Client: United Airlines
Industry: Global airline
Product: Ben Flyin — custom teddy bear with branded vest and passport
Uses: Employee-led hospital and community giving worldwide
Goal: A more responsibly made bear for a beloved outreach program
How United Airlines and Bears for Humanity brought comfort to children through a global employee-giving program and a more thoughtfully made teddy bear.
✈️ A Travel Companion with a Meaningful Mission
For United Airlines, meaningful journeys are not limited to aircraft and destinations. Through its Adventure Bear program, employees have delivered teddy bears to children facing medical challenges and other hardships, creating moments of comfort and connection in communities around the world.
At the heart of this initiative is Ben Flyin, a friendly teddy bear dressed for adventure in a United-branded vest and accompanied by a miniature passport. United employees — including pilots, flight attendants and other volunteers — personally deliver Ben Flyin bears to children.
🧩 The Challenge: Better Materials, Same Comforting Mission
The project created an opportunity to improve the materials behind a beloved outreach gift. Bears for Humanity partnered with United to move from a conventional polyester-exterior bear toward an ethically made version with a certified organic cotton exterior — while keeping the recognizable character and travel-inspired details.
The goal was more than an attractive mascot: it was to help an established employee-giving program offer a soft, thoughtfully manufactured keepsake that reflects United’s community and environmental ambitions.
✨ The Solution: A Custom Organic Cotton Exterior
Bears for Humanity produced Ben Flyin with a certified organic cotton outer shell, expressive embroidered facial features, an integrated branded vest design and customized United markings. A travel-themed passport adds imagination to the gift.
🧵 Product Snapshot
- Character: Ben Flyin, United’s adventure-ready teddy bear
- Exterior: Certified organic cotton outer shell
- Filling: Recycled plastic-bottle fiber (per the January 2020 partnership release)
- Details: Embroidered face, branded vest, United logo foot pad and back embroidery
- Extras: Miniature travel passport and boarding-pass tag
🌍 Giving Comfort a Global Reach
In its January 2020 announcement, Bears for Humanity reported that during 2019 approximately 1,200 United employees, friends and family members delivered more than 10,000 bears through 152 events in 31 countries.
Figures refer to the 2019 program year as reported in Bears for Humanity’s January 2020 announcement.
💙 Employee Engagement with a Human Purpose
The program shows how a custom plush can do something promotional merchandise rarely achieves on its own: make corporate volunteering personal.
🧸 Why Bears for Humanity?
Bears for Humanity combines bespoke character development with a focus on certified organic cotton textiles, detailed embroidery and responsible production. For United, the partnership offered a way to preserve the familiar Ben Flyin character while improving the sustainability profile of its exterior fabric.
Ben Flyin shows what happens when brand storytelling, employee engagement and charitable outreach come together — a carefully designed plush can become a lasting symbol of care.
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