A political cartoon in the Washington Post by Clifford Berryman is credited with starting the teddy bear craze in the United States in November 1902. Called "Drawing the Line in Mississippi", it depicted President Teddy Roosevelt refusing to shoot a baby bear, belying his reputation as a big-game hunter and giving a political twist to a local border dispute between Mississippi and Louisiana that the President was trying to settle. Media attention was so great that Rose and Morris Michtom of Brooklyn, New York, decided to commemorate the event with a stuffed bear. Its sweet and innocent look was apparently the first time a stuffed bear was not made to look fierce and intimidating.
The public's response to the toy bear led to the creation of the Ideal Novelty and Toy Company, founded by the Michtoms and a wholesale firm, Butler Brothers, to answer the demand.
At the same time in Germany, Margarete Steiff and her nephew, Richard Steiff, were already established in the stuffed toy business. Sketching bear cubs at the Stuttgart Zoo, Richard developed a prototype of a toy bear in 1902.
Although the two bear designs were different, and the two companies were unaware of each other's designs, an American toy manufacturer realized the Steiff bear would sell well in the U.S. and brought it to the American market in 1903. Within three years, the teddy bear fever had reached a high pitch for both adults and children. Roosevelt used a bear as a mascot in his re-election campaign, and more manufacturers responded with bears of all kinds and colors. While many of the early manufacturers didn't survive long, the Gund Manufacturing Company, started in 1906, is still making distinctive bears today.
The next leap forward in Teddy Bear history is thanks to a little boy named Christopher Robin Milne. Winnie-the-Pooh was "born" in print when Christopher Robin was six, and the original Pooh and his friends are on display at the New York Public Library's Donnell Branch in New York City.
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