Teddy Bear Trivia
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48 free Teddy Bear trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
40 free Teddy bear trivia questions with answers. Teddy bear trivia for anyone who still has one on the shelf. The quiz starts with the 1902 Mississippi hunt and the Washington Post cartoon that gave the toy its name, follows Morris Michtom's candy-shop bear and Richard Steiff's 55 PB, and then wanders through a century of famous bears: Winnie-the-Pooh and the real Winnipeg, Paddington's marmalade, Rupert, Corduroy, Sooty and Bungle, the Care Bears, Teddy Ruxpin, Fozzie, Smokey, Build-A-Bear and Seth MacFarlane's Ted. Most questions are answerable by anyone who grew up with these characters; a few - Steiff's model number, Aloysius's poet, the BBC's use of 'The Teddy Bears' Picnic' - are for the collectors. It suits a family quiz, a baby shower round, or National Teddy Bear Day on 9 September. Every answer has been checked against a reference page and carries its source.
30 of 48 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The teddy bear is named after which US president?
Theodore Roosevelt
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.
Q 02Why did the president spare the bear on the hunt behind the teddy bear?
It had been tied to a tree
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.
Q 03Clifford Berryman's 1902 cartoon of a president sparing a bear ran in which newspaper?
The Washington Post
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.
Q 04What did Morris Michtom sell at the Brooklyn business where he displayed the first 'Teddy's bear'?
Candy
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.
Q 05Which toy company did Morris Michtom found on the back of his teddy bear?
Ideal
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.
Q 06Richard Steiff's jointed teddy bear was first shown at a toy fair in March 1903 in which German city?
Leipzig
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.
Q 07Margarete Steiff's first product, in 1880, was a felt pincushion in the shape of which animal?
Elephant
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.
Q 08Which trademark has marked every Steiff toy since 1904?
A button in the ear
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.
Q 09Early teddy bears were usually covered in which fabric?
Mohair
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.
Q 10Which country made the 19-metre teddy bear that set a Guinness size record in 2019?
Mexico
It was built in Xonacatlan in the State of Mexico and measured 63 feet 8 inches long.
Q 11Which M*A*S*H character sleeps with a teddy bear at the 4077th?
Radar O'Reilly
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.
Q 12For more than 30 years BBC engineers used 'The Teddy Bears' Picnic' for what purpose?
Testing audio equipment
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.
Q 13Christopher Robin Milne's teddy bear, the model for Winnie-the-Pooh, was bought at which London store?
Harrods
Q 21What is Corduroy, the department-store teddy bear of Don Freeman's 1968 picture book, missing?
A button on his overalls
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.
Q 22Teddy Ruxpin, one of the best-selling toys of 1985 and 1986, told stories using what technology?
A cassette deck in his back
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.
Q 23Which bears were first painted in 1981 to decorate American Greetings cards?
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.
Q 14The real bear who gave Pooh his first name was named by a Canadian army vet after which home city?
Winnipeg
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.
Q 15Which animal gave Winnie-the-Pooh the 'Pooh' half of his name?
A swan
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.
Q 16Paddington Bear arrives in London as a stowaway from which country?
Peru
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.
Q 17Michael Bond bought the lonely teddy bear that inspired Paddington as a last-minute present for his wife on which day?
Christmas Eve
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.
Q 18Which actor has voiced Paddington Bear in his films since 2014?
Ben Whishaw
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.
Q 19Rupert Bear first appeared in 1920 in which British newspaper?
The Daily Express
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.
Q 20Which former Beatle produced the BAFTA-winning animated short Rupert and the Frog Song?
Paul McCartney
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.
The Care Bears
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.
Q 24Which pink, strawberry-scented teddy bear rules Sunnyside Daycare as the villain of Toy Story 3?
Lotso
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.
Q 25Which toy chain halted its 2018 'Pay Your Age' sale?
Build-A-Bear Workshop
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.
Q 26What is Fozzie Bear's catchphrase after telling a joke on The Muppet Show?
Wocka wocka!
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.
Q 27In the 2012 film Ted, the foul-mouthed teddy bear comes to life because of what?
A boy's childhood wish
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.
Q 28Sooty, the British TV glove-puppet bear, was bought by Harry Corbett on a 1948 holiday in which seaside resort?
Blackpool
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.
Q 29Aloysius, Sebastian Flyte's teddy bear in Brideshead Revisited, was modelled on the real bear of which poet?
John Betjeman
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.
Q 30Smokey Bear was given his own what in 1964 because of the volume of mail he received?
ZIP code
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.