Teddy bear plush toys have enjoyed ongoing popularity, complete with specialty retailers such as Teddy Atelier Stursberg and Vermont Teddy Bear Company, as well as do-it-yourself chains including Build-A-Bear Workshop. Retail sales of stuffed plush animals including teddy bears totaled $1.3 billion in 2006, with manufacturers including Gund and Ty Inc. Mohair, the fur shorn or combed from a breed of long haired goats, is woven into cloth, dyed and trimmed.Īn RAF Boulton Paul Defiant crew with their teddy bear mascot at RAF Biggin Hill during World War II In the United Kingdom one small, traditional teddy bear company remains, Merrythought, which was established in 1930. A few small, single-person producers in the United States make unique, non-mass-produced teddy bears. The majority of teddy bears are manufactured in countries with low production costs, such as China and Indonesia. There are also companies, like Steiff, that sell handmade collectible bears that can be purchased in stores or over the Internet. These "plush" bears must meet a rigid standard of construction in order to be marketed to children in the United States and in the European Union. They must have securely fastened eyes that do not pose a choking hazard for small children. These bears either have safety joints for attaching arms, legs, and heads, or else the joints are sewn and not articulated. While early teddy bears were covered in tawny mohair fur, modern teddy bears are manufactured in a wide variety of commercially available fabrics, most commonly synthetic fur, but also velour, denim, cotton, satin, and canvas.Ĭommercially made, mass-produced teddy bears are predominantly made as toys for children. Some teddy bears are also designed to represent different species, such as polar bears and brown bears, as well as pandas and koalas. Modern teddy bears tend to have larger eyes and foreheads and smaller noses, babylike features intended to enhance the toy's " cuteness". North American educator Seymour Eaton wrote the children's book series The Roosevelt Bears, while composer John Walter Bratton wrote an instrumental " The Teddy Bears' Picnic", a "characteristic two-step", in 1907, which later had words written to it by lyricist Jimmy Kennedy in 1932.Įarly teddy bears were made to look like real bears, with extended snouts and beady eyes. Although Steiff and Michtom were both making teddy bears at around the same time, neither would have known of the other's creation due to poor transatlantic communication. However, the shipwreck story is disputed – author Günther Pfeiffer notes that it was only recorded in 1953 and says it is more likely that the 55 PB was not sufficiently durable to survive until the present day. Although Steiff's records show that the bears were produced, they are not recorded as arriving in the U.S., and no example of the type, "55 PB", has ever been seen, leading to the story that the bears were shipwrecked. He ordered 3,000 to be sent to the United States. Steiff exhibited the toy at the Leipzig Toy Fair in March 1903, where it was seen by Hermann Berg, a buyer for George Borgfeldt & Company in New York (and the brother of composer Alban Berg). Ī little earlier in 1902 in Germany, the Steiff firm produced a stuffed bear from Richard Steiff's designs. He created a tiny soft bear cub and put it in his candy shop window at 404 Tompkins Avenue in Brooklyn with a sign "Teddy's bear." The toys were an immediate success and Michtom founded the Ideal Novelty and Toy Co. Morris Michtom saw the Berryman drawing of Roosevelt and was inspired to create a teddy bear. While the initial cartoon of an adult black bear lassoed by a handler and a disgusted Roosevelt had symbolic overtones, later issues of that and other Berryman cartoons made the bear smaller and cuter. He refused to shoot the bear himself, deeming this unsportsmanlike, but instructed that the bear be killed to put it out of its misery, and it became the topic of a political cartoon by Clifford Berryman in The Washington Post on November 16, 1902. They called Roosevelt to the site and suggested that he shoot it. A suite of Roosevelt's attendants, led by Holt Collier, cornered, clubbed, and tied an American black bear to a willow tree after a long exhausting chase with hounds. There were several other hunters competing, and most of them had already killed an animal. The name originated from an incident on a bear hunting trip in Mississippi in November 1902, to which Roosevelt was invited by Mississippi Governor Andrew H. The name teddy bear comes from former United States President Theodore Roosevelt, who was often referred to as "Teddy" (though he loathed being referred to as such). A 1902 political cartoon in The Washington Post spawned the teddy bear name.
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