You probably know that Winnie-the-Pooh was inspired by Christopher Robin’s stuffed bear, but did you know that the Thomas the Tank Engine books and the Paddington series also have their origins in a child’s toy?
The character Winnie-the-Pooh and most of the other animals in the Hundred Acre Woods were based on A. A. Milne’s son’s stuffed animals. Christopher Robin had named his bear after Winnie, a black bear in the London Zoo, and a swan named Pooh. Winnie-the-Pooh appears in four books written by A. A. Milne and illustrated by E. H. Shepard.
Michael Bond was inspired by a teddy bear that he spotted in a store window near Paddington Station on Christmas Eve 1956. He bought it for his wife and in ten days he wrote the first Paddington book, which was published in 1958. Eventually he wrote more than twenty books in the series, and of course picture books and TV and movie adaptations followed.
Thomas the Tank Engine is well-known as a TV show character and toy. He first appeared in 1946 in the second book in The Railway Series by Rev. Wilbert Awdry. A few years earlier when Awdry’s son Christopher was sick with the measles, he made him a little toy engine and painted it blue. Christopher asked for stories about the toy and his father complied. From this humble beginning came 42 books in The Railway Series, 26 written by Rev. Awdry and 16 by Christopher Awdry, and countless spinoffs.