THIRD GENERATION TEDDY RUXPIN

The last version of the Worlds of Wonder bear has an upgraded circuit
board containing many revisions including a better Teddy/Grubby
connection. The plastic tape player is nearly identical to the second
generation bear and the "spring" problem of the 2nd generation bear
continues. This bear has a hinged battery cover, designed to prevent
lose of the battery cover. As this was the last model, this hinged
battery cover is harder to find as it was produced for a short period of
time. Please note that a regular battery cover will work fine for this
bear so if you are unable to find a hinged one, an older battery cover
will work just fine. One problem with this battery cover is that it has
tabs (see below) sometimes making it difficult to get the battery door
to shut with the batteries in. Often you have to reposition the
batteries to clear these tabs. It also makes putting in and taking out
the batteries a little more difficult. This bear was impossible for little
child hands to get the batteries in and out without breaking the battery
cover, making it an adult task. The hinged battery cover is easily
detachable, in fact over time with wear, this hinge wears down and
the battery cover becomes loose anyway. If you compare the mouth
pieces of this bear to the 1st and 2nd generation bear you can see
they are quite different. With the 1st and 2nd generation bear, you
have the illusion of being able to "look down" Teddy's throat. As you
can see the 3rd generation bear has tabs at the back of the mouth
pieces that prevent you from seeing"down Teddy's throat. Generally
these mouth pieces are not interchangable with the 1st and 2nd
generation bears without substantial modification. As you can see,
with this model, they did away with the middle servo motor. The
upper mouth is spring connected to the lower mouth with the lower
mouth being the only part to contact the servo motor. This springs
are hard to find and many are rusty. If you should have a Teddy to
repair whose spring has come off, make sure you save the spring and
send it along when you get Teddy repaired. Along with the good
features of the 2 servo model (better battery life and less motor noise
during animation) there is a down side. As you can see they merely
left the 3rd servo motor out, making this Teddy vulnerable to facial
frame break when the nose and mouth pieces are pushed in, as when
Teddys face is sat on or when he is face down on a hard surface and
pressure is applied to his back. Bottom line, don't sit on or step on
Teddy's head! Once the facial frame breaks, Teddy's features will not
work as they shift inside and lose contact with the servo motors.
There also is a least 2 versions of the servo motors used in Teddy and
Grubby. The first type was a gear/mesh driven servo and these were
quite noisy. The newer servos had a pulley type drive that was much
quieter and less prone to "lubricant leakage" which shorted out earlier
servo models.
You will note that as these bears are repaired several times, since the
servo motors are interchangable, it is not unusual to find later servo
models in 1st generation bears. Sometimes Teddy restores do this to
try to quiet the motor noise of the earlier versions of Teddy.

