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' (a nickname which he loathed). A 1902 political cartoon in The Washington Post spawned the teddy bear name.

The teddy bear encyclopedia