A bear-faced breakfast . . .
QUESTION
Did a bear called Jeremy advertise Sugar Puffs in the Sixties?
A EUROPEAN brown bear cub was used to advertise the breakfast cereal Sugar Puffs in 1968.
A picture of Jeremy featured on the box and he appeared in TV adverts, eating Sugar Puffs with a group of children who shouted, ‘Look! There’s the land of wheat and honey!’ before singing the jingle: ‘ Welcome to the land of wheat and honey/ Where Sugar Puffs grow on trees . . .’
Launched in 1957, Sugar Puffs had been invented by William Halliday Davies, the production manager at the Quaker Oats mill in Southall, West London. Early advertising featured cowboys and Indians and model trains on the packaging, with plastic toys inside the box.
By the early Seventies, ‘Jeremy’ — who was, in fact, a female and was no longer a cute cub — was replaced by a cartoon bear in a 16-page 3-D comic called The Amazing Exploits Of Jeremy Bear. Free 3-D glasses were included.
In 1976, the Sugar Puffs Honey Monster became the star of a new campaign by adman John Webster, who had already created the Smash instant mash Martians and would later spearhead the Gary Lineker Walkers Crisps campaign and the John Smith beer ads starring Peter Kay.
Jeremy the bear was sent to Camperdown Wildlife Park near Dundee, but she hit the news headlines in 1986 when a group of boys broke into the zoo.
When a ten-year- old stuck his hand through the bars of the bear’s cage, his arm was severed at the elbow and his chest and shoulders were badly mauled.
Following a public campaign, it was determined it was not Jeremy’s fault and she lived out the rest of her life in the zoo until her death in 1990.
Maureen Callister, Stirling. AGED 62, I still have my Jeremy the Sugar Puffs bear. He is chocolate-brown and once had a ribbon around his neck.
I must have been six the day he arrived in the post. I never liked dolls, preferring furry or cloth toys. He sits proudly on my spare bed next to Snoopy, a womble and a gonk (remember them?).
Mrs Jane Cooke, Ponteland, Northumberland.
QUESTION Are animal organs still used for human transplants?
ORGAN transplantation is one of the most significant medical innovations of the past century. However, the demand for organs for seriously ill patients far outstrips the supply of donations.
An alternative option is xenotransplantation: living cells, tissues or organs transplanted from one species to another. However, trials using animal organs have not been successful because of the recipient’s immune system rejecting the graft, which can cause immediate death.
The most famous case was Baby Fae, an American infant suffering from the rare congenital heart defect hypoplastic left heart syndrome, in which one side of the organ is severely underdeveloped.
Unable to find a suitable human donor organ, in 1984 surgeons at the Loma Linda University Medical Centre in California replaced her heart with that of a baboon. Fae died 21 days later after her immune system rejected the monkey’s heart.
For the past 50 years, a more successful use of animal tissue to treat humans has been the transplantation of heart valves from pigs (most commonly) or cows to treat aortic valve disease. This condition makes it difficult for the heart to pump out blood to the rest of the body. In many cases, the faulty valve causes the blood to be pumped back into the heart, which is painful and can be life-threatening.
Under these circumstances, surgeons can replace it with a pig’s valve — which closely resembles a human valve — or a mechanical version.
However, the surgeon does not replace the valve directly. It first undergoes immunologic treatment to help preserve the tissue and prevent rejection by the patient’s immune system.
The decision on whether to implant a tissue valve or a mechanical valve is based on the patient’s general health, age and lifestyle. Tissue valves generally do not last as long as mechanical heart valves, but they do not require the lifetime on blood thinner medication.
Dr Ian Smith, Cambridge.
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