Press - Bear Essentials

12-Sep-03

Stamp & Coin Mart

Teddy Bear is 100 years old this year and to celebrate Paul Chesham traces the history of everyone's favourite furry friend and the stamps he has inspired.

Apart from rag dolls, which go back to Roman times, soft toys in the guise of humanised animals seem to have been a late-19th century invention. The earliest toys of this type consisted of nondescript ducks and amorphous sheep, but a major breakthrough came in the 1890s with the birth of the golliwog, based on the principal character in Florence Upton's Golliwogg (sic) stories, first published in 1895.

This impish character with its black face, mop of hair and smart clothes was an instant success. In the stories he was always getting into mischief and in real life served as a kind of scapegoat for many a child who could readily blame his or her own misdemeanours on to 'Golly'. The racist overtones diminished the popularity of the golliwog from the 1960s onwards and eventually it would be banished from the nursery as being anything but politically correct.

Teddy's Bear

If politics drove Golly into limbo, it was politics that gave birth to Teddy. A political cartoon in The Washington Evening Star of November 18, 1902 alluded to the fact that President Theodore Roosevelt had baulked at shooting a tiny bear cub while on a hunting expedition in the Rockies. The bear cub in the cartoon inspired Morris Michtom, a toymaker, to produce a cuddly creature named Teddy's Bear, and he went so far as to secure permission from Teddy Roosevelt to use this name.

The presidential endorsement of course helped to sell the idea to a big toyshop in Brooklyn, New York. A window display of these first bears turned out to be a tremendous crowd-puller at Christmas 1902 and the big toyshops in downtown Manhattan then took up the idea enthusiastically. The rest is, as they say, history, for the chubby bear with his yellow plush fur and beady eyes laid the foundations of the giant Ideal Toy Corporation.

The wheel came full circle in 1962 when the Ideal Toy Corporation was commissioned by the American government to manufacture Smokey Bear, to publicise and popularise the work of the US Forest Service and make the general public more aware of the hazards of starting forest or heath fires by carelessly discarding matches or cigarette ends. Smokey Bear with his Montana peaked hat, has appeared on numerous labels and slogan postmarks of the USA, and was honoured by a stamp bearing his portrait in 1984. In the background of the stamp can be seen the singed and smoke-blackened bear cub clinging to the charred trunk of a tree - an actual animal rescued and adopted as mascot of the Forest Service and named Smokey.

Although the Teddy Bear originated in the United States it spread rapidly to other parts of the world, taking on distinctive local characteristics. The idea was picked up by a German toymaker, Margethe Steiff whose bears had elongated snouts and a metal button stuck in one ear. Her brother took samples of her wares to the annual toy fair in Nuremberg, Bavaria in 1903 and, like his American counterpart, the German Teddy became an immediate hit. Moreover, der Teddybär transformed the cottage handicraft of Fraülein Steiff into one of the largest toy manufacturers in Europe, which flourishes to this day. Steiff bears from the Edwardian era now command five-figure sums when they turn up at auction.

European bears, especially those manufactured in Germany, tend to be slimmer and longer-limbed, whereas British bears have the same chubby, stubby appearance as the originals. Other refinements which add variety to the teddy bear are bells concealed in the ears and various squeaking or growling devices concealed in the chest. Now there are miniature and giant Teddies and bears dressed in every conceivable costume.

Stamps Baring Bears

The first postage stamp to feature a Teddy Bear as such was issued by Sweden in November 1978, when antique toys were the subject of the Christmas stamps. The bear sits upright with a quizzical expression on his face as if to say, 'Antique? Who, me?' Purists might argue that the German Democratic Republic had got there first, with a set of stamps for Children's Day back in 1964, and there is a good argument in favour of this as the set, featuring popular characters from East German children's television, depicted Bummi the Bear with his duckling friend Schnatterinchen on the 40pf stamp. Misha the Bear was the mascot of the Moscow Olympics in 1980 and was honoured with his very own stamp on November 21 that year at the closure of the Games.

Misha, in fact, was only the latest in a long line of clones from the original Teddy, discussed later in this article. In the past quarter of a century, however, many other countries have followed Sweden's example by issuing stamps showing teddy bears, arguably the nearest thing to a universal plaything. They were the subject of New Zealand's Health stamps in October 2000 and ranged from a commercial bear manufactured by Chad Valley of Birmingham to speciality bears Geronimo, Swami and Dear John, designed and produced by individual toymakers.

In the land of his birth, Teddy made his philatelic debut on one of the Christmas stamps of 1981 where he was depicted riding a sleigh laden with Christmas presents. In the first sheetlet of ten marking the Twentieth Century, one 30c stamp portrayed Theodore Roosevelt who dominated the first decade, while another depicted the original Teddy Bear of 1902.

Britain's contribution to the theme has so far consisted of a 19p stamp in the Greetings series of January 1989, but a much better close-up of a Teddy appeared on the 20p Greetings stamp of February 1990, the same motif being used for a first-class version of March 1991.

Rupert the Bear

It was inevitable that a cuddly toy with such strong humanoid characteristics would soon give rise to popular figures in children's literature. Mary Tourtel created Rupert Bear, a teddy bear clad in red jersey, check trousers and a scarf. The adventures of Rupert and his friends were serialised in cartoon form in the Daily Express and gave rise to numerous books. Rupert and Bill Badger were portrayed on one of the Gift Giving booklet of 1993. Mary Tourtel was a native of Guernsey and simultaneously that bailiwick released a 24p stamp portraying her most famous creation, while a miniature sheet depicted Rupert and all his friends.

Royal Mail's Messages of 1994 showed Rupert going aloft in a hot-air balloon, but the same greetings booklet included stamps featuring the Three Bears very much in the same genre as Teddy, and rounded off the booklet pane with a stamp showing Paddington Bear, clad in hat, coat and wellies, on the railway station that gave him his name. One of the stamps of 1996 celebrating 50 years of children's television, showed the late Harry Corbett with his glove puppet Sooty, yet another spin-off from the teddy bear.

Winnie-the-Pooh

The most famous of all the Teddy look-alikes, however, is Winnie-the-Pooh. Like Teddy Bear himself, Winnie was inspired by a real-life bear-cub in the London Zoo at Regent's Park. On a visit to the zoo six year-old Christopher Robin Milne fell in love with the bear-cub and promptly changed the name of his teddy bear from Edward to Winnie. When A.A. Milne first published Winnie-th-e-Pooh in 1926 many readers would have been familiar with the real-life bear on whom the hero was based.

Like Teddy, the real-life Winnie was an orphan cub which Lieut. Harry Colebourn bought as his regiment was in transit from Winnipeg, on its way to Europe and World War I. The cub became the mascot of the Winnipeg Light Horse, and that's why the male cub acquired the female sounding name of Winnie. In 1996 Canada issued a miniature sheet marking the 70th anniversary of Winnie-the-Pooh and showed Colebourn bottle-feeding his bear cub on the first of four stamps.

When the regiment embarked for active service on the Western Front the little mascot had to be left behind, and that is how he came to be in London Zoo where he was one of the top attractions. The second stamp in the sheet shows Christopher Robin with his own teddy bear but the lower pair feature the fictional bear drawn by Ernest H. Shepard and the version created by Walt Disney who created a number of animated feature films. The sheet margins showed the cinematic Winnie and Tigger with the magic castle from Walt Disney World in Florida.

Winnie-the-Pooh first appeared on an 11p stamp released by Britain in 1979 as part of a set marking the Year of the Child. Christopher Robin, in Shepard's drawing, was based on a photograph of the five-year-old and is thus regarded as the first example of a living person, other than Royalty, to appear on a British stamp.

A.A. Milne died in 1956 and his widow Daphne sold the film rights to Disney five years later. Amid the numerous stamps of the past 20 years devoted to Disney characters, Winnie-the-Pooh has figured prominently. Stamps of 1982 celebrated the centenary of the birth of Winnie's creator, but three years later several countries marked the 150th anniversary of Mark Twain with Disney characters illustrating some of his famous maxims, and Winnie appeared on stamps from the Maldive islands, Redonda, Lesotho and Sierra Leone.

Other stamps to feature the most famous of the fictional bears were the Christmas stamps from the Grenadines (1986), the Gambian set of 1987 for the 60th anniversary of Mickey Mouse, the Grenadines World Stamp Expo series of 1989 and several Christmas sets of 1991 orchestrated by the Inter-Governmental Philatelic Corporation which then held the rights to reproduce Disney themes on stamps. Among the last of these was the Best Friends series from Guyana in 1996, and the charming sheetlet and matching souvenir sheet from the Grenadines in 1997 devoted to Monday's Child in the Hundred-Acre Wood.

100th Birthday Celebrations

Several countries have released stamps recently to celebrate Teddy Bear's centenary. The United States produced a sheet of 20, with se-tenant blocks of four different vintage bears: a Bruin of 1907, an Ideal Bear of 1905, a stick bear of the 1920s and a Gund Bear from 1948. Not to be outdone, a pair of Steiff bears appeared on a 51c stamp from Austria, while Germany's Child Welfare series included a rather chubby teddy and Ireland released a 38c stamp showing Teddy in a green tartan scarf. Switzerland celebrated the centenary with a self-adhesive booklet publicising Teddyland and incorporating five different stamps featuring various bears in unusual frames.

These issues, however, pale into insignificance compared with recent issues from the IGPC countries. The Gambia, St Vincent, Sierra Leone and the Grenadines have released individual stamps, actually woven as textiles, showing a Teddy Bear who actually looks and feels like the real thing. The INTER-Governmental Philatelic Corporation has recently announced that these embroidered omnibus stamps have already sold out at the respective postal administrations and the agency's offices in New York.

In addition, there are several sheetlets shaped like teddy bears, containing strips of three or four or blocks of four se-tenant showing them in various guises and different apparel. Thus there are Sporty Bears (Grenada), All-American Bears and Adventure Bears (Liberia), Working Bears (Palau), Healthy Bears and Family Bears (Maldive Islands) and even Girl Power (Antigua and Barbuda). Heart-shaped sheets containing strips of four depict bears with birthday wishes and love greetings, and there is also a pair of souvenir sheets from the Maldives, each in the form of a black Sporty Bear holding a single stamp in its paws. Most of these sheets incorporate the logo of Vermont Teddy Bears who provided the images used for the stamps.