Secretly Incredibly Fascinating - Teddy Bears

Episode Date: June 26, 2023

Alex Schmidt and Katie Goldin explore why teddy bears are secretly incredibly fascinating.Visit http://sifpod.fun/ for research sources and for this week's bonus episode.Come hang out with us on the new SIF Discord: https://discord.gg/wbR96nsGg5

Teddy Bears. Known for being cuddly. Famous for being fuzzy. Nobody thinks much about them, so let's have some fun. Let's find out why teddy bears are secretly incredibly fascinating. Hey there, folks. Welcome to a whole new podcast episode, a podcast all about why being alive is more interesting than people think it is. My name is Alex Schmidt and I'm not alone. I'm joined by my co-host Katie Golden. Katie, what is your relationship to or opinion of teddy bears? I like them. They're cuddly. They're soft. They're huggable. I, yeah, I, I, my favorite stuffed toy when I was a kid was actually not a teddy bear. It was a stuffed chipmunk that I astutely called Squirrely. It was not a squirrel, it was a chipmunk. That was a very loved chipmunk slash squirrel. By the time I was done with it, you really couldn't tell what species or genus it was because it was just kind of worn fabric that I cuddled, you know, to the bone. That, I remember when we taped with our buddies, Ellen and Christian from Just the Zoo of Us,

and they said like, all our homies hate taxonomy. I've been really anti-taxonomy ever since. It's whatever species you want it to be. Forget it. I know taxonomy and species names are different, but you know, animals or whatever we say is what I say. Dramatic reveal that I will just post a picture of on Instagram later. I had a childhood teddy bear. Oh. Wow. Wow. Cool.

Oh, he looks adorably grumpy. Yeah, there's little face dark spots that are slightly frowny. But this was Coco the bear. I just still have, I just haven't tucked away in a closet i don't like uh continue to sleep with it or nothing but it's uh nobody needs to know your secrets alex oh sure what happens with you and the bear stays between you and the bear he also produces the podcast it's pretty cool uh but yeah i liked having a teddy bear it was great and i think i didn't think about it much either like it just felt default. It was like, yeah, teddy bear. Sure. A kid. Makes sense.

Yeah. Yeah. It's like it's like peanut butter and jelly, teddy bear and bedtime. But you don't want to bring your peanut butter and jelly with you into bed with the teddy bear because then it gets all over the teddy bear. I don't know where I'm going with this, but yes, teddy bears. I just took them for granted as a kid as well. That also, I'm sure all parents have at least one strong memory of something like peanut butter getting out of stuffed animal. And then you're like, okay, I'm a dry cleaner or textile expert now. Okay, here we go. I got to figure this out. Yeah. Once. So my, my not teddy bear, but you know, squirrely, I guess I chewed off one of its ears because that's what you do. But it still had the other ear and I was fine with it just having one ear. But then my brother, he thought that it was weird for it to be asymmetrical. So he just snipped off the other ear. He thought he was helping. This was not like a mean big brother thing. He thought he was being helpful because it's like this toy is not symmetrical. I will make it symmetrical. He's

an engineer now, by the way. And so I, but I was very upset because I liked sort of the avant-garde squirrel with just one ear. The other one I did chew off. So I could understand that he thinks that this is just what we do with the squirrel now as we take off its ears. Yeah, that's true engineer stuff. Just got to do it. I like that you nod one off and then he was like, time to get my scissors and I will place my tools. It's very professional. Very good. Yeah. If we can't add the ear back on, we will remove the other ear. And I'm excited to hear about folks' memories of teddy bears themselves, especially through Discord. And also, shout out to friends of the show, Jade and Steven.

Thank you, too, for this idea of teddy bears as a topic. Because it turns out it's amazing. And most episodes, we start with stats and numbers but this one i want to do stats and numbers last because i think listeners have a couple conceptions about teddy bears especially u.s listeners theodore roosevelt stuff so we're going to get into that first and then count to the end i am so excited because yeah from what i know theodore roosevelt like he was a bear in disguise. And that's why we call it Teddy Bears.

Right. He was our second animal president after Mallard Fillmore. And yeah, we'll get into takeaway number one. The first stuffed bear toys predate Teddy Roosevelt's bear encounter, and they have their own incredible origin story and alleged disappearance. Wow, this sounds like an Agatha Christie story, just the disappearance of the original teddy bear. And it was a gruesome murder. It's more of a Titanic thing, but we'll get into it. Oh, dear. Oops.

Whole crowd of them. Oh, dear. Yeah. Oops. Whole crowd of them. But this is, we'll talk later about Theodore Roosevelt, and he is the source of that name, Teddy Bear. Some of what you've heard is true, but the stuffed bear toy comes from a totally different process, mainly in Germany, that created really stuffed animals as a big industry. Yeah. I mean, everyone loves a stuffed animal. I mean, I, you know, it's like

you want to cuddle a bear in real life and you try to do that and your face is gone. But with the invention of stuffed animals, you can cuddle a bear and keep your face on your face. I'm imagining seeing an adult with no face. And my first thought is they must've got to cuddle a lot of animals. That's cool. That's a good trade off. So, so when, like, do you know when we started to make stuffed animals? Because this is very interesting to me. I would think that we had some kind of animal toys probably throughout human history, right? Like I've definitely seen sort of crude, right like I've definitely seen sort of crude like doll like not dolls but like crude sort of ceramic animals that I'm sure kids played with you know as far back as you know humans probably started using their hands for stuff but stuffed animals I would consider to be a specific type of thing where it is like fabric and then some kind of stuffing and it's like sewn so that I think of it as a very specific sort of like, you know, type of toy.

Like, do you know when we started making stuffed animals, the toy? Yeah, it turns out we can go to the specific year. 1880 is when a German seamstress named Margarethe Steiff created the Steiff Company and sort of invented the toy industry approach to stuffed animals and soft toys. And yeah, then it's like you say, there are all the way back to ancient times, people making soft things for their kids, usually homemade. But then there's an interesting jump where in the early 1800s, there starts to be a toy industry and they don't think of soft toys until decades later. Huh. Yeah. Cause they're like, you know, a lot of wooden things, creepy wooden dolls, porcelain dolls were big. I know that, uh, the soulless dolls that stare at you. Exactly. Yeah. There's a few

sources here, especially an incredible piece for BBC News by journalist Frances Cronin. She interviewed Leila Maniera, who's a former bear expert at Christie's Auction House. And she said the first toy industry didn't make soft stuff. Quote, children were playing with porcelain dolls, soldiers, and tin toys. They were hard and cold. End quote. Just like that generation of people. Yeah. Everyone had Queen Victoria's exact face, and they were real mad and frustrated all

the time. Like tiny babies just with a full grown german woman's face yeah if the toys are soft the children will be soft and how will we win so many wars in so many countries yeah and and this was a departure like like maybe the toy industry thought they were providing something you couldn't get before, so that's why it should be hard. But another source here is the Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester, New York. They say that, you know, thousands of years, soft dolls have been made by households,

especially from scraps of fabric or from the husks of maize, like corn husks. And so across the world, soft stuff. Thing about corn husk dolls, haunting, chilling. I hate them. They scare me. I see a corn husk doll. I don't think, oh, great, a toy for a child to play with and have fun. I think I'm going to get murdered by a corn cult.

Yeah, I guess it really becomes creepy in the modern day, huh? When we have all these ranges of various materials and we're not like primarily an agricultural society in the Americas. Yeah. I've actually thought about this a lot because like a lot of old toys are really scary, right? Like they're really creepy. So scary. I think about like, well, it's not because I don't think it is just because they're sort of decayed, right? Like they're really creepy. And I think about like, well, it's not because I don't

think it is just because they're sort of decayed, right? Cause like a decayed toy is kind of creepy, but like even a new, I see a refurbished new looking old toy. It is still scary. You look at the face of a porcelain doll, it's disapproving and a little creepy. I don't know when it flipped, like why it now seems scary to us, or I don't know. I wonder if like, even at the time it was a little scary for kids, but they knew they couldn't speak up or else Queen Victoria was going to spank them. Maybe that's one of the big advantages of stuffed animals is that we tend to make those cartoony and that a lot of those dolls were weirdly realistic or like elements are totally cartoony and elements are not. Uncanny Valley.

Uncanny Valley. Yeah. Yeah. And I feel like anytime I've been to a historical house or a colonial Williamsburg kind of thing, they'll take like one of those dolls sit in an adult human chair in the corner, like in a corner like in a way in a really ghosty creepy way you know you don't need to stage it that way guys you can put it more normal oh are we gonna talk about like cafes where they put life-size bears in them into the seats and then like have you ever seen one of those no No. What? Oh, okay. Okay. There are, I have seen this. There's one here in Turin. I've seen like a couple of them in the US.

They like put bears, like adult, like human sized bears, large teddy bears in the seats, just like they're diners, I guess to make it feel more welcoming. Like there are patrons there, but the patrons are bears. But it's really scary. I know I sound like I've lost it. If you've never seen one of these, like, what do you mean? Restaurant with bears? There's bears in the restaurant. No, but seriously, I have seen these. COVID innovated some of the seat filling. We did a long ago past bonus about sports where they just filled stadiums with cardboard cutouts and stuff. Like, it's, yeah, we were really like, who can fill a seat? And my bear Coco here, sort of in a sitting position. Like, I think they like to put the bottom feet in a way where they're already posted

up on a chair or something, you know? It's great. Coco is so cute. I love his angry little face. He's in really good condition too. Like, he's clearly loved, but also very well taken care of. Thank you. And mainly my parents. I think I was probably throwing them against the wall, but yeah, good job parents. How long bears last plays into this story too. The origin of stuffed bears is a big thing is sort of a side effect of stuffed animals. Because what happens is you have a toy industry starting early 1800s, they make terrifying porcelain things. And then around 1840, there starts to be a lot of toy stores. But it takes all the way until 1880 for somebody not in the toy industry to fall into it. In 1880, Margarete Steiff wanted to make a present for her nephew,

just hand make something. Quoting BBC News here, she found a pattern for a toy elephant and made it from soft felt. Drawn to how soft and cuddly they were, children in the neighborhood were soon asking for elephants too. And then Steiff already had a dressmaking business. She added felt elephants to the products and those were a hit. It built up a whole to this day Stife company and I'm linking their website catalog page for like an anniversary elephants. They really got the first big company for stuffed animals going. So that's so cute. I just I love that there was like a little elephant craze. Like everyone's got to get their hands on these soft elephants because it's soft. I feel like it happens a lot on this show.

I'll look into, oh, who did the idea making or entrepreneurial labor to make a product, a thing. And then they often tend to have like a company to this day or it worked out for and paid off. You know, it's nice. I'm glad Margarita's family got to like make a business out of this good idea. Yeah. It's cool. But yeah. And so she did this elephant. And then there's an amazing thing where she was making that first one for her nephew.

And then her nephew is the specific person who suggested a stuffed bear. Oh, interesting. He went into the new family business. I mean, bears do inherently look cuddly. They're absolutely not. They are just pure muscle, teeth, claws, and a strong desire to be left alone or murder. It's not an animal you want to cuddle. People have been eaten.

It's happened numerous times, but they, God dang it, they look so cuddly. I just want to hug a bear. And I know we're sort of joking, but I also love how the U.S. National Park Service really works to stop people from hugging or petting bison. Because don't do it. And people are like, oh, look at all the fur. I think we just see fur and we think shag carpet, friend to go touch.

Even if the fur is attached to the biggest, most sharp tooth thing in the world. Yeah. Yeah. Why are we? Because it's an odd thing because humans aren't particularly fluffy. We're not hairy. I mean, obviously our ancestors used to be, but we're so drawn to fluffy animals. We we domesticated dogs and cats over many, many years, you know, partially for the jobs they do. But a large part of it is they're fluffy and we like to cuddle them.

Yeah. It's very interesting to me how much we, how much we like fluffiness. I mean, one could go into sort of, you know, maybe it's because we liked fur clothing because it kept us warm, or maybe this is some kind of, you know, evolutionary memory of before when we used to cuddle our hairy ape mothers. But I don't know, it's an interesting thing. Just everybody loves a fluffy thing. Like I got a new mic cover, but it's like fake fur because it's a, and I keep petting it and anthropomorphizing my mic now. It's like the power of fluffiness is incredible. It should be studied. Can't beat it. Yeah.

Yeah. And fluffiness of things in the life of Richard Steiff led to this stuffed bear. That's the nephew of Margarethe Steiff. Richard Steiff was an art student in Stuttgart, Germany, used to visit the Stuttgart Zoo and sketch the bears. And then also, super weird thing happens here because the not weird thing is he sees bears in the Stuttgart Zoo and says, we should make a stuffed bear. Obvious. Great. Thing is, this was a little before 1900. At that time, zoos in the world were not very regulated. They were not necessarily totally scientific institutions. necessarily totally scientific institutions. And according to the BBC, the big attraction at the Stuttgart Zoo was a crossbreeding of brown bears with polar bears. And that specifically was the inspiration for the first Stife Toy Bears was let's make a stuffed version of a crossbred

brown bear polar bear. Can't see anything going wrong with breeding the brown bear, which is, you know, not like not aggressive, but it's not like super aggressive. And a polar bear who only dreams of eating you and letting your blood trickle down his face like it just slammed back a Gatorade. I think it was just to see what would happen. It's definitely just weird late 1800s European mindset of the world is a toy. And here I go. Yeah.

We're just humans are just toddlers running through the candy store of the world and the many species in it. I mean, naturally, there's sometimes like bear hybrids, like polar bear, grizzly bear hybrids and so on and grizzly bear and like brown bear, black bear hybrids. But it's, you know, it's weird. We thought that we could play bear matchmaker. Yeah. And I want to pull it out as a whole takeaway within the story takeaway number two the first stuffed toy bears were based on a brown bear polar bear hybrid because i find that really astonishing and also in a way we can't really measure it seems like

this really influenced the whimsicalness, cartooniness, imaginativeness of stuffed bears. Like teddy bears today, you don't usually buy a bear and think, is this replicating a specific bear species? The exception might be a polar bear toy, but a lot of bears, including my teddy bear growing up, are just kind of vaguely a bear. And mine is even sort of a very pale tan color, almost like a polar bear and a brown bear mixed. But it's probably just whatever the company wanted to make. And I just liked it. There's a real sort of separation from regular bear science with these toys. And this first example is probably part of why. Yeah, I'm looking at some Pizzlies, which are sort of a polar bear, grizzly bear hybrid.

They are very cute. It's interesting because I do see how this was the inspiration for those original bears. Because I also took a look at those sort of OG teddy bears and they're kind of lanky, right? Kind of lanky, right? Like they're, it's got a little bit of sort of the longness, the lengthiness of a polar bear, but then also the fluffiness of the grizzly bear. So it's interesting. It's very, very cute.

It would, I'm sure, eat my face like it's bologna and put it between two slices of bear bread. But yes, very cute. Yeah, for some reason, my mind keeps thinking it has the appetite of two bears. That's not how hybridization works. You just keep adding bears. You make a bear hybrid, it's got the strengths of both bear species. Actually, there are more, more pizzlies are happening in nature because of uh global warming and sort of these two bear populations kind of starting to inhabit similar uh habitats so you see more of these uh natural pizzly hybrids uh which you know is i mean the global warming thing is unfortunate but it is it is interesting it is interesting when you see this happen in nature, like you have these hybrids.

We talked about that on the narwhal show, didn't we? The narwhal beluga hybrids. Yeah, exactly. I really didn't expect us to stack with that so much. Especially narwhals and polar bears are maybe the two most charismatic Arctic big animals out there. And well, orcas, I guess. But you know what I mean? Like they are out there just kind of figuring out what to do with the world we're doing.

No, don't back away from it. Don't back away from it, Alex. I'm anti-orca. Shamu can go blowhole itself. That's right. If I ran SeaWorld, no shows. They would not let those orcas showboat and get all selfish, all that attention. I like you're doing the right thing by not like the more humane thing of not showcasing a large animal for the entertainment of people, but for the wrong reasons, just because you're petty against orcas.

Yeah, I don't want them to get their flowers. That's why. Yeah. But yeah, in this artificial turn of the century Pizley, that is the influence on the first stuffed bear. And the big year here is 1903. 1903 is when Richard Steiff completes the project at the Steiff Company to roll out a prototype of a stuffed bear,

debuted at the Leipzig Toy Fair. And this was not called a teddy bear, because the whole Teddy Roosevelt thing had not really influenced this. It had the industrial product name 55PB. Why didn't that stick? It's very C-3PO. It was just a little too early, you know? Mother, can I have my...

Wait, what is it again? 55PB? Yes, and it's so hard to remember. Yeah. Mother, can I have my 55PB for cuddles? Yeah. A lot of kids can't count to 55 yet, but they're supposed to say that. Forget it.

Yeah. I just imagine all children in like the early 19th century to be just creepy and very smart and always calling for their mother and saying very adult things in a little Victorian child voice. Yeah. They were reading a newspaper and not the comics. And then they put it down and ask for their 55 voice. Yeah, they were reading a newspaper and not the comics. And then they put it down and ask for their 55 PB. Yeah, calling things droll, haunting houses, Victorian children.

And also this bear, one of the main goals of the toy was basically action figure stuff. The name 55 PB, it's 55 for the height i believe in centimeters p stands for plush but then b stands for be vaguely which is the german word for movable because the main feature was that the arms and legs were jointed to the body with strings and the goal was you can like move it around like an action figure almost more than cuddling it. And also that feature is apparently part of why we don't have this original bear anymore. Because it turns out there is a debate about what happened to the first set of Stife bears. There are no existing examples anymore. And there's a company story that is probably a myth, which is that a bunch of them were lost in a gigantic

shipwreck. Apparently in 1953, the Stife marketing department put out a story that in 1903, there was very little interest in that prototype bear, except for one huge order from New York City for 3000 bears. And Stife expanded production to accommodate it, put them all on a ship, and then the ship sank in the Atlantic Ocean, is the story. I mean, this is a great sort of premise for an all-teddy bears version of Lost. That show had a polar bear, right? Just kind of going on? This time it'd just be a naked human walking around and scaring all the little teddy bears,

trying to have their cannibal teddy bear picnic because they ran out of food. This story, it's unclear whether that's true or not. There's a toy historian in the BBC quotes who says that doesn't happen. Sounds like a cover-up! But also there's sort of a conventional wisdom about this story, which is that even if some of the original bears were still on land or found or

not sunk, the way they were made of strings attaching the limbs, they would have all been pulled apart by kids and discarded probably before the modern day. Because they didn't really do that kind of mint condition toy collecting thing that we do now.

Right. Just these got used and beat up. And that was that. Just dismembered by big eyed Victorian children going, mother, give me the 55 PB. I must remove its arms. Right. Yeah. And because kids did that, this Christie's auctioneer, the BBC interviewed, said that if anybody finds one of these, it would be easily the most valuable stuffed animal ever found.

Apparently, the previous auction record for a stuffed animal is 180,000 British pounds. And this would blow that away if somebody finds one. Where did you say this ship sunk, Alex? The Atlantic Ocean, which narrows it down. All right, that narrows it down. Yeah, and these bears were a huge hit. Stife's annual bear sales hit nearly one million units in 1907. And then there was one other company that really built up the stuffed bear industry,

which was the first maker of what was called Teddy Bears. A candy shop in Brooklyn, New York, owned by Morris and Rose Mictum, came up with a stuffed bear toy and put it in the window. And that was specifically influenced by a political cartoon in 1902 depicting Teddy Roosevelt not killing a baby bear. And they called it the Teddy Bear. Yeah, so I've seen that cartoon. It's a very funny cartoon. There's a guy with this little bear.

It's a very, very cute kind of cartoony baby bear. And he's pulling it on a rope for Roosevelt to shoot. But Roosevelt has turned away and is putting his hand up like, no, I mustn't shoot this bear. And the thing that's kind of funny is that the bear's expression is sort of shocked. Like he's like, wait, you're not going to shoot me? Come on, man. What's going on?

The bear kind of has like a Mickey Mouse head a little bit. It's like got really round ears, a really big head, like little cartoony face. It's very cute. Yeah. And it turns out there was a ton to that cartoon and real story. And this is sort of the other origin of this toy. It's what really got it going in the U.S. on top of the German idea, which brings us into takeaway number three. There is a sort of accurate story of Teddy Roosevelt being kind to a bear,

There is a sort of accurate story of Teddy Roosevelt being kind to a bear, but it involves grim hunting stuff and grim Mississippi politics. Hmm. So it wasn't like Teddy Roosevelt holding the door too hardcore or anything, but it turns out that the general legend that a lot of Americans have heard that they're named after Teddy Roosevelt for kindness to a bear. That's pretty much true. And also there's several layers of politics and history going into it as well. Right. Because I thought Teddy Roosevelt did enjoy hunting quite a bit. Right. Like he was an outdoorsman and hunting was just kind of part of the package. Like you go out. I mean, like this was it's interesting because I think a lot of people who are really into hunting were also into conservation because they enjoyed being out in nature. They enjoyed animals and they want to shoot animals. Yes. But if all the animals are gone, there's no animals to shoot. So I think that like from my understanding and, you know, please correct me if I'm wrong, like Teddy Roosevelt really enjoyed nature, kind of wanted to preserve nature in a way while also shooting nature because that was fun for him.

way while also shooting nature because that was fun for him. Yeah, exactly right. And he, yeah, he had land in the Dakotas since the 1880s because he hunted there. He would go on to hunt in a couple different continents of the world. And this bear story comes from a Mississippi hunting trip where he specifically wanted to hunt black bears. He even had a hunting party where they specifically recruited a guide with bear hunting experience. Guide Holt Collier had killed more than 3,000 bears in his lifetime. Okay. That's too many bears for one person. Come on.

Yeah. Like personally, I wouldn't want to shoot one bear, but 3,000, that's just greedy. I sort of hope he was just guessing at that number too. Like, why would you keep counting after a certain point? I hope he was lying. Yeah, that too. I hope he like shot maybe one and a half bear. And then he was like, oh yeah, it was like, I don't know, 3000 bears.

If I wear this cool hunter outfit, nobody will question it. Yeah, that's good. That's very good. But yeah, and the thing that made this famous was a political cartoon published November 17th, 1902. So there's also a weird sort of parallel invention thing where the Steiff company in Germany has been around for a couple decades, finally makes a stuffed bear. Germany has been around for a couple decades, finally makes a stuffed bear. And then that same year, 1903, a business in Brooklyn gets a sideline going selling stuffed bears called teddy bears. In total parallel invention, two countries got it going at the same time.

Or so they say. Again, covering up the conspiracy. Where's the boat full of bears, Alex? That's true. Allegedly 1903 and sinking of the Atlantic. Yeah, it's a big year for stuffed bears across two continents. Mighty coincidental, if you ask me. But in this political cartoon, the key features of it are Teddy Roosevelt in his rough rider military cowboy type outfit, turning away from a sweet

looking baby bear that another guy has tied up. And then the caption in the middle of it is the words, drawing the line in Mississippi. And it turns out that's because Teddy Roosevelt did love hunting. And he told their guide, quote, I must see a live bear the first day. He went on a trip in fall of 1902, definitely meaning to hunt bears. But there were also a bunch of political goals going on at once, and they were broadly positive. In a good by 1902 standards way, the trip was anti-racist, and opposed to the lynching of black people in Mississippi, because that was the thing going on. lynching of Black people in Mississippi, because that was a thing going on.

Roosevelt was anti-racist in a 1902 imperialist bad way. He opposed Black people voting. He claimed that Black soldiers were not heroic in the Spanish-American War, but he opposed lynchings, stated a public belief in equality of people. He had Booker T. Washington for dinner at the White House. Roosevelt took this trip to Mississippi specifically so he could support the relatively positive governor of Mississippi, even though this governor, Andrew Longino, was in the opposite political party. He was a Democrat. Roosevelt was a Republican. upcoming political opponent was humongously horribly racist. And Roosevelt wanted to make a clear statement against lynching and for civil rights at that time. Let's give it up for kind of below bare minimum. But hey, you know what? At least not as bad as that other guy. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And and then when they went on this trip, it's not a super happy story, but it is Roosevelt trying to be a relatively ethical hunter as hunters went. They were hunting on the traditional land of the Chattayocknee people, also called Choctaw. Their guide used hounds to chase down an elderly adult black bear. chased down an elderly adult black bear. And then it was cornered and injured when Roosevelt finally got there. He had answered a bugle call to come. And then it was this situation where a really wounded, exhausted, tied up bear, they said, okay, Roosevelt, shoot it. And he said,

no, this is not good or sportsmanlike. I don't want to do that. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, but at that point, it's like, then what do you do? Release this wounded bear back into the wild? Like once you've got it in that situation, you kind of have to euthanize it. And that is actually what they did. Yeah. They, uh, they just had the guide euthanize the bear and moved on. And you know, it's, it's this thing where the story was covered as a hunting story. The Washington Post ran a headline saying, quote, President called after the beast had been lassoed, but he refused to make an unsportsmanlike shot. But the trip's coverage, and especially the

cartoon, were really about a attempt to do positive things for Black people in Mississippi at the time and the politics of it. And then that combination of positive elements is why Roosevelt got this bear toy named after him. Like in a dark and grim time, he tried to do relatively positive things. And as a result, the honorific happened. I see. So like the, it was sort of drawn as like an analogy, I see. So like the it was sort of drawn as like an analogy, which, you know, not great comparing human beings to animals, but hey, at least they relatively positive for that. Yeah. And it's also the American approach to this toy that, you know, could have could have come our way literally on a boat that same year from Germany. But instead, we kind of got it through the boat sank. Right. I'm not letting

this go, Alex. You seem to keep trying to breeze past the fact that a boat full of teddy bears mysteriously sunk. Meanwhile, an American company started creating teddy bears at the same time. Right. The timeline is so suspicious, and I think it just happens to not be the suspicious thing. It's really weird. It just happens to not be the suspicious thing. It's really weird. There's going to be a CIA file called 55PB, and it's going to be about the sinking of this boat and how these bears were turned into agents.

I don't know. I think it's a conspiracy. This is my conspiracy theory. 55PB sounds like more of a spy name than 007. That's amazing. Right yeah and and this much more sellable name teddy bear that built a whole nother american toy business again this is the couple morris and rose mictum owners of a candy store in bedside brooklyn new york the bear toys were a huge hit. They turned that into a gigantic toy business called Ideal Toys.

They went on to produce the Rubik's Cube, the game Mousetrap, the Betsy Wetsy doll, and a huge range of other hit toy products. Okay, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Betsy Wetsy doll, what's that? It's some kind of doll that simulates a baby urinating. Okay. Yeah. Sorry.

It's that thing. Yeah. I know it sounded like it. And there you go. Well, folks, that's all of our big takeaways for this, but there's a ton of stats and numbers to come. And we're going to jump into those after a quick break. I'm Jesse Thorne.

I just don't want to leave a mess. This week on Bullseye, Dan Aykroyd talks to me about the Blues Brothers, Ghostbusters, and his very detailed plans about how he'll spend his afterlife. I think I'm going to roam in a few places. Yes, I'm going to manifest and roam. All that and more on the next Bullseye from MaximumFun.org and NPR. Hello, teachers and faculty. This is Janet Varney. I'm here to remind you that listening to my podcast, The JV Club with Janet Varney, is part of the curriculum for the school year. Learning about the teenage years of such guests as Alison Brie, Vicki Peterson, John Hodgman, and so many more is a valuable and enriching experience, One you have no choice but to embrace because yes,

listening is mandatory. The JV Club with Janet Varney is available every Thursday on Maximum Fun or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you. And remember, no running in the halls. And folks, our last fascinating thing is many fascinating things. It is a quick set of fascinating numbers and statistics that's in a segment called... I need some figures. I'm holding off on someone who can crunch all the numbers. They gotta be smart and they gotta be fast and they gotta be ready to podcast. And they gotta be fast and they gotta be ready to podcast.

Is Coco clapping his little bear hands? Yeah. And then it was submitted by Bob. Great idea from them. Thank you, Bob. I have a new name for this. Every week, please make a Massillion Wacky Madness possible. Submit through Discord or to SifPod at gmail.com and we're going big the first number is 63 feet 8 inches which is over 19 meters oh is this a big bear the length of the world's largest teddy bear

oh no the largest we will have pictures including an photo, because it's 63 feet 8 inches, and an aerial photo is a pretty good way to see that. It's a Guinness Book of World Records thing. They say that in 2019, so pretty recently, in 2019, the municipality of Zona Catalan in Mexico constructed the world's largest record-setting teddy bear and displayed it in the town's sports stadium is this the one that's kind of like sun tanning itself it is extremely flopped on its face i don't know why they didn't set it up maybe that's harder but yeah i mean gravity's already doing a number on this thing so yeah i think that's exactly why it's sort of in the suntan position, because from like the side, it does look like it is sort of collapsing from its own heft. So yeah. Yeah, that's, that's really going on with it. It's also got a pink dress, a pink bow, a tiara.

The BBC says it took months to build it. It was part of a publicity event for tourism and a children's day gathering. Maybe they wanted it on the ground so it's close to kids. I don't know what, but it's just very fun to look at. And I feel like this record will probably continuously be beaten as various towns and cities say we have a reason to go for this. I think a single one of its eyeballs could, like, crush me. Wow. I imagined you running from it like Indiana Jones. I guess because we created OutDiana Jones the other day, the character who wants things out of museums.

He could also run from a bear eyeball. OutDiana Jones is the opposite of Indiana Jones, and he doesn't think things belong in a museum. Love that character. And speaking of fun characters, the next number here is August 21st, 1921. Because that date in 1921, that's the first birthday of Christopher Robin Milne, who was the son of British writer A.A. Milne. He's that little guy from the books about the bear with the honey addiction. The harrowing tale.

Yes. And it turns out the whole Winnie the Pooh thing is based on stuffed animals for the most part. And the New York Public Library says Christopher Robin Milne's first birthday was coming up. His dad picked out a stuffed toy bear that was called Edward Bear, because I guess that's a very formal version of the name Teddy. And it kind of bled from America to the UK in 1921. But OK, I thought Theodore was the formal version of Teddy.

How is Edward? How does Edward have anything to do with Teddy? Yeah, I think both names use Ted. Like Ted Kennedy was an Edward. What? Why isn't it an Ed? I feel like all the Kennedys, they were great examples of weird male first names in American culture. Like Jack for John and stuff. Okay.

Come on, cut it out. Knock it off. I feel like I just told a substantial amount of the audience to knock it off, but I'm standing by it. Take that, Jack O'Brien, who we both like a lot. Yeah, the Edward bear, he gave that teddy bear to his son, Christopher Robin, and their relationship became the basis of the Winnie the Pooh stories. That's very cute. Yeah. It's interesting because I think I've seen

the OG Winnie the Pooh bear, and he does not have as much of a paunch as the book bear. He's a little more svelte than the book bear. But yeah it is it is interesting it's a very different looking kind of toy than you would expect given winnie the pooh's sort of uh tubbiness his adorable tubbiness yeah that's true i agree yeah that maybe the character design is the most inventive part of the stories because like it even turns out winnie the Pooh's friends are mostly based on other stuffed animals the family had they had a big stuffed donkey and that's Eeyore and they had a little stuffed piglet and that's piglet you know it's it's it's kind of he looked around the room and said okay this is the book great and you know Winnie the Pooh's best friend used handkerchief.

Hello, guys, I used handkerchief. Woo! And also the one other origin of Winnie the Pooh is a zoo bear, because the family did not keep calling the teddy bear Edward Bear. They renamed it Winnie, which is short for Winnipeg, like the Canadian city Winnipeg. The London Zoo had an exciting real bear who was named Winnipeg because they were a former mascot for the Canadian Expeditionary Force in World War I. Some troops in that. So that's where Winnie comes from.

But where does the poo come from? It comes from a totally different weird animal thing. Apparently, in the mornings of various days, young Christopher Robin would feed a swan that was in a pond near where they lived. And then Christopher Robin named the swan poo because, quote, this is a very fine name for a swan, because if you call him and he doesn't come, then you can just pretend that you were saying poo to show him how little you wanted him. Is that what people would say back in the day? They just say poo at people if they were trying to be aloof?

Apparently, especially if you're a very fun little 1920s child in the UK. Yeah. And yeah. And according to Mental Floss, Milne just pulled in that word poo with Winnie. It's a name the character because because a poo bear does not seem to be a thing prior to this character. Right. Right.

It's it's not a species of bear. Yeah. The Winnie part makes a lot more sense. This poo thing. I think he was just grabbing more stuff in his world. It's almost grabbing the used handkerchief as a character at that point. Like, I don't know. He says that too. Yeah, he's doing the Kaiser Sozane method of children's book authorship where he's just looking around the room.

It's like, ah, what's that? It's a pile of poo. It's a poo bear. Yeah go to lunch i just like i like it if like christopher robin is like looks up from his book that his dad wrote and like looks at the wall and then sees all of these posters and like realizes like you know wait a minute it's all. My dad got it all from the posters on my wall. It's not how that movie goes, Usual Suspects, anyways. Yeah, sure. Yeah, it's about a father and a son.

Newspaper clipping. Yeah, exactly. Everybody in the lineup's just covered in honey. Okay, which of these honey-covered people did it? He tries to drop the mug, but it's too sticky. It just hangs. And another character here, the number is a date, December 24th of 1956, Christmas Eve, 1956. That is when a freelance writer and BBC cameraman named Michael Bonds

bought a teddy bear from the Selfridges department store in London. Okay, cool. Good for him. That's the end of the show. So this is yet another... Alex is like, some guy bought a teddy bear.

Anyways. I've just indexed various purchases that I want to share with folks. Let's see. Toys R Us 2013. A guy you don't know. So this is just like the Winnie the Pooh story. This is yet another sort of random London department store teddy bear purchase. But this one created Paddington Bear.

Oh, right. Which is cool. Okay. Who would win in a fight? You got Paddington Bear and he's got his marmalade sandwiches. You got Winnie the Pooh, and he's hopped up on honey. Right. And they have to wrestle.

For some reason, they have to wrestle. Who are you putting your money on? I should have said stuffed bears who are sugar freaks, specifically. That is the connection, too. You're not answering The question Paddington you know actually it's hard to say Because I'm imagining there's a thing in hockey Right where in hockey the guys are

Fighting you try to get the other guys sweater Over their head so they can't see what they're Doing I like both of them have Clothes on but Winnie's shirt is so Small I feel like it wouldn't obstruct the hat Enough so maybe Winnie would win I feel like there's a lot of muscle hiding behind Winnie's sort of portliness. You know, it's like it's a it's sort of a Scottish portliness. You know, have you seen those? What are they? They're they're the they're at the Scottish Highland

Games. You know, they like throw weights and like move boulders and stuff. And they're pretty portly, but there's like a huge amount of muscle under there. That's what I think is going on with Winnie the Pooh. And I think he would just crush poor little Paddington. He'd be like the wrestler, The Big Show, if folks know that guy. Now a more important question. Who's the heel? if folks know that guy yeah who's now a more important question who's the heel either of them trying to do it would be so unconvincing like oh i have an nwo shirt on now

oh yeah but it's not it's not believable come on one of the poos like i am going to stuff your body into honey and no one will find you. Okay, that was a little convincing. All right, cool. Yeah. Yeah, this Paddington story, it's also sort of like Winnie the Pooh where there's two main origins. Like Winnie the Pooh, it was a bear purchase and also a London Zoo bear. One of the two origins here is the specific situation of this teddy bear that Mr. Michael Bond bought. He said, quote,

I saw it left on a shelf and felt sorry for it. I took it home as a present for my wife, Brenda, and named it Paddington as we were living near Paddington Station at the time. And then I wrote some stories about the bear more for fun than with the idea of having them published. The loneliness of the bear's shelf positioning was an influence on the character. That's very wholesome. It makes me feel even worse about the fact that Winnie the Pooh would absolutely demolish Paddington. The other influence is even more wholesome and humanitarian oriented, because like, I think folks are aware if they're fans of Paddington, especially with the recent movies that Paddington is either sort of or fully coded as a refugee type character. Bond was in the British military in World War II. There was a major operation to transport Jewish children out of Nazi territory in Europe in 1939. It was called Kindertransport. About 10,000 kids got rescued to Britain.

And so Bond was serving. He was in the Reading, England train station and saw kids with large tags attached to them listing all their information, just kind of waiting to be picked up. And so that memory, like he sees this bear on this shelf and then that memory is in the back of his mind. And that's how you get Paddington. Yeah, it's really cute. I mean, it's it's really sad, but also I mean, it's those images of like the little kids with the huge suitcases that they're like sitting on and they have their little coats on and you know they they have been they're there probably without their families or without at least one parent uh you know waiting to be hopefully picked up by a distant relative you see the the same sort of presentation with paddington He's got his little overcoat. He's got the oversized suitcase. And this, I think it totally makes sense that it's trying to inspire a, you know, a feeling of sympathy and this feeling of like, you know, when you see a little child or this little bear, you just want to go and like make sure they're okay and take care of them.

and make sure they're okay and take care of them. Yeah. A couple extra numbers. Paddington Books, since the first one in 1958, they've sold 35 million copies, been translated into 40 languages. Because it's deeply relatable, even though the bear element almost separates it from the story.

When I didn't know what Paddington's deal was, I was like, why is that bear dressed for a rainy day? And that's it. But, you know, then you find out more. Yeah. He likes sandwiches. Well, now I relate. I don't like getting wet and I like sandwiches.

Here we go. Yeah. Especially at the same time. You got to have a dry sandwich. Yeah, boy. Pickle juice. Anyway, I could go on a thing. I won't go on a thing. I won't. I won't heel turn like Winnie and or Paddington in our wrestling league.

American businesses getting stuffed bears going. 1903 is the year when author Beatrix Potter registered the design for a Peter Rabbit stuffed animal. Hmm. Like intellectual property stuff. That's interesting. Yeah, because she wrote and illustrated all of the Beatrix Potter books about Peter Rabbit, but there are also a whole other bunch of animals. Mice, there were hedgehogs,

there were foxes, there were geese. I loved those books as a kid. I don't think I ever had a stuffed toy. But yeah, that is interesting, like a brand, like, because now so many stuffed animals are actually sort of branded things like a stuffed, I don't know, minion. And so it's the first thing I could think of. But yeah, it's great. Rather than like a generic, just sort of bear. It's like this is Winnie the Pooh or this is a Minions bear. I don't again, I could only reach for Minions. It's true, though. Yeah. I thought it was later in history when we started really getting that going. And in the past, it was just a tutty bear. Anybody could make a bear. But also as early as 1903, which is one year after the first Peter Rabbit book was published, Beatrix Potter very innovatively sought out like a British design registration for a Peter Rabbit stuffed animal.

And also it didn't really work out for her commercially. She couldn't find a company that wanted to make a deal to produce them. She also found out that the Steiff company in Germany was allegedly making an unlicensed Peter Rabbit toy after her book got successful. That's been going on forever, too. The unlicensed Sponge Bobs you get at the fair, that's a tale as old as time. Yeah. Yeah, and she apparently, Potter, personally started leading protests against free trade economic policies because she was so upset about the

Germans copying her character for toys in a way that I guess was legal since it was in a different country. Like she only had the British rights, you know? Right. Yeah. This this stuffed animal industry really got going kind of a while ago, but it gave us, among many things, this now long running toy, the teddy bear, our good buddy. Yeah the teddy bear our good buddy yeah our good our good buddy like coco who i am seeing just moving around alex isn't touching it by the way he is just like full-on walking sipping a mug of coffee telling alex to wrap things up yeah we we adapted our tale into the heartwarming time-lapse classic, Ted. If people have seen Ted, that's my exact life. Yeah.

So it's pretty good. Just like in that movie, the bear swears and like dates. It's a weird movie. That's Coco for you. Tell you what. Smoking a cigarette. Scrolling through Tinder. Looking for eligible bear chillerettes.

And the studio came to me. The studio that came to me. They says, who do we cast as you, Alex? I said, Mark Wahlberg. Obviously, that's like the first guy you would pick. That's exactly who. Why are you so mean to yourself, Alex? Hey, folks, that's the main episode for this week. Welcome to the outro with fun features for you, such as help remembering this episode with a run back through the big takeaways.

Takeaway number one, the first stuffed bear toys have their own incredible origin story and alleged shipwreck disappearance and predate Teddy Roosevelt. Takeaway number two, the first stuffed toy bears were based on a brown bear-polar bear hybrid. Takeaway number three, there is a sort of accurate story of Teddy Roosevelt being kind to a bear, but it mostly happened and became news because of grim Mississippi politics. And then tons of numbers about Winnie the Pooh, Paddington, and the biggest bear in the world. Those are the takeaways. Also, I said that's the main episode, because there is more secretly incredibly fascinating stuff available to you right now

if you support this show at MaximumFun.org. Members get a bonus show every week where we explore one obviously incredibly fascinating story related to the main episode. This week's bonus topic is three bizarre stories about teddy bears in politics and modern society. Visit SIFPod.fun for that bonus show, for a library of more than 12 dozen other secretly incredibly fascinating bonus shows, and a catalog of all sorts of MaxFun bonus shows. It is special audio. It's just for members. Thank you for being somebody who backs this podcast operation. Additional fun things, check out our research sources on this episode's page at MaximumFun.org.

Key sources this week include a piece for Smithsonian Magazine by Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Gilbert King, and a piece for BBC News by journalist Francis Cronin. That page also features resources such as native-land.ca. I'm using those to acknowledge that I recorded this on the traditional land of the Canarsie and Lenape peoples. Also, Katie taped this in the country of Italy. And I want to acknowledge that in my location, in many other locations in the Americas and elsewhere, Native people are very much still here. That feels worth doing on each episode, and join the free SIF Discord, where we're sharing stories and resources about Native people and life. We're also talking about this episode on the Discord.

And hey, would you like a tip on another episode? Because each week I'm finding you something randomly incredibly fascinating by running all the past episode numbers through a random number generator. This week's pick is episode eight. Episode eight is about the topic of ketchup. Fun fact there, one specific guy is the secret global master of Heinz ketchup flavor. So I recommend that episode. I also recommend my co-host Katie Golden's weekly podcast Creature Feature about animals, science, and more. Our theme music is Unbroken Unshaven by the Budos Band. Our show logo is by artist Burton Durand. Special thanks to Chris Souza for audio mastering on this episode.

Extra, extra special thanks go to our members. And thank you to all our listeners. I'm thrilled to say we will be back next week with more secretly incredibly fascinating. So how about that? Talk to you then.