Big Brother Rare Steiff Floppy Tiger Rattle In Paw 1959 To 1961 2 IDs

Here is a sweet sleeping critter (maybe dreaming that he captured one of my birds or bunnies for dinner?) This is the larger Floppy Tiger of the two Steiff made. Although his article number is badly faded, you should still be able to make out most of it from my picture; if not that, in person. Tiger’s number is 7328,00. The “7” is the problematic one because it is at the extreme left of the flag and is not only faded, but partly worn off from fraying. Tiger was made with this number only from 1959-1961, and not after that with any number!

The “28” in in Tiger’s number denoted his size in centimeters, and since I am not sure how one would obtain that measurement, I will give you some of his dimensions. If you place the measuring tape along his back, from the top of his head to where his tail joins his body, you get about 9 inches. If you include Tiger’s outstretched tail in your measurement, you get about 16 inches. From front outstretched paws to the tips of his rear paws, tiger measures about 13 inches, and his width at his widest (outside edge to outside edge of his rear paws) is about 7 inches. As I have him posed in my images, with his head turned sideways resting on his paw, Tiger is about 5 inches high measured from his lying surface.

I am really drawn to these lying, sleeping animals, which is embarrassing, since they were designed for young children to take to bed with them. The presumption was that a sleeping animal would encourage his young guardian to do likewise.

Many of these sleeping animals with embroidered floss closed eyes were called “floppy-” something or other, which Tiger certainly is. That floppiness, or hug factor, 😉 comes from Tiger’s soft kapok filling. His tail, on the other hand, is filled with excelsior, and it supposed to be rigid, not floppy.

When Tiger arrived, he was too floppy! He was somewhat “deflated,” although I have seen worse! His midsection was still nice and plump, and his rear legs were OK too, so I concerted my efforts on his two front legs. In order to do that, I had to open him up, of course, and I decided the best way to get access to each leg and do it with one opening was to open his center seam. I made an opening of only about an inch and a half, and even now, when I am looking directly at my incision, it is hard for me to see my stitches clearly; I think I made 6 or 7. Not only are these hard to see, but they will be invisible when you display Tiger in his intended pose!

Tiger’s tail was more problematic, since the stuffing was dislocated in several areas along the tail’s length. I can imagine his former young guardian dragging him along by his tail before both of them went to bed. Refilling the tail had two challenges. First, I wanted to make the opening as small and as invisible as I could, but I also had to push the new excelsior down the length of the tail and deposit it as evenly as possible. Just as I am showing you my stitches on Tiger’s belly, I am showing you my stitches in a seam at the beginning of his tail on the left side, JUST as the tail leaves Tiger’s body. I am holding Tiger up in my sixth composite image, to give you a straight on view of his tail. In the bottom right corner, I am TRYING to show you where my few tiny stitches in orange thread were placed, and if you can’t see anything, that’s the point! Not only can you not make anything out in my enlargement of the repair entry, it is out of view when you are looking straight on at Tiger’s tail. I mean REALLY out of view—because of their position on his body, not just too small to find in my enlargement of the repair area.

I made one other repair, which was kind of tricky, since the black embroidery floss depicting Tiger’s closed eyes has faded ever so slightly to a very dark brown. The inner (nose) end of the two strands of floss had come loose from his face, and the very end of those strands was frayed. I saw no good way to reattach Tiger’s “eye” to his face without getting rid of the frayed ends. I snipped them away, and now I was left with two separate but healthy lengths of floss to reattach near his nose. I have two shades of brown thread, but both were too light. Because the floss had very slightly faded from its original black, I was in a quandary—how to execute the repair while keeping it as unnoticeable as possible? As luck would have it, Tiger’s airbrushed face provided the solution. As it happens, there is a line of black airbrushing going down his face for about 1/4 of an inch that starts right at the point the floss ends. So, what I feared would be out of place black stitching at the end of very dark brown, my stitches blend right in with the line of airbrushing. I guess, if you look at the intersection of those two things under a magnifying glass, you would see some part of the black is thread, and the rest is airbrushing, but I believe it works perfectly!

I have one last thing to tell you, which is not a repair but a curious case of asymmetry, which is one of the many things I have seen over the years that have made me wonder how Steiff could have left the animal in his “completed” condition and allowed him to leave the factory. I don’t think I have ever seen a seamstress booboo like this, however.

In my seventh composite image, I am comparing the two sides of Tiger’s face, and you can see how long and full Tiger’s right sideburn is compared to his left. That whole side of his face is smaller; his left ear is not as big as his right ear either, although in that case the discrepancy is not as severe. As a practical matter, this left-right imbalance was easy to hide, or at least to minimize. Whenever (and there have not been many times!) I have had this tiger or his little brother in my shop, I have posed them resting with their heads turned to the side on one or the other of their front legs, just because that looks a lot nicer than having their faces out of sight touching the surface below. Displaying them with the tops of their heads pointed at the viewer is pretty silly. Whereas previously, I had the choice of which side to use as the display side, this time Steiff dictated the answer. 😉 Of course, I wanted you to see his luxurious right sideburn, so I have posed him accordingly.

I said I had one last thing to tell you, but I thought of another, also from the factory, which you cannot see. That is the rattle in Tiger’s right front paw! 🙂

I think I have covered everything you might want to know, but please write if you still have a question. Despite his intended use as a child’s toy, Floppy Tiger is very rare, and that is reason enough to welcome him into your Steiff collection or present him as a gift to the Steiff or tiger lover in your life.

WHATEVER YOU DECIDE TO DO ABOUT TIGER OR ANY OF MY OTHER STEIFF ITEMS, PLEASE BE SURE TO SEE THE ARTICLE I HAVE WRITTEN ABOUT STEIFF ID FRAUD—INCLUDING COUNTERFEIT CHEST TAGS—(AND OTHER IMPORTANT INFORMATION FOR COLLECTORS). YOU WILL FIND THE LINK ON THE BOTTOM RIGHT OF MY SHOP HOME PAGE UNDER “FAVORITE LINKS.” IF YOU HAVE NOT LOOKED AT IT RECENTLY, I UPDATED AND EXPANDED IT IN DECEMBER, 2022.