The Steiff Polar Bear and Fanta’s Wartime Mascot

At first glance, the polar bear costume looks like a piece of harmless whimsy. Oversized, soft edged, and faintly ridiculous, it appears designed to delight rather than persuade. Yet its origins place it firmly within one of the most unsettling periods of twentieth century Europe.

The costume was produced by Steiff, the German soft toy company internationally associated with teddy bears and childhood comfort. During the Second World War, Steiff created the polar bear as a promotional mascot for Fanta, a carbonated drink developed inside Germany after wartime trade restrictions severed access to Coca Cola syrup. With imports cut off, German bottlers were forced to improvise, creating a new drink from whatever ingredients could be sourced domestically. Fanta was not born from innovation in the usual commercial sense, but from necessity.

Within that context, the polar bear takes on a very different meaning. It was not simply advertising a soft drink, but helping to maintain a façade of continuity and normality. Fanta could still be poured. A mascot could still wave. Photographs could still be taken.

Look closely at the images in which the bear appears and the wider political reality is impossible to ignore. Nazi insignia are visible on uniforms. Swastikas appear on armbands and clothing. Soldiers stand arm in arm with the bear, smiling for the camera. Children lean in for photographs, apparently untroubled. The scenes are calm, even cheerful, yet they unfold within a state apparatus defined by violence, persecution, and systematic mass murder.

In this setting, the polar bear becomes more than a marketing tool. It functions as a symbol of collective denial. The presence of something playful and familiar helps suppress the visible signs of catastrophe. A fizzy drink offers a small pleasure. A costume invites laughter. Daily life, at least on the surface, carries on.

As one historian cited in TeddyBär observes, “The images are not propaganda in the traditional sense. They are more unsettling than that. They show how ordinary pleasure and denial can exist alongside horror.” The bear does not command, instruct, or threaten. Instead, it distracts. Its power lies in how effectively it allows people to look elsewhere.

Seen this way, the Steiff polar bear stands as a quiet reminder of how easily normality can be staged, even in the midst of moral collapse.

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