However, the shipwreck story is disputed – author Günther Pfeiffer notes that it was only recorded in 1953 and says it is more likely that the 55 PB was not sufficiently durable to survive until the present day. Although Steiff's records show that the bears were produced, they are not recorded as arriving in the U.S., and no example of the type, '55 PB', has ever been seen, leading to the story that the bears were shipwrecked. He ordered 3,000 to be sent to the United States. Steiff exhibited the toy at the Leipzig Toy Fair in March 1903, where it was seen by Hermann Berg, a buyer for George Borgfeldt & Company in New York (and the brother of composer Alban Berg). Ī little earlier in 1902 in Germany, the Steiff firm produced a stuffed bear from Richard Steiff's designs. He created a tiny soft bear cub and put it in his candy shop window at 404 Tompkins Avenue in Brooklyn with a sign 'Teddy's bear.' The toys were an immediate success and Michtom founded the Ideal Novelty and Toy Co. Morris Michtom saw the Berryman drawing of Roosevelt and was inspired to create a teddy bear. While the initial cartoon of an adult black bear lassoed by a handler and a disgusted Roosevelt had symbolic overtones, later issues of that and other Berryman cartoons made the bear smaller and cuter. He refused to shoot the bear himself, deeming this unsportsmanlike, but instructed that the bear be killed to put it out of its misery, and it became the topic of a political cartoon by Clifford Berryman in The Washington Post on November 16, 1902. They called Roosevelt to the site and suggested that he shoot it. A suite of Roosevelt's attendants, led by Holt Collier, cornered, clubbed, and tied an American black bear to a willow tree after a long exhausting chase with hounds. There were several other hunters competing, and most of them had already killed an animal. The name originated from an incident on a bear hunting trip in Mississippi in November 1902, to which Roosevelt was invited by Mississippi Governor Andrew H. The name teddy bear comes from former United States President Theodore Roosevelt, who was often referred to as 'Teddy' (though he loathed being referred to as such). A 1902 political cartoon in The Washington Post spawned the teddy bear name.

Steiff teddy bear