Theodore Roosevelt refused to shoot a tied bear, and a toy was born
On a Mississippi hunt in November 1902, Theodore Roosevelt declined to shoot a black bear his attendants had tied to a willow tree, calling it unsporting. A newspaper cartoon of the scene inspired a New York candy-shop owner to make a soft bear cub labelled Teddy's bear. Roosevelt, for the record, loathed the nickname.
The hunt came at the invitation of Mississippi governor Andrew H. Longino. Roosevelt's party, led by the freedman Holt Collier, chased the bear with hounds, clubbed it and tied it up, then summoned the president. He refused to fire, although he did order that the animal be killed to end its suffering. Clifford Berryman drew the episode for The Washington Post on November 16, 1902, and in later cartoons the bear grew steadily smaller and cuter.
Morris Michtom put his small cub in the window of his shop at 404 Tompkins Avenue, and demand was so strong that he founded the Ideal Novelty and Toy Co. Meanwhile, in Germany, the Steiff firm had produced a stuffed bear from Richard Steiff's designs in 1902. At the Leipzig Toy Fair in March 1903 a New York buyer, Hermann Berg, brother of the composer Alban Berg, ordered 3,000. No example of that model, known as 55 PB, has ever surfaced; a tale that the shipment sank was only recorded in 1953, and the author Günther Pfeiffer thinks the bears simply were not durable enough to last.
Early bears copied real cubs, with long snouts, beady eyes and tawny mohair. Modern ones have bigger eyes and foreheads and smaller noses, baby-like proportions meant to maximise cuteness, and most are made from synthetic fur in low-cost countries such as China and Indonesia. Not everyone approved: in 1907 a Michigan priest, Michael G. Esper, denounced them as monstrosities that would stop girls wanting to nurture dolls, a claim that drew brief, widespread attention.
The bear quickly entered popular culture, including John W. Bratton's 1907 two-step The Teddy Bears' Picnic, which gained lyrics from Jimmy Kennedy in 1932. Retail sales of plush animals including teddies reached US$1.3 billion in 2006, collectors are known as arctophiles, and the first teddy bear museum opened in Petersfield, Hampshire, in 1984.
Source: Teddy bear
