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Back in the late 1950's, Ken Forsse had an idea
for a puppet show. The main character in the show would be called
Simian Greep, and would be a bear-like character who loved
adventure. Also i the show was a character named Tweeg and his
small, red bouncing henchman friends. Throughout the 50's, '60's and
'70s, as Ken worked for Walt Disney and other companies, the idea
grew, characters were added, and the main character's name
eventually changed from Simian Greep to Teddy Ruxpin.
In the early 80's, Ken Forsse formed his own company,
Alchemy, using his decades of experience in the entertainment
industry to work for himself doing designs and performing other
creative services to companies such as Disney, where he designed the
costumes used on the TV show "Welcome To Pooh Corner" also around this time he brought in two other
men to help him with the company, John Davies and Larry
Larsen, and the trio invented the technology that would be
the basis for the creation of what would become the most popular toy
of the mid 1980's.
After the
ground level work on the "Talking Toy" technology was developed,
AlchemyII needed someone to produce their invention. Ken contacted a
man named Don Kingsborough, who had been an executive at Atari.
Kingsborough had enough money that he could live the remainder of
his life without working again, and was sitting bored on a beach in
Hawaii when he recieved Forsse's call. Immediately he became
intrigued with the talking toy idea and flew back to California.
Although he was burnt out on big business after having to lay off
thousands of employees at the bankrupt Atari Corp, Kingsborough fell
in love with Teddy Ruxpin and immediately began to secure funding to
create a company to produce him. Kingsborough decided to call the
company
"Worlds of Wonder" mainly because he thought everyone
who saw the stock symbol "WOW" would want to own at least one
share.
By
Christmas of 1985 Teddy Ruxpin was on toy store shelves,
although units quickly sold out and WoW had to go through competing
companies to have additional units manufactured. Teddy became
the best-selling toy of 1985 and 1986, and was among the best
selling toys through the early 1990s.
Worlds of Wonder
produced two slightly different versions of Teddy after the
original, the second of which was roughly the same size but utilized
a plastic tape player, and the third of which was smaller in stature
and used cartridges instead of cassette tapes to make Teddy
talk.
Despite instant success with Teddy Ruxpin and
related products, Worlds of Wonder struggled and finally closed it's
doors in 1991 after literally marketing itself out of business with
an overgrown catalogue of talking toys including Teddy, Mickey
Mouse, Mother Goose and others. Teddy's rapid success was
really only matched by the sudden decline of the company that
manufactured him.
WoW produced, to date, the only version of
the Talking Grubby, which is not a stand alone unit but only
animates when connected to the WoW Teddy via an animation cable.
Worlds of Wonder also produced a line of accompanying "World of
Teddy Ruxpin" toys which included miniature action figures, an
Airship, and a line of hand puppets.
The Worlds of Wonder
Teddy and it's accessories are not compatible with any other version
of Teddy. Fortunately, a WoW Teddy is very easy to spot, as it's by
far the largest version of the bear, and most widely available on
sites such as Ebay. It is one of two versions that use cassette
tapes to stimulate animation, the other being the late 1990's Yes!
Entertainment edition, which is much smaller and is dressed in a red
shirt and blue "jeans" instead of Teddy's regular tan tunic.
More technical information on the
WoW Version can be found at Mathue's Teddy Ruxpin FAQ.
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