Who invented the teddy bear soft toy?

Morris Michtom (1870 – July 21, 1938), was a Russian-born businessman and inventor, who with his wife Rose, invented the teddy bear in 1902. They founded the Ideal Novelty and Toy Company, which after Michtom's death became the largest doll-making company in the United States.

Michtom was born to a Jewish family and immigrated to New York in 1887. He sold candy in his shop at 404 Tompkins Avenue in Bedford-Stuyvesant Brooklyn by day and made stuffed animals with his wife Rose at night.

The teddy bear was inspired by a cartoon by Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist Clifford K. Berryman depicting American president Theodore Roosevelt having compassion for a bear at the end of an unsuccessful hunting trip in Mississippi in 1902, he was also later nicknamed "Teddy". Michtom saw the drawing and created a tiny plush bear cub which he sent to Roosevelt. After receiving permission to use Roosevelt's name, Michtom put a plush bear in the shop window with a sign "Teddy's bear." After the creation of the bear in 1902, the sale of the bears was so brisk that in 1907 Michtom created the Ideal Novelty and Toy Company.