After I posted a photo of my teddy bear Toasty the other day, some pictures of readers’ teddies have come in. I decided to solicit more, so if you have an old teddy bear that you owned as a child, do send me a photo and some words about the bear (don’t forget its name!), and I’ll put together a “Readers Teddys” feature.
Four years ago I had a “Readers’ plushes” post, including many stuffed animals and quite a few bears. If you contributed to that, you needn’t send in your bear now. I’ll collect new submissions until Friday.
Thanks!
Below is a replica of the original Teddy bear, named after Theodore Roosevelt and sold as “Teddy Bear” with Roosevelt’s permission. The story of its origin is sad, involving a bear cub that was trapped and put out of its misery (i.e., shot) on Roosevelt’s orders. A cartoon of the incident, drawn by Clifford Berryman, was published in the Washington Post in 1902, and inspired a toymaker to create the plush toy. It was a great success.
The cartoon:
A replica of the original Teddy:
Sadly, the imaginatively named Big Ted and Little Ted are no longer amongst my possessions – although they were until about 12 or so years ago.
Unfortunately I have no contribution to make. But at the time of Jerry’s “… my teddy bear Toasty…”, I sent that off to my daughter, who is a professor of philosophy. That was because she has constructed a little critter whose name is pronounced the same, but spelt ‘Tosti’, IIRC. Unfortunately it is not a Teddy Bear. It does take part in some small movies shot out on the lava of Iceland when we were all there. It plays the part of one of the invisible elves who live in the lava and occasionally demand that highways be re-routed.
I forgot:
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/10/why-so-many-icelanders-still-believe-in-invisible-elves/280783/