Traditional Teddy Bears: The Story of Teddy Bearsand More

There are several stories about how traditional teddy bears came about, but most scholars agree that President Teddy Roosevelt is the one who the special bear came for. So what’s the story?

According to several scholars, Teddy Roosevelt was trying to settle an altercation in Mississippi when he attended a bear hunt in his spare time. Now, during this hunt there was a bear that had been wounded. Given that the bear had just killed a hunting dog, the hunting party probably wasn’t all that sympathetic towards the animal and tied him to a tree; they’d been searching for a bear to shoot for days. However, the President demanded that the bear be killed out of mercy, since it was obviously in pain, and refused to simply shoot the poor thing, especially since it wasn’t really able to get around anyways. There are disputes as to whether or not the bear was old or young or either or.

Needless to say, a cartoon was created, which pictured a large bear—nearly full grown—leashed and standing next to a colleague of the President. And then the drawing changed—the bear went from full grown (in the illustration) to a smaller, shivering in fear bear cub.

There is a rumor that the first teddy bear appeared when a shop owner by the name of Morris Michtom decided to take two small bears that his wife had made and place them in his shop window. He then asked President Teddy Roosevelt if he could call the bear a Teddy bear and received permission.

Thus, teddy bears were created!

From there, teddy bears boomed. A lady in Germany by the name of Margarette Steiff who made stuffed animal’s for a living, had a young nephew working for her. He introduced their bear in America during the teddy bear craze and ended the fait with an order for 3000 teddy bears.

It should be noticed that Steiff’s nephew was an artist and that her bears looked much more like a real bear than Michtom’s. However, Michtom’s had greater popularity because of the location. There was also a trademark button on the left ear of the Steiff teddy bears. Another interesting fact—Margarette Steiff was actually disabled.

So what do traditional teddy bears look like?

Well, for one, they were brown—all brown. You have to keep in mind that a sense of realism in toys was appreciated and weird colors have become more popular since the latter half of the twentieth century.

Next, they were generally medium sized to small bears, as opposed to the large bears that we have now. Not to mention that they were made of velour instead of most of the materials that teddy bears are made of now.

But there’s loads more that you can learn about teddy bears; have fun looking up new facts! There’s tons of information out there about not only traditional teddy bears but other toys—such as the first wind up duck!


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