Ideal Toy Company
The Ideal Novelty and Toy Company was born in 1907 in Brooklyn, New York. The company grew out of the demand for Teddy’s Bears that Rose and Morris Mitchtom had made in their home in late 1902/early 1903.
Teddy’s Bears, or teddy bears as they soon began to be called, became more and more popular, especially after President Roosevelt used a teddy bear as his mascot during his 1904 presidential re-election campaign. Among the items produced by the Mitchtoms at that time were six inch campaign teddy bears with large round staring eyes.
But the Mitchtoms weren’t able to keep up with demand on their own, even with new facilities in another Brooklyn location. So in 1907 they created the Ideal Novelty and Toy Company with Butler Brothers after Butler bought up their entire stock of bears. The collaboration between the two was ideal because Butler Brothers was a wholesaler with interests in plush-type fabrics and the Mitchtoms had the patterns for the bears. The resulting company was the first teddy bear manufacturer in the United States.
It is not known what the Mitchtom’s earliest bears looked like because none of them have survived. Plus, the early bears weren’t labeled, so even those produced say in 1907 cannot be sure about their exact birthday. The early teddy bears usually had ears set far apart, a wide forehead and a stitched nose giving their heads a triangular shape. In addition, their paw pads tended to be slightly pointed and they had plush mohair coats. Early bears had black boot button eyes, which gradually gave way to glass. They also tended to have plump bodies, a hump at the top of their back and long curved arms.
Then came 1929, the stock market crash, and the Great Depression. Many toy companies went out of business because people didn’t have much money and also because buying such things as toys, even cuddly teddy bears, was consider frivolous. But Ideal managed to survive.
Mitchtom’s son Benjamin joined the Ideal Novelty and Toy Company in 1923, becoming its head when Mitchtom died in 1938. Changing the company’s name to Ideal Toy Company, Benjamin Mitchtom used his excellent marketing skills, along with the skills of chief executive Abraham Katz, to make the company one of the United States’ top toy producers. About that time, Ideal also began labeling their bears and marking them with a paper tag.
In 1953 Ideal joined the ranks of teddy bear companies such as Gund who were making soft bear toys of popular bears (live or cartoon characters). While Gund won the right to produce Disney soft toys, Ideal won the right to license the U.S. Forest Service’s mascot, Smokey Bear. Ideal produced Smokey Bear soft toys with vinyl faces until 1968 when it lost the license to another teddy bear company, Knickerbocker.
However popular the teddy bears were, however, Ideal had never stopped making dolls. And after World War II, Ideal devoted more and more of its energy to making dolls, becoming the largest doll maker in the United States. Some of its signature dolls were Shirley Temple, Betsy Wetsy and Judy Garland. Ideal also expanded under license agreements to countries including Canada, Great Britain, Australia and Brazil.
Then in 1968 Ideal joined the New York Stock Exchange as one of the top three toy companies in the country as the Ideal Toy Corporation.
Ideal underwent a number of changes in the 70’s and 80’s including opening a new facility in Newark, New Jersey and then moving its headquarters to New Jersey in 1982.
But as so often happens, going public spelled the death knell for Ideal. Following going public, Ideal maintained its independence until late 1982 when Mark Mitchtom, then head of Ideal and grandson of Morris Mitchtom, sold the company to CBS. (Ideal is now part of Mattel.) For some reason or other, CBS chose not to include Ideal’s teddy bears with its purchase. As a result, soon Ideal was no longer making teddy bears; some place the date after 1982; others place the date closer to 1984.
But even though Ideal itself no longer exists as a company, or makes teddy bears for its owner, its contributions to the world of teddy bears in the United States cannot be underestimated. Ideal will always be remembered as the company who made “Teddy’s Bears.”