​🧸​ National Teddy Bear Day ​🧸​

[Andriel_Isilien]

Hey y'all! I found out that today is National Teddy Bear Day 🧸So, I went down the rabbit hole about how stuffies came to be what we love and adore. Thought I would share!

It's common knowledge that the US President, Theodore Roosevelt, is where the name "Teddy Bear" originates but... who made the first teddy bear? I want to give credit to this seamstress, Margarete Steiff.

 

She was born in Germany, 1874. As a baby she caught the disease polio that left her with a lifelong disability. She lost all mobility in both her legs and partially in her right arm. That did not stop Margarete in the slightest, though. Her family were amazing to encourage and support her to have a full life. She grew up going to school the same as other children. At 17 Margarete accomplished her studies to be a seamstress despite the difficulty and pain she had holding a needle. She got her start working in a tailor shop with her sisters until she opened her own store making felt underskirts. Her business was growing! Hard wooden and metal toys for children were well known but little was made for soft, stuffed ones. A couple of magazines (both American and German) at the time published patterns for sewing farm animals. This gave Margarete the inspiration to stitch her first felt elephant as a pin cushion with lambswool stuffing. She experimented with this and would give these plush animals to family members as gifts. 1880 was when she got to selling a variety of plush animals using these patterns. Margarete's brother, Fritz, saw potential with her talent. He took samples of her work to markets and would return with many many orders for more! Her nephew, Richard, joined her business designing sketches and patterns for sewing. Some stuffies would have metal frames inside them, be pull-along toys with a cord, or even ride-ons. Margarete's clothing store evolved into a "Felt-Toy-Factory" under the Steiff family name.

The very first bear (Bear 55 PB) was made 1902 as a soft toy with moveable joints. Richard (nephew) brought her plush toys to a fair in Germany. There, an American buyer order 3,000 of them due to a very popular political cartoon of Roosevelt with a bear cub. Stuffed bears became a best seller in the US and in 1907 we got the nickname "Teddy" for them. A whopping 1 million bears were produced that year!

 

 

I think Margarete is an amazing female figure that, despite her limitations, started the market of stuffed animals for children and adults to enjoy generation after generation. What a boss!

You are never too old for a teddy bear 

[Guest weirdunicorn]

i love the deep dive down the rabbit hole. 🐻 

[MissNMTX]

That's awesome. Love Teddy 🧸 Bears. Somewhere I still have my Mom's teddy bear from when my grandpa was in Germany....with posable arms and legs. Not the normal cuddly kind! I remember it being so cool and fun.

[browneyedgirl]

Thank you so much! That was extremely interesting. I had no clue that Teddy bears had such an amazing origin story. 

Happy national Teddy Bear Day!!! 🧸🧸🧸