Stuffed Toys Essay

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A stuffed toy is a toy sewn from a textile, and stuffed with a soft material. They are also known as plush toys, plushies, or stuffed animals, and soft toys or cuddly toys . Textiles commonly used include plain cloth and pile textiles like plush or terrycloth. Common stuffing materials are synthetic fiber batting, cotton, straw, wood wool, plastic pellets or beans. Stuffed toys are made in many different forms, often resembling animals, legendary creatures, cartoon characters or inanimate objects. They are often used as comfort objects, for display or collecting and given as gifts, such as for graduation, Valentine's Day or birthdays. History and types The first commercial concern to create stuffed toys was the German Steiff company in 1880. Steiff used new technology developed for upholstery to make their stuffed toys. In 1903 Richard Steiff designed a soft bear that differed from earlier traditional rag dolls, because it was made of plush furlike fabric. The character Peter Rabbit from English author Beatrix Potter was the first stuffed toy to be patented, in 1903. Sock monkeys are handmade stuffed monkeys made out of socks that first appeared during the Great Depression. Amigurumi is a Japanese type of handcrafted knitted or crocheted stuffed toys. Amigurumi are typically made to look cute with oversized heads and undersized extremities. There are many brands of stuffed toys that began marketing strategies to encourage the collection of a series of stuffed toys, such as Ty's popular Beanie Babies. Several brands of electronic and robotic plush toys were fads when they were first released. These include Tickle Me Elmo, a laughing and shaking plush toy based on the character Elmo from the Sesame Street television show, released in 1996, Furby, a robotic talking plush toy with its own language, released in 1998 and Zhu Zhu Pets, a line of robotic plush

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