"Valentine Teddy Bears"
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by: lyle.hafele
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Word Count: 391
Date: Thu, 11 Feb 2010 Time: 11:55 AM
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As early as 1894 the German toy company of Gebruder Sussenguth featured a stuffed bear in their catalog and 50 years before that Robbert Southey wrote of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Neither however identified their creation as Teddy.
The precursor of the now famous German Steiff bear, often erroneously referred to as a teddy bear, first appeared in the Steiff Company catalog in 1899 as a brown bear with its handler or a dancing bear. They were rounder and softer than the later bears dubbed Teddy.
Margarete Stiff introduced her popular Stieff Bear to the United States market in 1903. The sweet brown bear with its Stieff trademark button in the ear was an instant hit and people immediately began calling it a Teddy Bear, although the Stieff company referred to it only as 55PB.
The American version of the origin of the teddy bear did indeed involve President Teddy Roosevelt. A popular cartoon of the day showed a cuddly bear cub the President had come upon in the mountains of Mississippi. The actual bear Teddy Roosevelt confronted in 1902 was a wounded bear, the victim of some unsportsmanlike torture and the President ordered it killed as an act of mercy. But popular cartoonist Clifford Berryman of The Washington Post took artistic liberties with the story. Ignoring the truth, he drew the bear as a loveable cub with no blood in sight.
American store owner Morris Michtom, inspired by Berryman’s cartoon created a small stuffed bear and put it in the front window of his shop. He tagged it Teddy’s bear and the name stuck. He subsequently made a gift of the bear to President Teddy Roosevelt, requesting permission to make and sell more bears in his name. A flattered president granted Michtom permission to produce the bears and an industry was born
The first known advertisement using the words Teddy Bear appeared in the toy trade magazine, Playthings, in 1907. Both Stieff and Morris Michtom’s company sold stuffed bears to an eager public and most people called them Teddy Bears. The controversy about origin, never settled, continues to present day.
Valentine Teddy Bears
http://valentinesdayroses.biz/main_page.php?id=valentine_teddy_bears.html
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