There are a few different versions of this story floating around out there, but the basics to the legend behind every child’s favorite cuddly friend are consistent: it involved President Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt and a real, live bear!

In November of 1902, President Roosevelt was on a hunting expedition in Mississippi. Unfortunately, the hunt had been rather unsuccessful. Wanting to give the President an opportunity for a successful shot, some members of his party spent a long while tracking a bear and were finally able to tie the bear to a tree. They presented the bear to TR so that he could shoot it. But the ever-sportsmanlike President refused whole-heartedly, saying that it would be wrong to kill the bear because it did not have a chance to defend itself.

Clifford K. Berryman, a political cartoonist at the Washington Post, heard of this story and created an illustration that depicted the scene, with Roosevelt holding up one hand in refusal of shooting the poor bear, who Berryman made out to look more cuddly than ferocious. A shop owner named Morris Michtom saw the cartoon and had some stuffed bears his wife had made for sale in his shop. He got permission from the President to call them “Teddy Bears” and the rest is history!

In today’s collectibles market, teddy bears are one of the hottest commodities, political memorabilia is also very popular, and lately, mechanical banks are soaring. Accompanying this article are photos of two examples of the mechanical bank known as “Teddy and The Bear,” both of which play on the scene described above, with depictions of Teddy Roosevelt with a gun in hand, aimed at a tree. When one places a coin on the gun, it is shot at the tree and a bear comes out of the top of the tree. The banks are both superb examples of a “Teddy and The Bear,” one has a gray tree and one a brown one.