the TATTY TEDDY

Tatty Teddy was invented in 1987 and has gradually grown in stature since. In some ways this particular beast flies in the face of accepted marketing wisdom; he is grey - usually written off as an unappealing colour - with spiky rather than furry locks. To explain his pallor his designers have created a story around him that involves him being left out in the cold.

In reality, his image is carefully nurtured. The secret is intuitively matching exactly the right degree of cuteness with the appropriate expression and a perfect copyline, according to Payne. "It's attention to detail," he says. "Just a slight shift in the eyes, a change in proportions, can make all the difference. When it's right, that bear will look at you sorrowfully from across the room and the eyes will follow you from any angle. You have to have it."

Haines adds: "It's the image that gets the card picked up, but the words that get the card taken to the till. It's making a statement. 'Miss you, Love you, Need you, Liked you' ... it's the sentiment that counts."

In fact, as Tatty Teddy broke into the retail big-time in the mid-1990s, there was already an older brother in the playpen - the Forever Friends bear, which does not have a name and was invented by entrepreneur Andrew Brownsword and artist Deborah Jones in a flat above a Chinese takeaway in Reading.

Brownsword, now retired from the card industry and best known as owner of Bath rugby club, says one of the driving forces behind the invention of the first bear concept in the 1980s was hitting an adult market. "I wanted to develop a bear that appealed to adults as well as children. I based Forever Friends specifically on the teddy bear that Sebastian Flyte carried around in Brideshead Revisited. It became the bear found in the attic."

In Forever Friends' case, the result was a brown, paunchy, stylised bear with a seam down the middle and an extravagant cravat. "And this was not just a bear, it was the words inside the card, too," Brownsword says. "Until then, we had all been emotionally starved. Forever Friends was the original and best. At its peak, it was turning over £250m worldwide in licensing."

Will it stop at bears, badgers and bunnies? Stand by for the next animal to be launched on the British cute market: Eeyore. Carte Blanche have now teamed up with Disney to create an "Eeyore concept" which will be in the shops by November. "The idea is to bond with people who have never met Eeyore before," says Haines. "We will make his eyes a little sadder and his expression a bit glummer. We think the concept will look great."