Keeppley Teddy Theme Store Set C0109

Keeppley's Teddy Theme Store is a City Corner model built from 281 blocks, standing 17.5 cm tall and 8 cm long. Age 6+.

Two people invented the teddy bear in the same year, and neither knew

In November 1902 Theodore Roosevelt was on a bear hunt in Mississippi and had found nothing. His hosts, embarrassed, cornered an exhausted black bear, tied it to a tree and invited the president to shoot it. He refused — not out of sentiment, he said, but because it would be unsporting.

A cartoonist at the Washington Post drew the scene, redrawing the bear smaller and more appealing with each version. A Brooklyn shopkeeper named Morris Michtom saw it, had his wife sew a stuffed bear, put it in the window labelled Teddy's bear, and wrote to the president asking permission to use the name. Roosevelt replied that he doubted it was worth much but he could go ahead.

In the same year, entirely independently, Richard Steiff in Giengen in Germany was designing a jointed toy bear for his aunt Margarete's company. It was shown at the Leipzig trade fair in 1903, and an American buyer ordered three thousand.

Neither party knew about the other. Two continents produced the same object in the same twelve months, and the argument about who was first has never been settled.

Eleven shops that make a street

City Corner sets are narrow shopfronts around 18 to 20 cm tall with flat side walls, designed to stand shoulder to shoulder. A run of four or five becomes a terrace.

The others are the dessert house (C0101), café (C0102), cosmetics store (C0103), florist (C0104), fashion store (C0105), bookshop (C0107), luxury store (C0110) and styling hall (C0111).

Specifications

Pieces: 281 · Series: Keeppley City Corner · Age: 6+ · Retail box
Model dimensions: 17.5 × 8 cm (6.9 × 3.1 in)