Who Constructed the First Toy Cear Called the Teddy Bear?
Well there are several stories-
In the 1900s in the United States, President Theodore Roosevelt was becoming
acknowledged as a champion of the natural wonders and wildlife of America. While on a diplomatic mission to
adjudicate the disputed boundary between the states of Louisiana and Mississippi, he went hunting for the brown
bear famous in the area, but the bears eluded him. His hosts didn't want to disappoint the President, so they
seized a bear for him. But the prisoner was only a cub, and the President would not harm a creature who had not
been fairly hunted. A political cartoonist named Clifford Berryman drew a depiction of the bespectacled President
and the fluffy, sweet-faced bear he had declined to shoot, and the cartoon appeared in papers on November 16,
1902.
After the famous bear cartoon about Teddy Roosevelt appeared in the papers, a
shopkeeper, Morris Michtom took two stuffed toy bears which his wife had made and put them in his display window.
He had an idea.
Michtom possessed a small novelty and confectionery in Brooklyn, New York. His wife
Rose was creating toy bears available in their store. Michtom sent President Roosevelt a bear and asked permission
from President Theodore Roosevelt to call these toy bears "Teddy's bears". Roosevelt agreed. Michtom and a company
known as Butler Brothers, started to mass-produce the teddy bear. Inside a year Michtom jumped off with his own
company known as the Ideal Novelty and Toy Company. Morris Michtom made the first authorised toy bear called the
teddy bear.
America went bear mad just about overnight, the Michtoms went on to make their
fortune with the Ideal Novelty and Toy Company and President Roosevelt had found a highly effective political
mascot.
Curiously, the Michtom's bears, later known as Morris bears, looked much like those
of Margarete Steiff with button eyes, embroidered mouths and noses, articulated joints that allowed limbs and heads
to move, cloth soles, and felt claws.
In 1903 in Giengen, Germany, Margarete Steiff made toy animals out of felt in a
small factory owned by her family. An malady had left Margaret Steiff not able to walk. She declined to be stopped
by her handicap and earned her living by sewing. First she constructed stuffed elephants, then other animals. Her
nephew, Richard Stieff, encouraged her to make a bear based on his sketches following a visit to the Stuttgart
Zoo.
She started with a soft toy factory in Giengen, had added a soft plush bear to the
Steiff catalogue and sold 3,000 to America in 1903. Between 1903 and the First World War Steiff sold literally
millions of bears, with their trademark button in the left ear, to the United States, Germany and Britain, as the
teddy bear overtook the diabolo as the latest toy craze.
Margarete was afraid a toy bear would be too fearsome, so she softened the bear's
snout into a friendly, pert nose and gave him a slightly humped back like a real bear. She cut a pattern out of
brown mohair pile fabric and created a bear whose head, arms, and legs were jointed so they could move
independently and so the bear could sit or stand. The toy was stuffed with excelsior (wood shavings used as packing
material), and he had shoe-button eyes and an embroidered nose and other features.
At a toy show in Leipzig, Germany, Richard displayed the bear, which caught the
attention of an American toy buyer who ordered 3,000 bears. Steiff bears in many variations from Margarete's
original have been created in the Steiff factory in Germany ever since, where thousands are now produced every
day.
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