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Of course Wednesday Addams played with the oldest stuffed toys in the world
Steiff toys like Eric the Bat have been valued as high as $20,000.
In the opening scene of The Addams Family episode "Thing Is Missing," Wednesday Addams plays with a toy that comes from a toymaker who collectors today consider the creator of the most popular antique stuffed animals of all time.
The toy Wednesday holds is called Eric the Bat, a stuffed animal created by a toy company called Steiff, which is credited with inventing stuffed animals.
Considered the oldest stuffed animals in the world, Steiff toys were first created in 1880 when a seamstress used felt to make a pin cushion and her nephew took a liking to the stuffed blob as a toy.
Soon, the seamstress was creating toys that she sold at craft fairs throughout Germany, and those toys became so popular, she started the Steiff company officially in 1893.
Today, Steiff toys are considered the most valuable and desirable of all the vintage stuffed animals you can find in antique stores all over the country.
Although Steiff toys started as pin cushions, they soon grew into a zoo of stuffed animals, including elephants, tigers and giraffes, but most popular of which was the teddy bear.
Steiff’s teddy bear was quite possibly the first teddy bear conceived, although that fact is hotly disputed.
Kids would cuddle Steiff toys as small as an inch high or enormously life-sized.
In 1989, the News-Journal reported that Steiff toys sold at auction for as much as $20,000.
If you go looking for Eric the Bat on auction sites today, you’re likely to shuck out a couple hundred bucks.
Eric the Bat toys were sold in the 1950s and 1960s, so it makes sense how one ended up in Wednesday Addams’ arms onscreen.
Although the episode is filmed in black and white, auction photos show that the stuffed bat toy is brown, with perky ears, a black round nose and wings draped off his arms in a perpetual Dracula pose.
It may have been the perfect choice of toy for Wednesday Addams, but according to the head of Steiff in 1966, Eric the Bat was not a popular toy with most other kids, and that’s why Steiff stopped making the toy bat.
"Eric the Bat was funny but nobody bought," Hans-Otto Steiff told The Alternative Press in 1968.
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Has either of those users made comments to the screenname your using currently?
Movie if it had been filmed in the
1960s .
Yes that was her nick name
Sorry
A confetti "HAPPY TwosDay 2 YOU!" greeting.
According to The Guinness Book of World Records a
"Steiff and Louis Vuitton Bear" sold in 2000 for $182,550.
On the Steiff USA page they sell a collectible
2021 "Gretle" Teddy Bear for $2,250.00, but they do have a number of stuffed animals for under $50.00.
