“Teddy Bear and Friends” Is A Magazine With Over 40,000 Subscribers.

• 1837 – The story of Goldilocks And The Three Bears was written in 1837 by Robert Southey who was the Poet Laureate at the time.
• 1887 – The oldest known Recordable teddy bear was made in 1887 and belonged to a soldier named Albert Lasker, who brought it back from France after the war ended.
• 1902 – American President Theodore Roosevelt refused to shoot a bear cub while hunting in Mississippi. The incident made national news. Clifford Berryman published a cartoon of the event in the Washington Post on November 16th, 1902, and the caricature became an instant classic.
• 1902  – In Germany, the Steiff family developed a silk-like fabric bear, based on zoo animals. They caused a sensation at a toy fair and were snapped up by an American buyer.
• 1903 – The first Teddy was created. Morris and Rose Michtom of Brooklyn, New York, named a plush bear “Teddy’s Bear” in recognition of Roosevelt’s deeds.
• 1903 – A German firm called Steiff began manufacturing teddy bears with movable joints.  First appearance in a toy fair. Steiff debuts its teddy bear version at the Leipzig Toy Fair.
• 1903 – The name “teddy bear” was first used in 1903 when a toy dealer named Edward Bear made stuffed animals for children at his shop on Broadway in New York City. He called them “teddies.”
• 1906 – The Oxford English Dictionary dates the first use of the term teddy bear to 1906
• 1907 -The classic song, ‘Teddy Bear’s Picnic.’  was written in 1907, shortly after teddy bears were first manufactured in Europe and America.
  • The Teddy Bears’ Picnic song was originally called The Teddy Bear Two Step.
  • The Teddy Bears’ Picnic song was composed in 1907 by JK Bratton. Its words by Jimmy Kennedy were added in 1932.
• 1912 – After the Titanic sank in 1912, German toy company Steiff created 500 teddy bears to honor the victims. The “mourning bears” were black with red-rimmed eyes to show their sympathy. They now sell for $20,000 or more in auctions.
• 1981 – the Care Bears first became greeting cards. Not long after, they launched into television and toy history.
• 1984 – Judy Sparrow opens the world’s first teddy bear museum in Petersfield, Hampshire, England.
• 1995 – A teddy bear has been into space! Magellan T Bear boarded the Space Shuttle Discovery in 1995 as part of a school project.
• 2004 – more than 36 million teddy bears were sold in the U.S. alone!
• 2009 –  December 2009, a new record was set for the most teddy bears sold in one day – more than 5 million bears!
• 2012 – There’s probably no bigger arctophile than Jackie Miley of South Dakota.  She holds the Guinness World Record for having the most teddy bears — 8,026 at the time the record was set in 2012!  She has so many, she keeps them in a separate house across the street from where she lives.
• 2013 – it was reported that the average American spent about $220 on teddy bears each year!
• 2018 – The teddy bear emoji is a representation of a child’s stuffed toy bear. Toys, children and their wonderful innocence, affection for significant others, and folks who are just so freaking cute you want to squeeze them like a teddy bear are all emerging uses that were only introduced in 2018.
• 2020 – A staggering 5,000 artists globally make their money from designing custom-made teddy bears, according to the Chicago Tribune in 2020
• Big Bird from Sesame Street named his Teddy Bear “Radar”.
• The British invasion of Teddy Bears includes Winnie-the-Pooh and Paddington.
• Let’s not forget the Muppet character Fozzie Bear. The lovable and comedic bear endlessly perseveres with one-liners, slapstick and musical comedy.
• They aren’t just for children – 40% of teddy sales are for adults, and a quarter of us still have our childhood companions.
• If you love teddy bears, you are officially an arctophile (say “ark-toe-file”)! That’s from the Greek words arctos (meaning bear) and philos (meaning loving).
•  In Southey’s original story, the visitor to the bears’ house was an ugly old woman. Goldilocks only entered the tale in later versions.
• The term “bear hug” meaning a tight embrace was first used in 1846, almost 60 years before the teddy bear was “born”.
• There are more than 500 types of Teddy Bears on sale at any time (as of 2019).
• Over 90% of teddy bears sold in the United States are created in China.
• In Europe, Russia, and China, giving a bear without mentioning its name first is considered bad luck. This is why many Russian teddies have names such as Vladimir or Natasha inscribed on them!
• The world’s smallest embroidered teddy bear is only 0.29 inches tall! Cheryl Moss, a South African artist noted for her microscopic work, made it.
• There is a magazine devoted entirely to teddy bears. ‘Teddy Bear and Friends is the title of this magazine. It has approximately 40,000 subscribers.

Sources:

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