As legend has it, that bear drank a cup of the tea — which is mainly chamomile and mint — and fell fast asleep for five decades. But then the marketing team determined that a mascot might enliven its sales, and rudely awakened the bear, who'd missed everything from disco to Y2K to the invention of social media. That didn’t stop Sleepytime Bear from dominating TikTok and Instagram as the new face of Celestial Seasonings, however.
“He's just been an absolute hit,” says Emily Rosen, director of marketing for the Hain Celestial Group, the parent company of Celestial Seasonings since 2000. “The virality of his videos and what he does and how he just wishes he was asleep, it's so relatable.”
Even asleep, Sleepytime Bear had already inspired memes and Halloween costumes with his trademark blue nightshirt and floppy red cap. Social media fans posted about pining for his sleepy lifestyle; Twitter user @jordansamuel urged everyone to “stop glamorizing the grind, start glamorizing the Sleepytime Tea bear” just days before he was revived.
“When people think Celestial Seasonings, they think Sleepytime,” Rosen says. “He's just this distinctive asset for us. People are so crazy for him. You see tattoos of Sleepytime Bear across the world. He's lovable. He's relatable. He's approachable. He's wise, but in a nice, friendly way.”Stop glamorizing the grind, start glamorizing the Sleepytime Tea bear pic.twitter.com/2Iwvgk9WAK
— Jordan Samuel Skin (@jordansamuel) October 5, 2021
On its Instagram, @celestialtea usually gains a few hundred likes on normal product posts, which might be respectable, but pales compared to the popularity of its Reels of the Sleepytime Bear. A recent video gained over 16,000 likes; it depicts the bear drinking tea with the caption, “My beige flag is that I will be in bed by 9:00 p.m. no matter what. Worked til 8:30? In bed by 9:00. Invited to go out? In bed by 9:00. Laundry pile on my bed? That’s the laundry pile on the chair now because I am in bed by 9:00.”
Over on TikTok, @celestialseasoningstea garnered an astonishing four million views for a clip with Sleepytime Bear shaking his head in horror with the caption, “When you made plans while feeling extroverted and now your friends are texting ‘wya?’ but you were about to snuggle up in bed."
Sleepytime Bear's story began in Boulder, where Celestial Seasonings is based. The company was founded in 1969 by a group including Mo Siegel, Peggy Clute, John Hay, Wyck Hay and Lucinda Ziesing. By 1972, the company had its famous hibiscus Zinger line and its Sleepytime Tea ready to sell.
When Celestial Seasonings wanted art for its Sleepytime box, John Hay’s artist sister, Beth Underwood, stepped up. In 1973, she painted the original artwork that shows a zoomed-out version of the famous box where the bear is joined by his wife and four bear cubs.
The original painting still resides in Boulder, hanging in the office of Tim Collins, general manager of Hain Celestial, According to Collins, Sleepytime Tea is consistently the company’s highest-selling tea. When Sleepytime Bear first woke up, Celestial Seasonings heard from a lot of people about the new mascot, including Stephen Colbert (read: Col-Bear) and Hulu. Collins jokes that the company told Hulu that if it's ever looking to craft a reality show about bears that sleep, Sleepytime Bear might be available.
The TikToks and Reels with Mr. Sleepytime are made by an outside ad agency, and while the company hasn’t received requests specific to the videos, it has been asked if the bear can make an appearance at a wedding. Collins says that the company isn’t sure the bear would be much of a party guest; it doesn't know if he is “able to wake up for that long of a time period.”
If the bear had a dating profile (though he wouldn’t, because he is married), it would say that his job is sleep ambassador. He’s a Taylor Swift fan, and, yes, he managed to stay awake long enough to secure Bear-as Tour tickets. His favorite color is red, like his hat.
Could he have friends that join him from other Celestial Seasonings boxes?
“We haven't talked about bringing others to life, but we've got some really amazing characters,” Collins says, referencing the box for True Blueberry Tea, which has a bear rafting on the front and a mouse tagging along. “People wrote in and said, ‘Why does the bear have a helmet and the mouse doesn't? You need to get a helmet on the mouse!’ There's these fun little Easter eggs.”
But Blueberry Bear isn’t going to come to life anytime soon, he says.
In the meantime, though, you can see Sleepytime Bear's cottage when you join one of Celestial Seasonings tours, which were introduced in 2005 at Celestial Seasonings' longtime home at 4600 Sleepytime Drive in Boulder, then went on hold during the pandemic. They just started up again on August 12, and are offered during normal business hours Tuesday through Saturday.
"We wanted to make sure we were through the pandemic,” Collins says. “During the pandemic, we experienced a surge in demand. A lot more people were drinking tea and making sourdough bread and all that, so we wanted to make sure that we could continue to meet the demand.”
Though Celestial Seasonings sources its ingredients from 35 countries, the entire process — from cutting the herbs to mixing to packaging — is done in Boulder. Collins is proud of the company’s dedication to its Colorado roots, as well as its emphasis on sustainability.
The company has always made its tea bags without strings or tags to reduce waste, and it is continuing those efforts. It will soon remove plastic from the ten million tea bags it packages per day by redesigning its boxes to be fully tamper-proof.
On the tours, people learn all about tea-making. Although they were free before the pandemic hit, Celestial Seasonings is now charging $5 per person. That's because the company wanted to encourage people to buy souvenirs, Collins says, so it’s giving every tour participant a $5 discount for purchases at the gift shop. Along with its range of teas, which visitors can sample for free after a tour, the gift shop sells tea-related merchandise, including a stuffed version of Sleepytime Bear. A box of Sleepytime Tea runs $5.79 for twenty tea bags.
“That sense of community here — there's people that love this brand, love our teas, and it's so energizing for us,” Collins says. “We've got 100 operators working on the factory floor, and they were begging us to reopen the tours. You would think it's a huge pain in the butt. And they're like, ‘No, we love it. It gives us such pride that people are excited to see what we do.’”
And they're excited to see Sleepytime Bear, but they might not catch him awake during the 45-minute tour. While he's the star of the introductory video in which he teaches tour-goers about safety, by the time you reach the Sleepytime cottage, chances are good he'll be snoozing in his chair.
