48 Fun Facts About Teddy Bear

The teddy bear is named after which US president?

Theodore Roosevelt openly disliked being called Teddy. After newspapers made a story of his 1902 bear hunt in Mississippi, toymakers put the nickname on a stuffed bear anyway, and it stuck.

Why did the president spare the bear on the hunt behind the teddy bear?

It had been tied to a tree: his guides had run the old bear down with dogs and roped it to a willow for him. He called shooting it unsportsmanlike, though he did order the injured animal put out of its misery.

Clifford Berryman's 1902 cartoon of a president sparing a bear ran in which newspaper?

The Washington Post ran it on November 16, 1902. Berryman first drew a full-grown bear, then shrank it into a small, frightened cub that he kept tucking into his cartoons for years.

What did Morris Michtom sell at the Brooklyn business where he displayed the first 'Teddy's bear'?

Candy was the day job. His wife Rose sewed the first bears, two of them went into the shop window, and the demand that followed soon turned the sweet shop into a toy business.

Which toy company did Morris Michtom found on the back of his teddy bear?

Ideal began with a request: Michtom asked the president's permission to call his toys 'Teddy's bears', then sold so many that he went into mass production.

Richard Steiff's jointed teddy bear was first shown at a toy fair in March 1903 in which German city?

Leipzig was where an American dealer spotted the bear and ordered 3,000, the breakthrough that made the company's name. Richard Steiff had based the design on bears he sketched at the zoo.

Margarete Steiff's first product, in 1880, was a felt pincushion in the shape of which animal?

An elephant: she sewed it from a pattern in a fashion magazine and meant it to hold pins, but children took to it as a toy. Polio had left her unable to walk, and sewing was how she earned her living.

Which trademark has marked every Steiff toy since 1904?

A button in the ear was devised by Franz Steiff, the founder's nephew, because the bear's success had brought a wave of cheaper imitations. The metal stud still tells a genuine Steiff from a copy.

Early teddy bears were usually covered in which fabric?

Mohair plush, woven from the fleece of long-haired goats, was what Richard Steiff settled on after hunting for a material soft enough to cuddle. Most modern bears make do with synthetic fur.

Which country made the 19-metre teddy bear that set a Guinness size record in 2019?

It was built in Xonacatlan in the State of Mexico and measured 63 feet 8 inches long.

Which M*A*S*H character sleeps with a teddy bear at the 4077th?

Radar O'Reilly, the unit's boyish clerk, kept the bear until the day he was sent home. He left it behind on Hawkeye's bunk as a parting gift, a sign that the farm boy had grown up.

For more than 30 years BBC engineers used 'The Teddy Bears' Picnic' for what purpose?

Testing audio equipment suited Henry Hall's 1932 recording because its range of tones was unusually wide for its day. Engineers went on using the same record to check their gear into the early 1960s.

Christopher Robin Milne's teddy bear, the model for Winnie-the-Pooh, was bought at which London store?

Harrods sold the bear that became Pooh. In 1947 he and the other nursery toys crossed the Atlantic with Milne's American publisher and never came back: they were given to the New York Public Library in 1987.

The real bear who gave Pooh his first name was named by a Canadian army vet after which home city?

Winnipeg was Harry Colebourn's adopted home. He bought the orphaned cub for $20 at an Ontario railway station in 1914 on his way to war, and left her at London Zoo when his unit went on to France.

Which animal gave Winnie-the-Pooh the 'Pooh' half of his name?

A swan: it was a friend's pet that the Milnes met on holiday and knew as Pooh. Milne put the swan into a poem two years before he handed its name on to the bear.

Paddington Bear arrives in London as a stowaway from which country?

Peru was a late change. Michael Bond first wrote that the bear came from darkest Africa, until his agent pointed out that Africa has no bears, so he moved him to a country that does.

Michael Bond bought the lonely teddy bear that inspired Paddington as a last-minute present for his wife on which day?

Christmas Eve, 1956: the bear was the last one left on a London shop shelf, and Bond bought it out of pity. A few months later he wrote the first book about it in ten days.

Which actor has voiced Paddington Bear in his films since 2014?

Ben Whishaw was a late replacement. Colin Firth had already recorded the part, but dropped out during post-production, and Whishaw has voiced the bear in every film since.

Rupert Bear first appeared in 1920 in which British newspaper?

The Daily Express launched Rupert to win readers from rivals whose comic strips were selling papers, the Daily Mail and the Daily Mirror. Mary Tourtel, wife of one of its editors, drew him.

Which former Beatle produced the BAFTA-winning animated short Rupert and the Frog Song?

Paul McCartney's company bought the film rights to Rupert in April 1970, one day after he announced he was leaving the Beatles. The 13-minute short was all that reached cinemas, 14 years later.

What is Corduroy, the department-store teddy bear of Don Freeman's 1968 picture book, missing?

A button on his overalls is missing, so shoppers pass him by until a girl named Lisa takes him home and sews on a new one. Don Freeman's own publisher turned the book down before finally giving it a chance.

Teddy Ruxpin, one of the best-selling toys of 1985 and 1986, told stories using what technology?

A cassette deck in his back played the stories while his eyes and mouth moved in time with the tape. The craze was brief: his maker, Worlds of Wonder, filed for bankruptcy within three years of the launch.

Which bears were first painted in 1981 to decorate American Greetings cards?

The Care Bears were painted for the card company by Elena Kucharik. Four years later their first film took more at the North American box office than Disney's The Black Cauldron, which had cost many times as much to make.

Which pink, strawberry-scented teddy bear rules Sunnyside Daycare as the villain of Toy Story 3?

Lotso, short for Lots-o'-Huggin' Bear, turned bitter when the girl who lost him simply got a replacement. Pixar had wanted him in the first Toy Story, but could not yet animate convincing fur.

Which toy chain halted its 2018 'Pay Your Age' sale?

Build-A-Bear Workshop offered any bear for the price of the child's age, and the lines grew so long that stores had to shut their doors and its chief executive apologised. The chain began in St. Louis in 1997.

What is Fozzie Bear's catchphrase after telling a joke on The Muppet Show?

Wocka wocka! Frank Oz, who performed the bear for 24 years, has said he was named after Faz Fazakas, the workshop designer who made his ears wiggle, and not, as fans long assumed, after F. Oz himself.

In the 2012 film Ted, the foul-mouthed teddy bear comes to life because of what?

A boy's childhood wish, made just as a shooting star passes, comes true. Ted enjoys a brief spell as a celebrity, then settles into sharing a flat with the grown-up John for decades.

Sooty, the British TV glove-puppet bear, was bought by Harry Corbett on a 1948 holiday in which seaside resort?

Blackpool's North Pier sold him the plain yellow bear for seven shillings and sixpence. Before its first television appearance Corbett blackened the ears and nose with soot, and changed its name from Teddy to match.

Aloysius, Sebastian Flyte's teddy bear in Brideshead Revisited, was modelled on the real bear of which poet?

John Betjeman took his bear, Archibald Ormsby-Gore, up to Oxford with him in the 1920s, which is where the novel's bear comes from. Archie stayed with the poet for life and was in his arms when he died in 1984.

Smokey Bear was given his own what in 1964 because of the volume of mail he received?

A ZIP code was the only way to cope: more than 13,000 letters a week were arriving for a living bear, a cub pulled badly burned from a forest fire in the Southwest in 1950, who spent 26 years at the National Zoo.

Why did a 1952 song add 'the' to Smokey Bear's official name?

To keep the song's rhythm, writers Steve Nelson and Jack Rollins slipped in an extra 'the'. The wrong name then spread through everyday speech and print for decades, though it was never made official.

Which American soft-toy maker, founded in 1898, launched the floppy plush bear Snuffles in 1981?

Gund's founder, Adolf Gund, taught a young Russian immigrant named Jacob Swedlin to cut patterns. When he retired in 1925 he sold him the whole company for $1,500, and Swedlin's brothers helped it grow.

The charity 'teddy bear toss', when fans throw soft toys onto the playing surface, began in which sport?

Ice hockey crowds let fly the moment the home team scores its first goal, and the toys are gathered up for hospitals and charities. One minor-league club, the Hershey Bears, claims more than 100,000 in a single game.

Bungle the bear, housemate of Zippy and George, appeared on which British children's series?

Rainbow was devised as a British answer to Sesame Street and ran for more than 1,000 episodes from 1972. Bungle, played by an actor in a bear suit, shared its house with the puppets Zippy and George.

Else Holmelund Minarik's Little Bear books, basis of the Nick Jr. series, were illustrated by whom?

Maurice Sendak drew the bears six years before Where the Wild Things Are. Minarik, a first-grade teacher, wrote the first book because she wanted something her pupils could read entirely on their own.

In The Simpsons, which character pines for Bobo, the teddy bear he lost as a child?

Mr. Burns dropped Bobo in the snow on the day he left home to live with a loveless billionaire. The 1993 episode, 'Rosebud', retells Citizen Kane with a teddy bear in place of the sled.

Snuggle, a giggling teddy bear puppet, has been the advertising mascot since 1986 for which kind of product?

Fabric softener has been sold by the bear since three years after the brand's launch. The puppet was created by Kermit Love, the puppet maker who also built Big Bird for Sesame Street.

Sweep and Soo, the companions of glove-puppet bear Sooty, are what kinds of animal?

Sweep, a squeaking grey dog, arrived in 1957 and Soo, a panda, in 1964; Harry Corbett later handed the act to his son Matthew.

Which singer's 1957 number one begged 'Let Me Be Your Teddy Bear'?

Elvis Presley sang it in Loving You, his first starring role, and it spent seven weeks at number one. His parents were visiting the set, and they can be spotted in the audience in the film's final scene.

Pudsey, the bandana-wearing bear introduced in 1985, is the mascot of which BBC charity appeal?

Children in Need got its bear from BBC designer Joanna Lane, who named him after Pudsey, the Yorkshire town where her grandfather had been mayor. He looked sad at first; a redesign a year later gave him a smile.

Which 1990s sitcom character's constant companion is a knitted toy simply called Teddy?

Mr. Bean treats the little knitted bear as alive, buying it presents and creeping about in the morning so as not to wake it. That has not stopped him using Teddy as a paintbrush or shrinking him in the wash.

What word describes people who are fond of, or collect, teddy bears?

Arctophiles take their name from arktos, the Greek for bear. The same word gave us the Arctic, the region that lies beneath the constellation of the Great Bear.

Rilakkuma, the teddy bear character that debuted in 2003, comes from which country?

Japan's San-X launched him in 2003. Designer Aki Kondo, busy at work and envious of the easy life of pet dogs, blended 'relax' with kuma, the Japanese for bear, to name a bear who does nothing all day.

After Taft won the 1908 election, toymakers pushed which plush animal to replace the teddy bear?

A possum: Taft had been served a roast one at an Atlanta banquet in January 1909, so a Georgia firm launched Billy Possum with the slogan 'Good-bye, Teddy Bear'. The toy had flopped within the year.

Which firm, making bears at Ironbridge since 1930, did the BBC call Britain's last surviving teddy bear factory in 2011?

Merrythought made Mr Whoppit, the mascot that speed-record breaker Donald Campbell carried in his cockpit. When Campbell was killed on Coniston Water in 1967, the bear floated free of the wreck and was recovered.

Misha, the smiling bear cub who floated out of the stadium on balloons, was the mascot of which city's Olympics?

Moscow's 1980 Games ended with a giant Misha rising out of the stadium under a cluster of balloons, while cards held up in the stands showed him shedding a tear.

What kind of journal ran a deadpan 1972 April Fools' paper on the teddy bear's diseases?

A veterinary journal, the Veterinary Record, let three authors describe the ailments of 'Brunus edwardii' as if the teddy bear were a new species. Readers sent in their own observations of the species for months afterwards.

A. A. Milne set Winnie-the-Pooh's adventures in a wood modelled on part of which real English forest?

Ashdown Forest, in Sussex, lay just beyond Milne's farmhouse. So many visitors have since come to play Poohsticks there that the old wooden bridge wore out, and Disney helped pay to rebuild it in 1999.