uh

Seriously this has actually become a huge debate on the internet.

I don’t understand. Could someone explain it to me?

Apparently many of us could swear it was spelt and pronounced as BerenstEIn (pronounced as bear-in-steen) Bears yet all evidence (save for a few mysterious 1980s editions of the books that turn up) claim it was BerenstAIn (pronounced as Bear-in-stain) Bears and that they were named for the creator Mike Berenstain.  I grew up in the 1980s and I could swear the old Saturday morning cartoon and holiday specials were Berenstein but all evidence contradicts me.

Apparently there’s a bizarre conspiracy theory that some of us are actually from an alternate universe (where Earth is very similar save for a few slight differences) and we somehow swapped places with alternate versions of ourselves at some point by mistake and the first clue of this other world was the Berenstein Bears / Berenstain Bears. 

Kind of like the episode of Sliders where the heroes (who traveled from version of Earth to version of Earth) thought they were home, it was just like their world, but The Golden Gate bridge was blue.