Pedobear’s most recent appearance on Nestle’s Facebook page for Kit Kat got them in a heap of trouble.  It appeared that the chocolate maker had posted a photo of a man wearing a suit resembling that cute bear with a reputation for having a penchant for minors.

Many who know of Pedobear, also know of his roots on the meme factory internet site 4Chan.  A percentage of those people probably know that he was imported from its Japanese precursor, 2Channel, where he is known as “Kuma” even to this day.

But what is known of his life then?  To answer that RocketNews 24 is prepared to peel back the layers of Pedobear’s surprisingly wholesome – if not heroic – roots.

WARNING: Much information regarding the history of internet memes is murky at best, based on many opinions and word-of-mouth testimony. We believe this to be an accurate account of Pedobear’s life but new information may arise at a later time.

Around the year 2000, on the Japanese anonymous bulletin board site 2Channel (2ch), bears had become something of a fad. This picture especially became well known with its caption referring to getting reeled in by trolls.  Its caption roughly translates to “How’d I get hooked like this?!”

Around the same time Playstation released a weird singing game involving a vocaloid polar bear was generating a lot of buzz. These events may have helped to set the stage for Pedobear’s creation.

Then in 2003, a random thread was created on the ASCII art board of 2ch titled:

くまくま━━━━━━ヽ（ ・(ｪ)・ ）ノ━━━━━━ !!!

Which roughly translates to:

 BearBeeeeeeeaaaaヽ（ ・(ｪ)・ ）ノaaaaarrrrrrrrrrr!!!

Among the scores of ASCII art bear pictures that followed was one in particular called Mimawari Kuma which roughly means “surveillance bear” and sometimes refers to adults who patrol local hang-outs making sure kids are safe, but are kind of squares themselves.  Here’s Mimawari Kuma.

Reknowned 2ch ASCII artist Buru-3 (ぶるー３) saw it and later in this legendary thread expanded on it to make the first known image of Kuma (Bear), appropriately yelling “Kumaaa!” while patrolling for your safety.  Thus, a legend was born.

Kuma’s likeness was merged with the previously seen polar bear photo, and so, Kuma became a kind of identifier for trolling (known as “fishing” in Japan).  There is a version of Kuma getting hooked by skillful trolls.

As well there is a scenario with Kuma evading trolls with weak game by stealing their bait and leaving the hook dangling.

So in his humble beginnings, Kuma was a well-intentioned but somewhat naïve bear who when strutting into a forum (with his now famous swagger) sometimes gets hooked by trolls.

Even after arriving on Western shores, Kuma continued to live up to his “surveillance bear” roots and protected children by being an identifier of child pornography posted on 4Chan. In doing so he was unfortunately dubbed Pedobear.

Then in a cruel twist of fate, the one-time protector of children had been corrupted into a molester of them thanks to an ambiguous nickname.  Even the police in Tulsa, Oklahoma had issued a warning regarding this “mascot of pedophilia.”

Since then he has been quietly protecting the Vancouver Olympics, Barak Obama, and making sure Jerry Sandusky was put away. And yet while trying to help Kit Kat celebrate their first foray into using Instagram on Facebook his mere presence caused the entire celebration to come to a screeching halt.

And so the media will continue to chase away this guardian of children branded as a pedophile. Because he’s the hero the world deserves, but not the one it needs right now. So we’ll hunt him… because he can take it… because he’s not a hero. He’s a silent guardian… a watchful protector… a dark… bear.

▼The Kit Kat photo responsible for the most recent Pedobear controversy