Morris and Rose Mitchom, owners of a Brooklyn candy store in 1902, take credit for creating the first Teddy Bear in the United States after the incident described below and after seeing Berrymans cartoon.
On the 14 November 1902, Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th President of the United States of America took time out for relaxation after some hard political bargaining over the disputed boundaries between the states of Mississippi and Louisiana. His hosts took him on a hunting trip to an area near Little Sunflower River in Mississippi. In an effort to please the President a bear cub was captured, stunned and tied to a tree to ensure that the President had an easy target and would go home with a trophy.
However this plan backfired because the President refused
to shoot the defenceless cub and ordered it to be set free. The press who
were covering Roosevelt's visit quickly heard of the incident and the Washington
Star's political cartoonist Clifford Berryman drew this cartoon of the incident
entitled 'Drawing the line at Mississippi. The cartoon emphasises the child
like helplessness of the cub and was designed to convey the politiacl message
that such an upstanding President as Roosevelt could not be persuaded to make
decisions for the wrong reasons. The cartoon was printed in all the papers
and Roosevelt's popularity soared as a result of his actions. For the rest
of his political career Roosevelt mascot was 'Teddy's Bear', which Berryman
continued to use in all his cartoons and which played a key part in the Presidents
successful re-election campaign of 1905.
Mr. Mitchom used the cartoon as a guide to design a pattern of the bear cub he had seen in the cartoon. With his wife's help he quickly created a little bear and put in his store's window along with a copy of the cartoon. He called the toy "Teddy's Bear". It became so popular that within a year of its creation, Mr. Mitchom closed the candy store and founded the Ideal Novelty and Toy Company, which was, at one time, the largest bear factory in the United States and remains one of the biggest toy companies in the world today.
Almost at the same time in Germany Richard Steiff went to the Stuttgart Zoo in search of an idea for a new toy. Among the animals he saw there was a troupe of performing bears which gave him an idea. He envisioned a toy bear, which stood upright, and was jointed similar to the way in which dolls were made. Richard sketched the bears and gave the drawings to his aunt, Margarete Steiff, a renowned toy maker and designer. Margarete took her nephew's drawings and designed a jointed bear based on them.
The new jointed bear appeared for the first time at the Leipzig Toy Fair in 1903. At first, no one seemed interested in the jointed bear. Then, as the story goes, while Richard was packing up his stand at the end of the fair, an American buyer approached him, and upon seeing the bear, immediately ordered several thousand. This was the beginning of the Steiff teddy bears we now all know and love.
copyright Teddy Bear UK - 2000. All rights reserved