I have yet another bear! This one was found at the Salvation Army Thrift Store. I have far too much stuff right now, so I simply took a picture.
Like Harrods and many other high-end department stores, the legendary F.A.O. Schwarz sold special-edition teddy bears for Christmas.
F.A.O. Schwarz was the name in toys for over a century. In 1862, German immigrant Frederick Augustus Otto Schwarz opened Toy Bazaar in Baltimore, Maryland, and he opened a New York City outlet in 1870.
Readers of a certain age may remember Schwarz and its famous "walking piano" from the movie Big, in which Tom Hanks danced Hoagy Carmichael's "Heart and Soul" across its black and white keys, but I remember going to the Downtown Chicago outlet when I was about five or six. The one thing I definitely remember is the wonderful, whimsical store clock with the animatronic face, and its jingle that played every so often: ♪Welcome to our world, welcome to our world, welcome to our world of toys!♫ There might have been a replica of the keyboard from the New York one, but for the life of me I cannot remember whether or not it actually lit up. Two toys that pop up in my memory are a set of teddy bears that were called The Honey-Spooners (as their name suggests, they were dressed up to look like Jackie Gleason, Art Carney, and the rest of the cast of The Honeymooners) and a set of spinning tops that had felt-tipped markers as their points. You spun them on a sheet of paper, and their random motion would create interesting patterns and spirals. Again, though, I only went there once or twice, so it's entirely possible that I'm conflating one or two other things.
I also remember F.A.O. Schweetz, a Schwarz-branded candy store that had an outlet alongside the WTTW Store of Knowledge at Chicago's Water Tower Place. Though my memories are hazy thirty years on, a very well-stocked Willy Wonka display sticks out in the memory.
Fortunately, F.A.O. Schwarz still exists as a brick-and-mortar store as well as a brand name unto itself. Schwarz-branded toys are available for sale at Midway Airport and my local Target on 95th and Pulaski. Schwarz primarily sells simple, early-childhood fare such as teddy bears, activity boards and puzzles, and even "air soccer," a larger version of air hockey.
