Here's some great bear covers I found at this years 77th Annual RMS Convention in Hagerstown, MD.
This Polar Paris polar bear cover from The Southern Coal Co. has very little information available online, but it's a great cover nonetheless.
Pola-Wite is still in business - they sell teeth whitening products. This great United Eng. cover had a nice polar bear logo on it.
Grizzly Brake Lining had an amazing (and angry) bear advertising their products.
It bears repeating that it wasn't just Joe Camel peddling his vices to youngsters out there, in the 1950's and 60's you had this very Disneyesque Hamm's Beer bear dancing in the land of sky blue waters advertising beer on TV. As far as cartoon bears go though, I think he's pretty cool; right up there with the dumb Disney bear that picks up trash, the Looney Tunes Junior Bear, and the Icee bear.
An older, Hamm's cover with a more blue beer bear. It's beyond me why a beer or liquor company never made a pink elephant mascot.
Rooty, the Great Root Bear was a Canadian A&W Root Beer stand invention that found his way across the border in the mid 1970's. Some incarnations are closer in appearance to the above mentioned Looney Tunes Junior Bear. As most of us have forgotten or never cared, there later was a Burger Bear Family.
Yogi Bear's Jellystone Park wasn't just a fictitious playground in cartoon-land where raiding picnic baskets was a normal pastime, this is a real place - I'm serious. I was always confused by highway signs advertising this as a kid, but they are real campground / resort areas located across the country.
Before Hanna-Barbera made him a star, Yogi Bear was a simple New Zealand TV and HiFi repairbear, or so this Allenco matchbook from Auckland, New Zealand would like us to think.
