photograph: Papal Audience

The Michtom family's involvement with the toy industry all started with a political cartoon about Theodore Roosevelt in 1902. Morris Michtom had fled Russia to avoid conscription into the czar's army and had opened a candy store in Brooklyn, NY. The cartoon showing Roosevelt refusing to shoot a bear cub on a hunting trip and was captioned "Drawing the Line in Mississippi," meaning to praise the President's support for the tentative movement toward civil rights legislation in the South. Michtom appreciated the cartoon's message and hung it in the window of the candy store, accompanied by a handmaid mohair bear made by his wife. Customers wanted their own copies of the bear and Michtom wrote to Roosevelt asking for permission to use the president's name in marketing them. The teddy bear went on to become an American icon and the foundational product for the Ideal Novelty and Toy Co. While teddy bears proved to be evergreen products, Ideal's cash cow in the 1930s were Shirley Temple dolls and the firm later had astronomical success in the 1980s with Rubik's Cube. When CBS bought the company in 1982, it had annual sales of about $200 million.

One of Ideal's most notable missteps came in 1958 when the company produced an elaborately packaged doll of the infant Jesus Christ. Labeled as "The Most Wonderful Story" in a box resembling a Bible, the product was described as a "replica of the Christ Child [which] has been produced under the direction and guidance of Church Authorities." Kids and their parents proved to be singularly uninterested in the toy and rumor has it that unsold copies were used to create an oceanfront breakwater.