1834 - Robert Southey writes Goldilocks and the Three Bears

1894 - German Toy Company Gebruder Sussenguth produce a catalog showing a stuffed bear toy.

1897 - Steiff features skittles and roly-poly toy bears in that years catalogue.

1899 - Margarete Steiff registers patents for 23 of her soft toy designs which include a dancing bear and a brown bear with a handler.

1902 - The American President Theodore Roosevelt refuses to shoot a bear cub while hunting in Mississippi and the incident makes national news. The famous cartoon of the incident by Clifford Berryman is published in the Washington Post on November 16th 1902.

1902 - Richard Steiff, reputedly in October 1902, to look for new ideas for toys and to see bears in an American travelling circus. He sketches an idea of an upright bear and sends it to his aunt - Margarete Steiff, a German stuffed toy manufacturer since 1880.

1903 - Russian Jewish immigrant to the US, Morris Michtom, sees the Berryman cartoon and his wife Rose Michtom designs a stuffed bear toy. Michtom writes and asks permission from President Roosevelt to name the toy after him. “Teddy” Roosevelt agrees and the "Teddys Bear" is born. 

Roosevelt is quoted as saying "I don't think my name is likely to be worth much in the toy bear business, but you are welcome to use it." Theodore (Teddy) Roosevelt, 1903.

How wrong Roosevelt was. In lending his nickname to a new children's toy, the twenty-sixth President of the United States unwittingly gave the toy industry the hook needed to manufacture the worlds most commercially successful toy -”Teddy’s” Bear or... The Teddy Bear

PS... How did President Roosevelt react to the incredible popularity of teddy’s bear? Well, the music to the popular song The Teddy Bears' Picnic was used during President Roosevelt's subsequent election campaign

and...  to show the power of “Teddys Bear”  US President William Taft had his own toy “Billy Possum” made. This was intended to rival the amazing popularity of Teddy’s Bear