The Teddy Bears' Picnic Trivia Quiz

Answer: Richard Steiff

Both the US and Germany are credited with inventing the first teddy bears; in the case of Germany, Richard Steiff came up with the idea for toy bears after drawing the bears in his local zoo in Stuttgart. Steiff's aunt Margarete, a seamstress, had founded a soft toy company and he began working there in 1897. In 1902, he created a prototype toy bear named 'Steiff Bär 55 PB'; PB stood for 'Plüsch' (plush) and 'beweglich' (movable). An American buyer bought all 100 of Steiff's teddy bears at the 1903 Leipzig Toy Fair, and ordered 3000 more, due to the new craze for 'teddy bears' that was taking off in the US at the time. However, none of these bears have survived.

The following year, the Steiffs sold 12,000 toy bears at the St Louis World's Fair, receiving the Gold Medal.

Answer: Old Bear

Jane Hissey was given the real-life Old Bear by her grandmother as a child, and as an adult, he was the inspiration for her first book, 'Old Bear', in 1986. In the story, Old Bear had been hidden away in the attic to protect him from the children's rough play, and the other toys hatch a plan to rescue him. The other toys who form the core group are Bramwell Brown, a brown teddy bear with floppy ears; Duck, a grumpy toy duck; Little Bear, a young teddy bear who wears red trousers; and Rabbit, a toy rabbit.

The books were made into a stop-motion series, 'Old Bear Stories', which ran from 1993 to 1997. As well as the core cast, it featured various other toys from the books, such as Jolly Tall the giraffe, Camel the toy camel, and a family of dolls.

Answer: Sooty

Sooty was a yellow bear glove puppet with black ears and originally appeared on 'The Sooty Show', with Harry Corbett as his puppeteer. Originally known as 'Teddy', he was bought by Corbett while on holiday in Blackpool in 1948. Corbett used the puppet to entertain children with magic tricks. Sooty was mute, and would 'speak' by whispering into the puppeteer's ear. He was originally yellow all over, but was given black ears - which led to his new name - to make him stand out more on black-and-white television. Sweep, a grey dog with floppy black ears, joined 'The Sooty Show' in 1957, while Soo - a female panda voiced by Marjorie Corbett - joined in 1964.

Corbett's son Matthew took over as presenter in 1976, and the show became more like a sitcom, with lots of slapstick and wacky adventures. Scampi, Sooty's young white cousin, was introduced in 1991.

Answer: True

Yes, this is true! Before Zelenskyy became President of Ukraine, he was an actor and starred in the romantic comedies 'Love in the Big City' and '8 First Dates' and their sequels. As a teenager, he competed in KVN, a Russian comedy competition. He also played the President of Ukraine in the TV series 'Servant of the People', four years before becoming the real one.

In the original 'Paddington' films, the titular bear is voiced by Ben Whishaw.

Answer: Elvis Presley

'(Let Me Be Your) Teddy Bear' was written by Kal Mann and Bernie Lowe. Elvis posed on the cover holding a black teddy bear with a gold ribbon round its neck. It was featured in 'Loving You', his second feature film, where he played Deke Rivers, a delivery man who just happens to have a great singing voice.

The song was released in 1957 and has been covered by a range of musicians, from Pat Boone and Johnny Hallyday (who did a French version) to Take That with Mark Owen on lead vocals, ZZ Top and Cliff Richard.

Answer: Robert Rankin

Robert Rankin's 'The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse' is a detective story featuring toys and nursery rhyme characters. When Jack goes to Toy City, he meets Eddie Bear, a teddy bear detective who works for Wee Willie Winkie's agency and is investigating the deaths of various nursery rhyme characters. Humpty Dumpty is boiled alive, Little Jack Horner is stuffed with jam, Little Tommy Tucker is killed by a bomb, Jack Sprat is fried in his ex-wife's diner, and Little Boy Blue's death is very gruesome indeed. The killer, revealed to be the toymaker Anders Anders' evil twin, leaves hollow chocolate bunnies at the crime scenes. After the case is solved, Eddie becomes the mayor of Toy City (although he is deposed in the sequel).

Incidentally, Robert Rankin is from Brighton, where I grew up, and his son was a friend of mine - we were in the same class in infant school.

Answer: Mexico

'Osito de peluche' is Spanish for 'teddy bear', and the record-breaking plushie was made in Xonacatlán in Mexico State on 28 April 2019. It was a joint effort between the Municipio de Xonacatlán (Xonacatlán Community), Ideas por México (Ideas for Mexico) and Agrupación de Productores de Peluche (Soft Toy Producers' Group).

It measured 19.41 metres long, weighed nearly 4.4 tons and took nine hours to make, wore a pink dress and a pink bow on one of its ears, and had a shiny pink nose. The ginormous teddy was displayed in a local football stadium and had been made to promote Children's Day in Mexico.

Answer: Mr Burns

Bobo is Mr Burns' teddy bear and appears in the episode 'Rosebud', a parody of 'Citizen Kane'. Mr Burns lost Bobo when he was a child and Bobo had an adventurous life; after falling into a river, he was washed up in New York and was found by Charles Lindbergh, then Adolf Hitler, who catches him when Lindbergh throws him into the crowd in Paris. Hitler throws Bobo away in 1945 while hiding in his bunker, blaming the bear for Germany's loss, and Bobo later ends up encased in ice at the North Pole, where he is found by ice cutters in 1993 and put in a bag of ice for the Kwik-E-Mart.

Mr Burns discovers that Bobo has returned to Springfield and offers a reward for finding him; however, Maggie Simpson has the bear. Homer refuses to give Bobo up, but Maggie gives it back to Mr Burns. He evidently loses Bobo again, because thousands of years in the future, when he is a cyborg, he takes Bobo back from a group of apes.

Answer: Tottenham Hotspur

A native Londoner, Sheringham began his playing career at Millwall, where he become their all-time second top scorer with 93 goals, beaten only by Neil Harris (who would go on to manage them many years later). He signed for Nottingham Forest in 1991 and the following season, he joined Tottenham Hotspur, becoming one of their best players; in the first season of the Premier League, he was its top scorer. In the 1994-1995 season, he and new signing Jürgen Klinsmann made a formidable pair. Sheringham signed for Manchester United in 1997 for £3.5 million; between 1999 and 2001, he won three titles with them, along with the 1999 FA Cup.

Incidentally, Sheringham has also been on the British version of 'The Masked Singer'. He was disguised as a tree (a teddy bear would have probably been a bit too obvious).

Answer: Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc

Monokuma ('Monobear') is the mascot of the series, a half-black, half-white robotic teddy bear who acts as a proxy for the true mastermind of each game (who is controlling him behind the scenes). He announces the task for each chapter, presides over the trials and pronounces each killer guilty before dragging them off to die a horrible death, usually related to their talents (for instance, Leon Kuwata, a baseball player, is battered to death by baseballs).

The second game, 'Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair' is set on an island, which is actually a virtual world; the third game, 'Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony', features five miniature versions of Monokuma called the Monokubs. They all have dummies in their mouths and are killed off one by one throughout the game. 'Danganronpa Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls', a side story featured between the first and second games, features two Monokumas: Kurokuma, a black Monokuma smoking a cigar and dressed like a gangster, and Shirokuma, a white Monokuma with a bandaged eye.