.
Jews and the Seduction of youth
For well over a century Jews in America have seen the opportunity to profit off of the natural appeal that toys hold for children; from Fredrick August Otto Schwartz, the founder of F.A.O. Schwartz; to the Kaufman Brothers who started K-B Toys; to Charles Lazarus, the founder of Toys-R-Us, Jews have made vast fortunes in the retail toy market. It is a fact that is surprising to many, but some of America's best known toys such as the Teddy Bear, Mr. Potato Head, G.I. Joe, the Barbie doll, Hot Wheels, the Frisbee and the Hula-Hoop, were all lucrative products marketed by Jews who made billions selling children's toys, largely as a result of successful commercial advertising campaigns broadcast through the Jewish controlled media of television.
F.A.O. Schwarz, the oldest continuously operating toy store in the United States, was founded in 1862 by Frederick August Otto Schwarz, a Jewish immigrant from Herford, Westphalia, Germany. Schwarz arrived in the United States at the age of 20, having immigrated with his three brothers, Henry, Richard, and Gustav, in 1856. Settling in Baltimore, Maryland, Schwarz found employment working for a Jewish stationer who sold paper goods imported from Europe.
Some of the Jewish suppliers shipped toys and other goods along with stationary hoping to expand their export business and Schwarz began displaying these in the windows of the shop where he worked and soon realized that they were outselling the stationary.
By 1862 Schwarz opened his own shop along with his brothers under the name “Toy Bazaar.” In 1870, Schwarz opened a New York City location known as the "Schwarz Toy Bazaar" at 765 Broadway which moved to 42 E. 14th Street in Union Square in 1880 and operated at that location until April 28, 1897, when it took over two vacant store locations at 39 and 41 W. 23rd Street.
By then, The New York Times described Schwarz as "the largest dealer in toys in this city." Beginning in November 1869, the Schwarz Toy Bazaar held an exhibition of toys that would be available for the Christmas season, which in 1883 was described as the "14th Annual Exhibition."
In 1896, Schwarz proclaimed the store as the "Original Santa Claus Headquarters" in New York. The FAO Schwarz holiday catalog has been published annually since 1876. In 1931, the New York City location moved to 745 Fifth Avenue where it operated for 55 years.
The FAO Schwarz flagship store opened at its current location in 1986 in the General Motors Building at the corner of 58th Street and 5th Avenue. Since the 1990s, new FAO Schwarz stores opened throughout the United States and by 2000 the company had 40 locations.
Morris Michtom's Ideal Toy Company's Teddy Bear
Teddy bears first appeared in the United States in 1903 as the result of clever marketing on the part of toy merchants following the appearance of a popular cartoon by Clifford Berryman that appeared in the November 16, 1902, edition of The Washington Post newspaper, which depicted U.S. President, Teddy Roosevelt, refusing to shoot a captured bear on a hunting trip that he had just returned from earlier that month.