The teddy bear is one of the most beloved toys ever made. Generations of children have hugged them to sleep, and plenty of grown-ups still keep one on a shelf. You may have even heard a curious claim that the very first teddy bears were made for adults, not kids. Is that true?
The historical record doesn't really support it. The teddy bear appeared in the early 1900s, created at about the same time by Morris Michtom in the United States and Richard Steiff in Germany, and it quickly became a popular children's toy. The grown-up twist belongs to an earlier toy: Steiff's very first stuffed animals were felt elephants sold as pincushions, until children started playing with them.
A President Who Wouldn't Shoot
The name comes from President Theodore Roosevelt, often called Teddy, a nickname he reportedly loathed. In November 1902, he joined a bear-hunting trip in Mississippi. After a long chase, his attendants, led by a formerly enslaved man named Holt Collier, cornered a black bear and tied it to a willow tree.
They invited Roosevelt to shoot it, but he refused, calling it unsportsmanlike. Instead, he told them to put the injured bear out of its misery. The episode inspired a political cartoon by Clifford Berryman in The Washington Post on November 16, 1902. Later versions of Berryman's cartoons made the bear smaller and cuter.
A Candy Shop Window
Morris Michtom saw the cartoon and made a small, soft bear cub. He set it in the window of his candy shop in New York City with a sign that read "Teddy's bear." The toys were an immediate success, and Michtom went on to found the Ideal Novelty and Toy Company.
The craze spread quickly. A children's book series called The Roosevelt Bears appeared, and in 1907 composer John W. Bratton wrote the tune "The Teddy Bears' Picnic." Words were added to the tune in 1932.
Meanwhile, in Germany
Across the ocean, the Steiff company had begun in 1880 with seamstress Margarete Steiff. Her felt elephants were meant as pincushions, but children claimed them as toys, and she soon designed monkeys, horses, dogs, cats, and many other animals for kids.
In 1902, her nephew Richard Steiff designed a plush bear with movable arms and legs, known as 55 PB. At a toy fair in 1903, an American buyer ordered 3,000 of them. Strangely, no example of that bear has ever been found. One story says the shipment was lost at sea, but one author notes that the tale wasn't recorded until 1953 and suggests the bears simply weren't sturdy enough to survive. By 1907, Steiff was making 974,000 bears. Neither Steiff nor Michtom likely knew about the other's bear, since news traveled slowly across the Atlantic in those days.
Teddies for Every Age
Early teddy bears looked like real bears, with long snouts and beady eyes. Over time they gained bigger eyes and foreheads and smaller noses, baby-like features that make them cuter.
Adults do love them too. After the Titanic sank in 1912, a British retailer ordered black Steiff bears as mourning comfort, though only 494 were made. Today, rare old teddies sell at auction, and bears are popular gifts for adults to show affection or sympathy. So while the first teddies were a children's hit, it turns out nobody ever truly outgrows them.
