It's what's inside your heart that matters most.

What is our mission?

We are passionate about creating moments between parents and children to develop connections, inspiration, and a love of reading. Teaching character and life's most important lessons can be fun and simple.

The Character Bear product builds resilient, confident, and emotionally intelligent children utilizing

pretend play and imagination with a lovable, cuddly teddy bear named Merritt.

Check out Joan's journey

Character Bear has been a passion for Joan since her children were young. The original product was launched at LEGOLAND CALIFORNIA and has been seen on ABC's American Inventor produced by Simon Cowell.

Introducing Merritt

An adorable teddy bear, collectible finger puppets and adorable stories teach character and life's most important lessons.

All about Character Bear

children with teddy bears stuffed animals learning emotional intelligence created by Joan Colvin

Our Story

Character Bear came to life while Joan was planning her daughter's 5th birthday party. She wanted to have a fun activity and also make a memorable event. Joan has always loved teddy bears, and so she bought unstuffed bears, cotton stuffing to fill them, and then wrote a cute princess story to bring the bear to life and teach the girls a fun lesson - choosing love over fear. All the girls were invited to dress up as a princess. The girls stuffed the bear with the stuffing that was labeled with different character traits, such as love, courage and friendship. The girls LOVED their new teddy bears and many parents shared how much the girls believed and understood the moral of the story Joanie wrote. The party was a big hit, and she realized that there was nothing like this product in the marketplace. That is when Joan had her "aha moment" to bring Character Bear to market.

LEGOLAND Character Bear display with Joan Colvin

Initial Launch at LEGOLAND CA

Character Bear was successfully launched that very next year at LEGOLAND CA in 2005. Story time was a big hit and the bears were sold all over the park, including the THE BIG SHOP. It was quickly discovered that more money needed to be invested into packaging and marketing so the bears would sell in the retail market to compete with other products.

Joan Colvin on ABC American Inventor show sharing Character Bear

ABC's primetime show - American Inventor

In 2006 - ABC was looking for America's best new invention and the winner received 1 million dollars. Although Joan didn't win the big prize, she was a semi-finalist on the show and received hundreds of emails supporting her. One of the producers on the show told her at the finale that she received the most calls of support.

That year Joan applied for, and years later received her utility patent for the Character Bear.