Yowies and Bunyips and Drop Bears, Oh My!: Difference between revisions

{{examples}}

== Advertising ==

* A Bundaberg Rum advertisement features Australian male campers using stories about drop bears to lure attractive female backpackers into moving their tents close to them. The blonde backpackers are incredulous until the Bundy Rum bear (a large talking polar bear often featured in the company's advertising) drops out of a tree near the edge of the lake, destroying one of the girls' tents.

* There was a Cadbury's product sold in Australia and the UK called "Yowie", which were hollow chocolate [[Ugly Cute]] [[Cartoon Creature]] versions of Australian fauna. In the story, the Yowies were all guardians of different kinds of wild habitat, and were ruled by a Bunyip king. They came with a small toy of an endangered animal and a little booklet [[Green Aesop|talking about them and why they should be preserved]], and some of the money from sales of the chocolate was donated to rainforest preservation.

 

* [[Nextwave]] fought against [http://www.marvunapp.com/Appendix4/dropbears.htm drop bears].

 

== Literature ==

* The short story "Matilda Told Such Dreadful Lies" by Lucy Sussex is purportedly the true story that inspired the song "Waltzing Matilda", as told by the bunyip who haunts the billabong where it happened.

* ''The Bunyip of Berkeley's Creek'' is a picture book well-known in Australia about a bunyip who doesn't know what kind of creature he is, and sets out to find somebody who can tell him. (At one point he encounters a proud rationalist who tells him confidently that he doesn't exist.)

* One of the best known bunyip characters in Australia is Alexander Bunyip, who appeared in a series of children's books starting with ''The Monster That Ate Canberra'' in 1972.

 

* Alexander Bunyip (see ''Literature'', above) had his own TV series called ''[[Alexander Bunyip's Billabong]]''.

* The bunyip was featured repeatedly on ''[[Charmed]]'', most notably the episode "Nymphs Just Wanna Have Fun".

 

 

* [[D20 Modern]] features drop bears in its ''Menace Manual''.

* The ''[[Call of Cthulhu (tabletop game)|Call of Cthulhu]]'' supplement ''Terror Australis'' has statistics for quite a few mythological Australian monsters, including the yowie and bunyip (but alas, no mention of drop bears).

* In ''[[Werewolf: The Apocalypse]]'', the Bunyip were a werewolf [[Splat|tribe]] that went extinct in the 1920's along with the thylacine. The other werewolves helped things along as well, which remains a sore point.

 

* Mentioned in [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZ-gfalEWI0 this Australian production] of ''[[Gilbert and Sullivan|HMS Pinafore]]'', in an added stanza to The First Lord's Song (referring to Pauline Hanson, a commonly-mocked Australian politician from Ipswich).

{{quote|''I learnt some tricks from the Ipswich Witch:

 

== Toys ==

* In the early 2000s, the (then) British chocolate company Cadbury's had a hollow chocolate treat called a "Yowie", each of which contained a small "collectible" plastic model of an antipodean animal. [[Yaoi Fangirl]]s gave them out at anime conventions down under.

 

== Video Games ==

* ''[[Ty the Tasmanian Tiger]]'' features bunyips.

* ''[[RuneScape]]'' has a familiar called the bunyip. Its special ability allows you eat raw fish (when the scroll is used, you see the bunyip eating some fish). It's actually a pretty vital summon for people doing slayer or bossing if their summon level isn't high enough, since it also heals you 2 hp (20 lp) every 15 seconds, which adds up.

* Two enemies in ''[[Final Fantasy X]]'' are named Yowie and Bunyip, though they bear little resemblance to their inspiration.

 

* ''[[Schlock Mercenary]]'': [http://www.schlockmercenary.com/2010-10-29 "Smart Drop-bear"] was used in reference to Petey.

 

== Western Animation ==

* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtrYO-Mog60 "Bunyip Moon"] from ''[[Dot and The Kangaroo]]''.

* ''[[Scooby Doo]]'' has the Yowie Yahoo prominantly featured in ''Legend of the Vampire''.

 

== Real Life ==

* Former Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating once accused an opponent of being from the "Bunyip Aristocracy", meaning he had fanciful notions of belonging to an aristocracy that didn't exist.

** This is actually a quote from an early speech ridiculing MacArthur's plans to ''set up'' an aristocracy by Daniel Deniehy.

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Tall Tale tropes]]

[[Category:Useful Notes/Australia]]

[[Category:Index of Fictional Creatures]]

[[Category:Bear with this Index]]