Trumpy Bear

Submission 5,118

Part of a series on Donald Trump. [View Related Entries]

About

Trumpy Bear is a stuffed animal made in the likeness of Donald Trump that grew popular thanks to a commercial for the product that some have suspected of being a parody. The commercial went viral in November of 2018 after it aired on Fox News.

History

Trumpy Bear was made by Exceptional Products.^[3] The product is a teddy bear made in the likeness of Donald Trump and comes with an American flag blanket inside.The commercial advertising the product, which can be purchased with a certificate of authenticity and is paid for in two installments of $19. The commercial first was published to YouTube on July 8th, 2017 and gained over 2.3 million views.

Online Reaction

The ad began attracting media attention the following month. On August 14th, AV Club covered it.^[1] The commercial began running on national networks Animal Planet, Discovery, Grit TV and INSP in October of that year.^[2] Over the following year, multiple media outlets ran pieces about the oddness of Trumpy Bear, including the San Francisco Chronicle,^[4] Kansas City Star,^[5] AL.com,^[6] and others. Snopes^[7] ran a piece validating that the Trumpy Bear is in fact a real product, writing "The commercial is real, not a spoof (although some moments appear to have been written with tongue firmly in cheek)."

November 2018 Revival

On November 12th, 2018, Vox reporter Aaron Rupar tweeted the commercial, saying "I can't believe this commercial that just ran on Fox News is for real" (shown below).

Rupar's tweet brought the commercial to the attention of Twitter users who began making jokes about it. For example, Twitter user @jeremynewberger tweeted a joke about the shot of Trumpy Bear riding a motorcycle (shown below, left). User @OhNoSheTwitnt tweeted a joke about Fox News' coverage of the day's events, gaining over 2,500 retweets and 8,000 likes (shown below, right).