Gah Lak Tus.
 * In a Manga version of Star Trek the Original Series, Kirk met up with an entity called the Bandi Bear, which was a living teddy bear with empathic capabilities. Kirk found the only way to "conquer" it was to approach it with love.
 * This differs from his usual approach to First Contact, how?
 * Noora in The 99 has the power to shine light at people, making them see their own inner darkness and feel guilt. Not coincidentally, "noor" means "light" in Arabic.
 * In Green Lantern, the Indigo Tribe is made up of reformed villains whose rings provide them with a compassionate outlook... in many cases, not entirely willingly. When the rings come off... hoo, boy.
 * The recent storyline is currently dealing with Abin Sur's relationship with the tribe (and the antagonism he had with Indigo-1).
 * In the eleven part "Black Ring" storyline in Action Comics (specifically, issues #890-#900), Lex Luthor releases the Zone Child (a creature that intended to purge all negative emotion from the universe) from the Phantom Zone and defeats it. He gains its full power and proceeds to use it as the Zone Child would. We then get a montage of The DCU (the entirety of it) experiencing eternal bliss. Luthor learns that he can only keep his newfound power as long as he doesn't do anything negative, so of course, he tried to kill Superman. This led to The Joker commenting about how Luthor, with his pettiness, squandered the ultimate power to do good.

Film
"Nicky: Release the good.
 * In the now-defunct Captain EO, Michael Jackson does this (combined with The Power of Rock) to the evil queen and her minions.
 * In Ghostbusters 2, the team are able to channel the positive emotions of New Yorkers to weaken Vigo the Carpathian's hate-slime by coating the interior of the Statue of Liberty with positively-charged slime and getting her to walk by playing "Higher and Higher". Once inside the museum they're able to release Janosz from Vigo's power by spraying him with mood slime.
 * Little Nicky.

[shoots rainbows out of hands and group of bunnies appear]

Nicky: Yes, they're furry.

Demon: Bunny, Bunny, Bunny, Bunny!"


 * Charles in X-Men: First Class uses his telepathy to help Erik recall a happy memory to unlock his full potential of his powers.
 * Orgazmo gives us Hotter and Sexier variation. The titular superhero has a weapon called orgazmorator which stuns his opponents with well orgasms.

Literature

 * At the end of Madeline L'Engle's novel A Wrinkle in Time, Meg Murray's brother Charles Wallace has been converted to evil by the being called IT. She frees him by concentrating on and expressing her love for him.
 * She PONDERED doing it to 'IT'... but she found that impossible.
 * How the Grinch Stole Christmas. Not intentionally done by the citizens of Whoville, but probably the definitive example of this trope.
 * Something like this happens to in Wayside School Gets A Little Stranger when she tries to use her evil telepathic powers on Mrs. Jewls' baby:
 * Happened in the conclusion of The Witch Returns. The villain is finally defeated when the entire family of the protagonists gathers in a circle around her and assaults her -- with acceptance and general goodness. All her evil power fades away, leaving only a kitten, which apparently symbolizes the bit of goodness that was left in her heart.
 * Something similar is used in The Wish List, also by Eoin Colfer. Apparently, whenever an act of perfect good is performed, it sets off an explosion in the spiritual plane that leaves ghosts unaffected, but has the same effect as a nuclear bomb on demons, not to mention that it leaves a nice scent around them when they end up splattered back in Hell.
 * The title character in Lord Valentine's Castle does this. Actually, Robert Silverberg is fond of this trope in general.
 * In Lynne Reid Banks' Angela and Diabola, the appropriately-named Angela telepathically sends her twin sister Diabola warm thoughts while the obviously devilish one is being soaked by the rain outside, because she's just that selfless. This act of goodness enrages Diabola so much that she sends in return the wettest, most wicked thoughts she can muster up, which are enough to make Angela convulse in shivers.
 * Dameon in The Obernewtyn Chronicles and other Empaths are able to bathe people in feelings of calm, love, comfort etc. This just as well for the emotionally repressed protagonist.
 * In Sword of Truth, magical healing works by sharing the pain of the healed. When someone is affected by an ailment of the soul, the healer has to link his own soul with theirs. This is described as being much more intimate than sex, though not erotic in any way.
 * At the climax of the Sword of the Stars novel, The Deacon's Tale, . This is made all the more jarring by the recipient's nature as member of a species who consider mind rape as a healthy form of social interaction, and the Care Bear Stare thus ends up turning him into a self-flagellating, neurotic and suicidal wreck.
 * According to the game's sequel, he got better.
 * In the Animorphs series, Jake morphs into a Howler, a member of the foottrooper race of the Crayak built to do nothing but have fun destroying and murdering. When Jake learns that all Howlers ever created share a hivemind, he begins pushing all of his memories of love and kindness into it. The end result is that the next time the Howlers are sent to destroy a planet, they try kissing everyone instead.
 * In the Star Wars Expanded Universe novel Truce at Bakura.
 * And in Traitor Jacen Solo wins back the trust of a Yuuzhan Vong dhuryam (basically an organic computer that looks like an Eldritch Abomination) with "perfect empathy".
 * Jasper in Twilight. He is The Empath of the Cullens, and is often called on in the first book to calm Bella down with feelings of peace and happiness. Subverted in the fourth book, where Jasper follows Bella around for a while because she is emitting such positive emotions.
 * In Harry Potter, boggarts are creatures that transform into your worst fear. The spell to counter them is "riddikulus," which turns them into something hilarious, and laughter drives boggarts away. Patronuses (Patroni?) do a more solemn, protective version of the same thing to dementors.
 * This is also how Harry gets to stay out of his mind, or to keep his mind out of
 * Riddle's diary exploited Ginny in a manner similar to the "love bombing" mentioned below. She told him about her everyday troubles and he expressed sympathy, causing her to feel loved and understood. Of course, it was all a ruse to make her susceptible to his Mind Rape.
 * Futurological Congress by Stanislaw Lem features special drugs benignators that cause severe feats of tenderness and love in humans.
 * Night World series: Maggie does this to . She takes a romp through his head and kisses happiness and light into the darkness. It's not nearly so sickly sweet as that makes it sound.
 * The Last Dove: the Doves, particularly Queen Vasi, have the ability to defuse tension and make people feel at ease.

Live Action TV
"Jeff: This won't work. The last time you did this, I saved a vial of your tears and I've been slowly building up an immunity."
 * Not exactly a mind hug, but in Star Trek Voyager, Tuvok initiates a mind-meld with Lon Suder, a mentally disturbed killer. The meld, along with Tuvok's teaching him Vulcan self-discipline, allows Suder to gain some peace. After some time and training, he begins to feel that he might be able to control his homicidal tendencies.
 * In Star Trek the Next Generation, Sarek (Spock's dad) has Bendii's syndrome, a Vulcan disease that leaves them unable to control their emotions. A mindmeld with Picard alleviates his symptoms enough for him to finish a mission. Unfortunately, it turned Picard into a raving lunatic for the duration.
 * Inverted in Star Trek the Original Series when Kirk fills his mind with racist hatred to infect an android duplicate that is being made of him via a mind-scan: Spock realises it's not the real Kirk when the android starts insulting him.
 * The Power Rangers in Space finale "Countdown to Destruction" had the Red Ranger destroy Zordon's chamber, unleashing his goodness on all the bad guys currently battling. Monsters were turned to dust, humanoid villains were all turned good.
 * In Angel's third season, post-Plot Relevant Age Up Connor gets a Care Bear Stare from Cordelia when he tries to kill her.
 * Although later developments suggest it might have been something a little more sinister. After all, it's not like Connor's demeanor towards anyone else improved as a result.
 * The cult variant (see Real Life below) featured in the Strangers With Candy two-parter "Blank Stare". It works on Jerri - and when they try it on Chuck, who has supposedly come to rescue her, all it takes is the words "Do you need someone to love you?" before he breaks down crying and gives in.
 * One episode of Bewitched involved aliens visiting Earth and threatening the neighbors with their terrifying N-guns -- which turns out to stand for "niceness."
 * The Doctor pulls this one with a deranged Elizabethan mental patient in the Doctor Who episode "The Shakespeare Code".
 * The Doctor also frequently uses positive emotions (or any emotions) against the Cybermen.
 * Stark from Farscape can psychically transmit memories, making him ideal for calming down those in pain or distress.
 * The Eidolons are legendary for their Care Bare Stare: quite simply, it's a calming aura used to make individuals "see reason," powerful enough to have Scorpius, Crichton, and Emperor Staleek cheerfully sitting around a table discussing the terms of a Peace Treaty.
 * Annie from Community has a will bending stare that the she uses to gain sympathy.

Tabletop Games

 * Compel Emotion in GURPS: Magic can be used to compel happiness or peace. Ecstasy is a more malicious variant used to incapacitate the target.
 * In Dungeons and Dragons Emotion spell in "Happiness" mode makes victims unwilling to attack without an extreme provocation.
 * The Magic the Gathering card "Pacifism" essentially disables opponent creatures by making them too peaceful to attack or block.

Theater

 * Depending on the director, this can happen at the end of Mozart's opera The Magic Flute, when the Queen of the Night is destroyed by the appearance of a family united in love.
 * At the end of Pokémon Live, Mewtwo uses his Psychic Powers to use Ash's pure heart to do this to "Mechamewtwo", the robot super-Pokémon that Giovanni created as his new superweapon after creating Mewtwo backfired on him.

Video Games

 * James did this to Dolores in Zone of the Enders Dolores i when she had a Heroic BSOD via Journey to The Center of The Mind. Appropriate, considering she's a Robot Girl.
 * All three Mother games seem to have the characters using this to beat the final boss.
 * Lenneth Valkyrie, of Valkyrie Profile, can use the experience gained by her Einherjar to increase their virtues and reduce their vices to increase their individual "Hero" rating.
 * Laharl is subjected to one of these in the form of sexually attractive women spouting optimistic phrases. Given his aversion and (literal) allergy to the aforementioned, his stats are cut in half for the next fight. Flonne spouting "eternal love!" didn't help at all.
 * Were Flonne a buxom succubus like the aforementioned attractive women rather than a flat-chested angel, Laharl would likely have been slain outright.
 * In the RTS spinoff Halo Wars, one of the skulls players can collect will make any Scarabs on the map fire, instead of the normal blue plasma, a rainbow beam which covers the target in hearts and bubbles.
 * In the Ghostbusters game, much like the movie example above, if someone gets possessed, you have to hit them with positively charged slime to free them. This same slime also closes ruptures to the ghost world, renders evil black slime inert, and even does more damage to certain targets.
 * In the Demonflame adventure pack for Champions Online, you force a demon into temporary servitude. After you rescue some children, it uses the happy thoughts of those children to destroy a magical barrier. Before doing this, the demon informs you that "Regrettably, it will not harm the children."
 * King Of Dragon Pass has what players have nicknamed the Chalana Arroy Peace Bomb. An inaccurate summary is that a clan pools its magical power to send one of its members back to the world's creation, where she (re)performs one of the great deeds of that age. By affecting the creation, she Rewrites Reality in the present. One deed basically consists of healing everything in sight, so a good enough healer can spam it until everything is sunshine and puppies.
 * A literal Care Bear Stare is apparently used as a weapon, similarly to the XKCD example, during the original Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny. It hits Abraham Lincoln and Jackie Chan, knocking them out of sight - Lincoln is later seen dead on the ground, but Chan isn't seen again, and the Care Bear itself also vanishes. Of course, since "only one will survive", it can be presumed that all three are dead.
 * Another literal example of a Care Bear Stare being parodied in this Twilight comic.

Webcomics

 * In Devil Bear The "Care Bear Stare" is referred to as a "Virtue Bear Condenscending Glare". It is a rainbow attack that incites love, serenity, and altruism.
 * Bland Name Product to avoid AG's lawyers biting them, much?
 * Or an intentional parody? Given that it comes from the Virtue Bear's butts in the form of a fart, probably the latter.
 * Subverted in an Xkcd strip; this "Care Bear Stare" is an energy blast that knocks the target down, and the black hat is a long-established identifier of the strip's "Jerkass" character. Word of God says that he got this power from eating Care Bears.
 * In Nodwick, they do a parody of the Dungeons and Dragons film. In the film, there is a scene where Damodar does Mind Rape of the captive Marina Pretensa. In the Nodwick comic, Damodar attempts this on the captive Piffany, the Lawful Good cleric who is all about gumdrops, rainbows, and kittens. Her mind is too happy and cheerful for Damodar to take, and he begs her to just take the treasure map and go. (See it here.)
 * Also, a particularly gruesome variant in Q4force stories.
 * The effects of Agatha Heterodyne's "perfect" coffee in Girl Genius. Except on other Sparks who are more overall resistant than normal people, and Jaegermonsters, for whom it's just Verra Gud Coffee, Vit A Nize Kick.
 * Admittedly, the Jaeger giving that review was being violently beaten with a wrench while drinking it. (Don't worry, he deserved it)
 * She did say she could "fix that" after seeing the initial euphoria, so while the Spark could be resistant, she could also have toned it down....
 * In the Superhero arc of Dragon Tails, Lemuel becomes a villain named Sparkles with the superpower of "Happiness Sparkles", in an attempt to pacify his enemies. It doesn't work particularly well - all it does is make them feel rather happy about beating the snot out of him.
 * Something Positive, in one of their many RPG storylines, has Davan playing in a game based on statting up kids' toys. Thinking the others would leave their toys unmodded (clearly not knowing how girls play with dolls), he is left with a "stock" Care Bear. His Care Bear Stare proves useful, though... as a distraction, so the rest of them can rip him apart.
 * This El Goonish Shive strip subverts it to the point of Nightmare Fuel (continued two comics later).
 * Later an Immortal used a heavy assault Care Bear Stare called a Serenity Spell as an emergency Instant Sedation for a magic-user going bananas.
 * Subverted in Eight-Bit Theatre. Black Mage's Hadoken is powered by love, in the sense that a minivan is powered by petroleum: every usage depletes the universe of some of a finite resource.
 * This Dark Legacy Comics strip, where due to Player Character predation, only the sickenly cute ones survive. Only a small group of wolves managed to adapt, and thus was born the Gnome-Eating wolf.

Western Animation

 * The trope namer is the Care Bears. Originally conceived as a powerful weapon against the bad guys, Adventures in Care-A-Lot introduced the notion that it could also be used to heal and cheer up sad Care Bears and kids.
 * The Care Bears Movie has it used to stop an evil spell, but it's not enough to stop the villain. That takes The Power of Friendship.
 * Maguro from Sushi Pack frequently uses her telepathic powers to share zen thoughts when an antagonist needs to calm down. In one instance, she used this on her own team mates to make them follow a course of action that they did not agree with.
 * In The Fairly Odd Parents there exists a race of self-proclaimed evil aliens whose weaknesses include chocolate, flowers, and hugs. In fact, there was an episode where a Care Bear-eque army of creatures invades their planet through the use of cereal boxes and the evil aliens are unable to do anything because the power of Cute exhibited by these creatures is too strong.
 * A greater example is shown in "Wishology" as.
 * In The Spectacular Spider Man,
 * In the Teen Titans cartoon, the mechanical Fixit attempts to turn Cyborg into a pure robot, but in linking his brain to Cyborg's, Fixit's mind is flooded with all the simple pleasures of life that he had forgotten after removing his own humanity. He releases Cyborg and decides to try to relearn some of what he had lost.
 * In My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic, the Elements of Harmony can act like this, complete with bonus points for a literal stare (with Glowing Eyes of Doom) being the final part of the spell. Or they can just exile ponies to the moon.
 * In "The Return of Harmony: Part 2", in the climax, after Twilight, she goes around using a spell to snap out of Discord's control. It consists of her , bringing them back to normal.
 * In "The Return of Harmony: Part 2", in the climax, after Twilight, she goes around using a spell to snap out of Discord's control. It consists of her , bringing them back to normal.

Real Life

 * Love bombing. This practice is frequently used by cult members on potential recruits. The cult focuses on showing up as affable, joyful, giving, and attentive, with the intent to convince the "bombed" one into joining the cult. (See http://www.rationalrevelation.com/tr/lovebomb.html )
 * Studies have shown that humans who have animals in their lives have lower stress levels.
 * It's debatable how Real Life it actually is, but if you take the author of The Men Who Stare At Goats at his word, a number of U.S. military personnel were involved in trying to create a military unit too cute and cuddly for enemies to shoot. Standard field issue would include cute animals and flowers, and soldiers would learn how to project positive thoughts at the enemy. The theory was (as far as we know) never put into practice in actual combat situations.
 * And would almost certainly not have been effective, since most modern warfare is done with neither side seeing the other without electronic aid, not to mention what is cute and cuddly in one culture will almost certainly squick or just confuse those from another.