Famous Dolls and Bears

Barbie

Barbie is a best-selling doll launched at the American International Toy Fair on March 9, 1959. The doll is produced by Mattel, Inc. Barbie dolls and related accessories are manufactured to approximately 1/6th scale, which is also known as playscale.

Barbie's full name is Barbara Millicent Roberts, and over the years she has been given many companions, the best known being her beau Ken (Ken Carson), who made his debut in 1961. Like Barbie, Ken shares his name with one of Ruth Handler's children. Barbie and Ken have a famous on-off relationship and they announced a split in 2004 which seems to have been only temporary. Other longstanding friends in Barbie's ethnically diverse social circle include Hispanic Teresa, African American Christie and Steven (Christie's boyfriend), and Kayla. For a full list of Barbie's companions, see the List of Barbie's friends and family.

According to the Random House novels of the 1960s, her parents' names are George and Margaret Roberts of Willows, Wisconsin. Barbie has been said to attend Willows High School in Willows, Wisconsin and Manhattan International High School in New York City (based on the real-life Stuyvesant High School).

Barbie has thirty-eight recorded pets, including cats and dogs, horses, a panda, a lion cub, and a zebra. She has owned pink convertibles, trailers, jeeps and more. She also holds a pilot's license, and operates commercial airliners when not serving as a flight attendant.

Winnie the Pooh

Edward 'Winnie-the-Pooh' Bear or sometimes referred to as Pooh, is a fictional bear created by A. A. Milne. He appears in the books Winnie-the-Pooh (1926) and The House at Pooh Corner (1928). Milne also included several poems about Winnie-the-Pooh in the children’s poetry books When We Were Very Young and Now We Are Six. All four volumes were illustrated by E. H. Shepard.

The hyphen was later dropped when Walt Disney Productions adapted the Pooh stories into a series of Winnie the Pooh featurettes which became one of the company's most successful franchises worldwide.

The Pooh stories have been translated into many languages, notably including Alexander Lenard's Latin translation, Winnie ille Pu, which was first published in 1958, and, in 1960, became the first foreign-language book to be featured on the New York Times Bestseller List.

History of Winnie the Pooh

Milne named the character Winnie-the-Pooh after a toy bear owned by his son, Christopher Robin Milne, who was the basis for the character Christopher Robin. His toys also lent their names to most of the other characters, except for Owl and Rabbit, who were probably based on real animals, and the Gopher character, who was added in the Disney version. Christopher Robin's toy bear is now on display at the Donnell Library Center Central Children's Room in New York.

Christopher Milne had named his toy after Winnipeg, a bear which he and his father often saw at London Zoo, and "Pooh," a swan they had met while on holiday. The bear, called "Winnie," was known as a gentle bear who never attacked anyone, and she was much loved for her playfulness. This is exactly what inspired Milne to write about Pooh Bear. Pooh the swan appears as a character in its own right in When We Were Very Young.

The home of the Milnes, Ashdown Forest in East Sussex, England, was the basis for the setting of the Winnie-the-Pooh stories. The name of the fictional "Hundred Acre Wood" is reminiscent of the Five Hundred Acre Wood, which lies just outside Ashdown Forest and includes some of the locations mentioned in the book, such as the Enchanted Place.

Dolls and Bears

Dolls

A doll is a toy often made in the likeness of a human baby or child, although dolls are also made in the likeness of human adults, animals, or fictional creatures (e.g. troll dolls). Dolls can be made out of almost any material, but both cloth and plastic are popular in doll-making.

Dolls have been around for far longer than most would think, archaeological evidence placing dolls as foremost candidate for oldest known toy, having been found in Egyptian tombs which date to as early as 2000 BC. In Egypt, as well as Greece and Rome, it was common to find them in the graves of children, these were mainly made from wood, however, among the wealthier families, pottery dolls were also found.

Many suggest that dolls were around even before 2000 BC, going further back to prehistoric times, and were probably made from materials such as clay, mud, fur, wood, etc.

Bears

The teddy bear is a stuffed toy bear. It is an enduring, traditional form of stuffed animal, often serving the purpose of comforting upset children. In recent times, some teddy bears have become expensive collector's items. Teddy bear collectors are known as arctophiles from the Greek words 'arcto' (bear) and 'philos' (lover). The world's first Teddy Bear Museum was set up in Petersfield, Hampshire, England, in 1984. In 1990 a similar foundation was set up in Naples, Florida, USA.

Naming (Teddy Bear)

Theodore Roosevelt, nicknamed "Teddy", enjoyed big game-hunting. According to one legend, the teddy bear received its birth at Hotel Colorado in Glenwood Springs, Colorado. To cheer Theodore Roosevelt after an unsuccessful day of hunting, Hotel Colorado maids presented him with a stuffed bear pieced together with scraps of fine material. Later, when he did bag a bear, his daughter Alice admired it saying, "I will call it Teddy." The term caught on.

According to another legend (and the one most often cited), the name derives from a bear-hunting trip in Sharkey County, Mississippi in 1902, when Roosevelt's tracker, noted African-American hunter and sportsman Holt Collier, found and caught an old injured bear. Roosevelt refused to kill the lassoed animal, calling it "unsportsmanlike", and instead released it. "Teddy's Bear" was immediately publicized by political cartoonists, taking journalistic licence and changing it to a young cute bear. The first such cartoon appeared the following day, November 16: Clifford Berryman, an editorial cartoonist for the Washington Post, immortalized the incident as part of a front-page cartoon montage. Berryman pictured Roosevelt with his gun beside him with the butt resting on the ground and his back to the bear, gesturing his refusal to take the trophy shot. Written across the lower part of the cartoon were the words "Drawing the Line in Mississippi," which coupled the hunting incident to a political dispute