De Bereboot (The Bear Boat) is a Dutch children's puppet television programme from the 1970s written by Lo Hartog van Banda. 407 episodes were made for broadcast on NOS (October 2, 1976 - April 29, 1977) and AVRO (October 1, 1977 - September 30, 1978).
The three bears enter the pub and start a conversation with Neel; halfway subject switches to one of their adventures which often took place on the silliest of theme-isles such as Stupid Toddler's Island, Cake Island (Dutch: Taarteiland) or Hat Island (Dutch: Peteiland) . These adventures were serialised over the course two to five episodes to fit the five-minute time-slot.
During their AVRO days the bears also hosted the Wednesday afternoon show Berebios (Bear's Flicks) at the local cinema where Fred sold the tickets. Apart from their own adventures they also aired Dutch-dubbed cartoons (from Hanna-Barbera, The Adventures of Tintin, and their Scandinavian peer Rasmus Klump). After De Bereboot was cancelled, the Wednesday slot changed its name into Kinderbios (Kid's Flicks) and remained for about a decade.
The images of Brom, Maatje and Brilbeer appeared on merchandise ranging from erasers to balloons; the latter even guesting in one of the episodes. A six -track sampler-EP was sold at a chainstore-supermarket in preparation of the full-length albums.
In 1991, nine year after re-runs of the first season, De Bereboot was introduced to the new generation; this time on TROS. The original theme-tune was replaced with the one used for the AVRO-season and the episodes were slotted together as one. Later children's channel Kindernet (now Nickelodeon) took over with more success; by 2000 new merchandise was available including double VHS-tapes.
It was also adapted into a comic strip by Ton Beek for the magazine Bobo.[1]