Viewing 40 posts - 1 through 40 (of 40 total)
  • What Teddy Bear?
  • Pigface
    Free Member

    Ok a very dear friend has just been approved to adopt a baby 😀

    I want to get the little one a teddy bear and am confused, don’t think spending £100+ is justified so over to the denizens of STW recommend me a teddy bear.

    fasthaggis
    Full Member

    Wait for bin day and get a free one 😛

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    muppetWrangler
    Free Member

    Go to the toy shop and buy the one that looks cute, fluffy and is machine washable. Buying a lifestyle brand teddy bear is starting the consumerism a bit young.

    perchypanther
    Free Member

    My wife is an avid collector of Steiff bears
    What you want is A Steiff Charly bear

    Cuddly and robust enough for a child to love and play with but still a Steiff – About £30. Job Jobbed.

    Pigface
    Free Member

    Agree but looking for longevity really, I still have the Teddy Bear given to me on the day I was born, he is a bit threadbare baddumtish and is a bit flat and torn but I can honestly say I love him.

    Just trying to do the same for this little baby, maybe a rose tinted view of things.

    Thanks for the sugestions

    jate
    Free Member

    In our house it’s been Paddington all the way. Mate bought one for my daughter when she was 6 months old. She now has >30 including 2 “stunt doubles” for the original (plus books, mugs, t-shirts etc etc). He goes everywhere with us (she’s now 14!) and is a very well travelled bear (he’s currently in Wales with her and at Easter will be heading off to Italy skiing I gather). Tbh he’s pretty much a member of the family and myself & Mrs Jate would be very upset if anything ever happened to him.
    The great thing with Paddington is that as she got older we read her the stories and then of course she read them herself, so he’s more than just a cuddly toy.

    muppetWrangler
    Free Member

    Agree but looking for longevity really, I still have the Teddy Bear given to me on the day I was born, he is a bit threadbare baddumtish and is a bit flat and torn but I can honestly say I love him.

    I’ve still got my childhood favourite bear too, he’s in a similarly threadbare state, he’s not torn though, you bloody hooligan!

    The steiff ones in the picture picture above certainly look like cute kid friendly bears and i wouldn’t count them out but there’s really no telling what a kid becomes emotionally attached to. It could be that the tackiest looking rainbow coloured giraffe becomes their favourite.

    Sandwich
    Full Member

    Sandwich Jr had a soft bear from Boots in white. He’s a little thin in places these days but bearing up (I thank you). My advice would be to get 2 so that one being cleaned doesn’t cause anguish.

    Harry_the_Spider
    Full Member
    perchypanther
    Free Member

    The Gruffalo is where it’s at. Any fule know dat.

    Silly old Harry, don’t you know?

    There’s no such thing….

    daftvader
    Free Member

    Jelly kitten toys are brilliant, very soft and cuddly. Minivader has several as does minimissvader…

    cinnamon_girl
    Full Member

    Where’s bearnecessities when you need him?

    jemima
    Free Member

    Silly old Harry, don’t you know?

    There’s no such thing….

    WHY IS THERE NO LIKE BUTTON IN THIS FORUM???

    In terms of bear selection our boy really likes his foot tall Pooh Bear and Roo.
    He also likes a random little blue soft toy dog we got hand-me-down from a friend. No accounting for taste…

    DrJ
    Full Member

    My daughter had a teddy bear from IKEA. It has been everywhere and now at the age of 22 needs major surgery to its arm and ear. If I’d been clever I’d have bought two, as she couldn’t (wouldn’t) sleep without it, so were lived in fear of losing it or forgetting it.

    chiefgrooveguru
    Full Member

    You don’t choose a bear, a bear chooses you.

    spacemonkey
    Full Member

    +1 Steiff Charly.

    MIL bought one for monkey jnr when he was born. They became very attached. We then “lost” Charly on a day out when monkey was two. Thankfully I managed to locate a new Charly in a Guildford store and the manager even stayed open an extra 30 mins for me to rock up and purchase said bear. Monkey never noticed the difference.

    Similar thing happened with “Pig”. Monkey spotted the difference this time though as the replacement was clean.

    Bottom line: buy two and keep one as a backup. Be prepared to ‘mess up’ the latter to make it match the original.

    Pigface
    Free Member

    When I was about 7 I lost my Teddy and was inconsolable, my dad came up with a genius solution, he told me that my Teddy was working the traffic lights in Crumlin 😆 he used to drive me up there to prove it. He did this funny voice that I knew was my dad but at the same time knew it was Teddy. Crumlin was about 4 miles up the road from where I grew up.

    The following summer when we got the bikes out I found Teddy in the boot of my sisters trike. Happiness restored 😆

    Dont think I would have sussed out a replacement if they had tried that.

    MoreCashThanDash
    Full Member

    Harrods used to do bears with the year embroidered on the paw – my brother in law got both of our two one when they were born.

    Alternatively, if you are handy with a needle and thread…

    fwiw, neither of them had that bear as their “special” teddy though.

    zippykona
    Full Member

    This is our best seller.
    Jellycat bashful bunny. They start at £7.99 and go up to £50 for a giant one.
    If replacing a lost toy , a good idea is to put it in the parent’s bed for a couple of nights so it gets a familiar smell.

    metcalt
    Full Member

    Not a bear but I got one of these (in the large size) for my friends son and he loves it.

    http://www.jellycat.com/cordy-roy-fox-roy3fx/

    Kahurangi
    Full Member

    You can’t beat the Jellycat stuff. Really soft, machine washable, and you avoid those nasty “that’s not a proper teddy” snobs who vouch for Steiff 😉

    jate
    Free Member

    That picture of the Bashful Bunny is pretty scary. This is mainly because along with all her Paddingtons, our daughter also has a wide selection of Jellycats, each with their own personality (go with me on this…..). The particular one pictured is, in our household, called Flipsy and is tbh rather more aggressive than the average rabbit. She certainly frightens me.

    perchypanther
    Free Member

    you avoid those nasty “that’s not a proper teddy” snobs who vouch for Steiff

    In a house with tens of thousands of pounds worth of Steiff bears in it , the most precious and valuable soft toy of them all is Monkey, who was purchased for £3.99 from Paradise Park in Hayle.

    Monkey was kidnapped in Portugal when middle sized panthercub tucked him into bed when we went to the pool and the maid stripped the sheets from the bed and sent then to an offsite Laundry. I had a couple of days of tense international relations to negotiate his safe return.

    We purched a spare replacement Monkey after the kidnap scare but he twigged straight away. He is now known as “Other Monkey”. A poor substitute indeed.

    My son is now ten years old and still takes Monkey to bed every night for a cuddle though he wouldn’t dare admit to it.

    bigblackshed
    Full Member

    there’s really no telling what a kid becomes emotionally attached to

    Exactly.

    I bought both my boys Steiff bears when they were born, more out of family tradition than hoping they would become favourites. I’ve still got mine, although it’s very dog-eared. Boy1’s favourite is a cheap soft toy of a favourite TV character, Mopatop, it still goes on holiday even though Boy1 is 17! Boy2 loves his dinosaur wheat filled hot pad.

    mrhoppy
    Full Member

    Wise parents buy 2 and regularly rotate to keep an even level of wear so that you don’t get the problems when it comes to swapping out. We only have one and live in fear of badger going missing.

    kcr
    Free Member

    Don’t overthink it. They’ll probably end up with more soft toys than they know what to do with, and babies don’t care if it’s a “premium brand” toy, as long as it is cuddly and colourful. Consider getting some simple books. It’s never too early to start reading to kids, and even young babies can enjoy looking at and playing with those washable, chewable books, long before they start to comprehend them. I think encouraging a love of reading is one of the best gifts you can give.

    Northwind
    Full Member

    I got a jellycat onesie bunny for my friend’s kid, he’s ridiculously adorable- soft and flopsy and generally ideal, the sort of soft toy that you can easily think they’ll still have in 50 years. Steiff seem like a grownup’s idea of a bear to me, I had a couple like that as a kid that I just didn’t take to at all, they were good toys but they weren’t people.

    Pigface – Member

    Agree but looking for longevity really, I still have the Teddy Bear given to me on the day I was born, he is a bit threadbare baddumtish and is a bit flat and torn but I can honestly say I love him.

    Try and take Brown Bear from me and I will end you. He looks like this guy, if this guy had a long term meth habit and had spent a decade eating out of bins

    zippykona
    Full Member

    It’s good to hear the love for Jellycat. We used to sell them side by side with Gund but they really went off the boil.

    Alex
    Full Member

    My Grandma proudly presented me with a cuddly elephant she’d knitted for me over a period nearly as long as my mum was pregnant. Not that I received it at birth. Oh no, it was far too precious. It was handed over for my third birthday.

    ‘Look LOOK your Grandma has made you this lovely elephant, isn’t he superb, what a likeness, what do you want to call him’

    ‘Woof Woof’

    I didn’t know what a bloody elephant was. I was only three. I knew what a dog was, we had one of those and it looked sort of similar. My ‘nan was not impressed at all 😉

    Anyway as you were.

    Oh except our eldest has an elephant from my mom (this time properly identified by grandchild) which she;d bought on hols in the US and wasn’t available in the UK. So when the original got lost somewhere, getting replacement was slightly harder that it really needed to be. Especially as firstborn couldn’t sleep without it 😉

    We’re not much for cuddly toys nowadays…

    tjp1980
    Free Member

    My little (5) girls favourite is a little soft puppy from Sainsburys. My little boy (2) just likes hard toys like cars. Takes a different one to bed each night. Hope that isn’t a portent of things to come…

    thebrowndog
    Free Member
    demonracer
    Full Member

    Hi Pigface,

    I get asked this at work on a daily basis. Are you after a bear for the baby to play with or something to keep on a shelf in the bedroom (possibly more for mum to start with). Do you know if it’s going to be a baby boy or girl yet?

    If you after a bear to play with then a ‘my first steiff’ in a suitable colour or a “charlly” are both good options if you want to go for a well know brand. Another option is a jelly cat, I normally go for a monkey for a boy baby of rabbit for a girl … My little niece loves hers and takes it everywhere!

    If you want something a little more special to keep on a shelf then Charlie Bears are worth a look, you get a lot of bear for your money if you go for a plush bear rather than mohair. Another nice brand but more expensive is Merrythought, they make their bears in England from mohair and EU start from just under £70.

    Whatever you decide to go for I’m sure both mother and baby (in time) will appreciate it.

    Bregante
    Full Member

    My daughters most treasured “bear” is a jellycat bunny. She’s now 12 and its the only one that she’s lasted with.

    My sons most treasured “bear” is a jellycat Monkey. He’s now 8 and has loads of bears but Monkey is the one that goes in the suitcase when we go anywhere.

    We didn’t impose either of these favourites on them so there must be something in it.

    edhornby
    Full Member

    our eldest has gravitated to a jellycat bashful just like the one in the picture (named pink bunny) and the youngest switches between a white one and a small steiff, I had no idea they were as popular tbh

    chiefgrooveguru
    Full Member

    My eldest’s only treasured associate is not a bear but an irreplaceable ’70s vintage synthetic cellular blanket. He has a name and he even talks nowadays, despite looking like a rapidly disintegrating knot of nylon rags. There are many bears too but she considers them more fellow house guests, each with their own distinct personalities and past careers (mostly in show business, although one was a 1980s ursine superhero before he hung up his cape and retired)…

    Cougar
    Full Member

    I think you’re overthinking it. Very young kids don’t care about a premium £100 toy over a cardboard box, it’s utterly unpredictable what they’ll latch on to.

    In my young formative years my ‘comfort blanket’ plushie was a mole that came back from a grandparents’ trip to Blackpool. Not the most premium or interactive of soft toys but “Digger” and I were inseparable.

    CountZero
    Full Member

    Bottom line: buy two and keep one as a backup. Be prepared to ‘mess up’ the latter to make it match the original.

    This, but swap them regularly, like every week or so, that way they each wear pretty much equally, and are easier to exchange if one should get kidnapped, abducted by aliens, go on an extended vacation…
    As Cougar says, you can really overthink these things, it’s impossible to predict what a little one will bond with; my pregnant niece came up recently with her little girl, and my dad gave my niece a couple of little toy bears that my late mum had bought on holidays, one for the girl, one for the impending one, and given a choice the little one immediately made a grab for one specific bear, and was quite adamant that she wanted that one, and certainly not the other!

    dooosuk
    Free Member

    OP I think your going to be disappointed by the outcome of all this.

    Just had our second kid. As with the first, every man and his dog bought some sort of soft toy. We literally have bag and shelf fulls of them, all brand new.

    The first child was more interested in the free meerkat that arrived one day but soon lost interest in that.

    But if you have to buy one, one of the Jellycat range would more than suffice.

    pictonroad
    Full Member

    We have bags and bags of the damn things (all makes) all bought for us by well meaning friends. The boy is vaguely attached to a dog shaped thing that came out of a penny pusher and the girl won’t sleep without a square of cotton muslin, any will do.

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