The Houston Chronicles Stephen Hunter found that "the film integrates its music into the story very clumsily. It's not merely that the numbers are forgettable—they are—it's that they're shoe-horned so obviously into the story that they don't amplify it, they stop it cold." Likewise, Michael Blowen of The Boston Globe said that "the uninspired songs ... add nothing to the banal plot." Release In 1984, before the film's completion, Carole MacGillvray offered The Care Bears Movie for consideration to major studios in the US; since they did not see the financial potential in a picture aimed strictly at children, they declined the offer. MacGillvray told Adweek magazine in April 1985, "I made several trips, and I was really disappointed. They kept telling me things like 'Animated movies won't sell' and 'Maybe we'd consider it if you were Disney,' but most just said, 'You're very nice, good-bye.' " When few takers were left, she took it to the Samuel Goldwyn Company. A newcomer in the independent market, it agreed to release the film. Comparing the title characters' appeal to Hollywood stars like Barbra Streisand and Robert Redford, founder Samuel Goldwyn Jr. remarked: "Having my [two] children, I know these bears are stars, too." According to the 1985 edition of Guinness Film Facts and Feats, the Samuel Goldwyn Company spent up to US$24 million on the publicity budget for The Care Bears Movie, the largest at that time. The film's advertising budget was US$4 million; Variety reported that "the beneficiaries of [its] merchandising tie-ins have earmarked [the remaining] $20,000,000 to promo Care Bear products in step with the film's release". For the film's promotion, Goldwyn's staff partnered with Kenner Toys and the fast food chain Pizza Hut; there were also tie-ins on Trix cereal boxes. Parker Brothers published two tie-in books, Meet the Care Bear Cousins and Keep On Caring, shortly after the film's release; both were reissued in October 1985 by Children's Press. The Goldwyn staff came up with two advertising strategies, which tested well with the company—one was aimed at the film's target audience of children as young as age five; another targeted grown-ups, parents, and older children. In the words of Cliff Hauser, the distributor's executive director of marketing, "We didn't want parents to think the movie was threatening. So the big debate was—although the formula for success in animated film is the triumph of good over evil—how can