Legend has it that our love of teddy bears began in 1902 with a hunting trip. Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th president of the United States, was coming up short on attaining a kill on the excursion. His companions captured a bear and tied it to a tree, affording Roosevelt the opportunity to shoot it. But Roosevelt walked away, declaring that it would be unsportsmanlike to kill the captive animal.
A Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist, Clifford Berryman, heard of the incident and created a cartoon of “Teddy” Roosevelt’s compassion toward the bear. The cartoon, which illustrated the event, appeared in “The Washington Post:” in November, 1902. It featured a cuddly bear cub when in fact, the actual bear was an old injured bear. Berryman used the bear in several other political cartoons throughout Roosevelt’s term.
After the appearance of the 1902 cartoon, a Russian-born businessman, Morris Michtom, conceived the idea of a plush bear cub toy. He sent one to Roosevelt and also displayed one in the window of his candy shop with a sign reading “Teddy’s bear.” Michtom’s wife fashioned the first bear out of velvet and stuffed it with wood shavings. The demand for the teddy bear was immediate, leading Michtom to establish the Ideal Toy Company, a business that would grow to become the world’s largest toy manufacturer.
While Michtom was succeeding in America, around the same time in Germany, toymaker Margarete Steiff and her nephew were visiting a zoo, where the boy was fascinated with the bears. He asked Margarete to design a stuffed bear, which she created with movable arms and legs, button eyes, and stitched mouths and noses. By 1907, one million Steiff teddy bears had been produced. • In 1912, following the sinking of the Titanic, the Steiff company produced 500 teddy bears to honor the victims. These black mohair “mourning” bears included red felt behind the eyes to signify eyes red-rimmed from crying. In 2000, a mourning bear sold at auction for more than $250,000.
In 1907, American composer John Bratton composed “The Teddy Bear Two-Step,” a song that sold well and could be heard regularly accompanying circus acts. In 1930, an Irish songwriter, Jimmy Kennedy, added lyrics and the song was renamed “The Teddy Bears Picnic.” Very popular over the decades, the song has been recorded by many, including Bing Crosby, Rosemary, Clooney, Jerry Garcia, and Anne Murray.
During World War I, a Canadian soldier stationed in Ontario bought a live bear cub for $20, naming the cub Winnipeg Bear after the town he grew up in. The bear quickly became his infantry troop’s mascot. When the brigade headed overseas, the bear came along, where he stayed until the unit was deployed to France. Winnipeg was then loaned to the London Zoo, where the extremely tame bear, nicknamed Winnie, was one of the zoo’s most popular animals. Frequent visitors to the zoo were A.A. Milne and his son Christopher Robin. Christopher named his own stuffed bear Winnie, adding “Pooh” after the name of a friend’s pet swan. A.A. Milne published his first book about the “silly old bear,” “Winnie-the-Pooh” in 1926.
