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 Teddy
bear, teddy bear where did you come from?
The story about the Teddy Bear
originates 100 years ago when our 26th President of the United States,
Theodore Roosevelt, decided to take time out for himself following some
difficult bargaining over the disputed boundaries between Mississippi and
Louisiana.
In November 1902, President Roosevelt,
who truly enjoyed the outdoors, nature, and especially being in the woods,
among the animals, set out for a bear hunt with his aides. Because he was
the president, the people organizing the hunt wanted to be sure that the
Presidents hunt was a success.
After a day in the woods, having not
fired one shot, the President was called to kill a bear cub that was
stunned, tired and tied to a tree. This, the aides thought, would ensure
that the President would have an easy target and a trophy to go home with.
However, the plan backfired because
the President refused to shoot the bear. Feeling it was un-sportsman-like
and inhumane to shoot a defenseless cub, President Roosevelt ordered that
the bear be set free.
 The following day
a popular cartoonist, Clifford K. Berryman (Bear-y-man!) captured that
moment in the woods in the November 16, 1902 cartoon for The Washington
Post. He captioned the cartoon, "Drawing the Line in Mississippi." The
cartoon emphasized the childlike helplessness of the cub and conveyed the
political message that such an upstanding President, as Roosevelt, could not
be persuaded to make decisions for the wrong reasons. The cartoon was
printed in many papers and Roosevelt's popularity soared as a result of his
actions.
The restrained bear cub in the cartoon
was variously called, "Berryman's Bear", "The Roosevelt Bear", and "Teddy's
Bear"… In just a few years, the lucky "Teddy's Bear" became the "teddybear"
and toy companies sprang up all over the United States to produce this
popular toy.
There are several stories that could
answer this question. The most popular story is about a man named Morris
Michtom. He made the first official toy bear called the teddy bear. Mr.
Mitchtom owned a small candy store in Brooklyn, New York and his wife, Rose,
made toy bears to sell in their store. Mr. Mitchtom sent President Roosevelt
one of Roses' bears and asked permission to use the teddy bear name.
Following the Presidents approval, Mr. Michtom consulted a company called
Butler Brothers to start mass-producing the teddy bear. Within a year, Mr.
Mitchtom closed his candy store and started a company called the Ideal
Novelty and Toy Company, which remains one of the biggest toy companies in
the world today.
At the same time the teddy bear was
born in The United States, it was also born, across the ocean in Giengen,
Germany. Richard Steiff was working for his aunt, Margarete Steiff, in her
stuffed toy business. Richard, a former art student, often visited the
Stuttgart Zoo to sketch animals, especially bear cubs. His design talents
led to the creation of a toy bear prototype in 1902, the same year the
Michtoms made "Teddy's Bear." Steiff bears were first introduced at the 1903
Leipzip Fair, where an American buyer saw them and ordered several thousand
for shipment to the United States.
Although both the Michtoms and Steiff
created their toy bears at the same time, it is believed that neither knew,
at a time of poor transatlantic communication, about the other's creation.
Besides, the Michtoms bear resembled the wide-eyed cub in the Berryman
cartoon, while the jointed Steiff bear, with its humped back and long snout,
looked more like a real bear cub, like the ones at the Stuttgart Zoo.
While there are other stories that
have been told about how the teddy bear came to be, and nobody knows for
sure whose story was first, the simultaneous births of the teddy bear in
Brooklyn and Giengen are the best substantiated.
By 1908, there were more than 20
companies making teddy bears in the United States alone. Consumers were in
love with teddy bears! The popularity of the toy led to its use in every
imaginable consumer good-candy containers, music boxes, clothing lines for
bears, specialty bears that performed and lit up and innumerable teddy bear
novelties. |
