To mark the end of Cookie Bear’s 57-year reign as an advertising icon he pictured the loveable bear being tearfully farewelled by fellow marketing legends like Sgt Dan, Ches and Dale, the Tiger Tea tiger and others. Cookie Bear, you see, is being demoted by Griffin’s to appear on snack packs only.
We are told Cookie Bear arrived in 1968, by which time our own advertising agencies had been brainwashed by American marketing. Oddly, no Cookie Bear newspaper advertisements appear before 1972 and that coincided with the introduction of Sesame Street with its Cookie Monster and New Zealand children were Americanised in a big way. Even Cookie Bear’s "Dum-de-do, dum-de-day" had echoes of Cookie Monster’s "om nom nom nom" as he gorged himself on cookies.
The chance of having a Biscuit Bear or Bickie Bear was gone. Television commercials made Cookie Bear a star.
At that time Cookie Bear was a proud Dunedinite as the face of Hudson’s biscuits which were taken over by Griffin’s in 1989 and Griffin’s is now part of the German company Intersnack, based in Dusseldorf where the New Zealand market is probably a very small blip on the screen.
During his early years the bear became the darling of shopping malls. In 1972 a Christchurch mall announced Cookie Bear would be arriving by helicopter but the then minister of defence Allan McCready banned the use of RNZAF helicopters in a commercial venture.
Local private helicopter firms were too busy to give Cookie a lift but the crowds turned up all the same. The bear was soon joining special flights for disabled children and Christmas "Santa flights" for the intellectually handicapped put on by Air New Zealand.
Before long there was a series of Cookie Bear books and, at a time before inedible school lunches were supplied by big business, the Cookie Bear lunch box, made of tin not cheapo plastic, was the choice of discerning kids. In the late 1970s trainer Brian Glidden of Burnham named his horse Cookie Bear and it had great success, including at Hollywood Park in America.
In Lower Hutt a 20-year-old butcher David Barton was charged with impersonating a policeman on his way to a fancy dress party wearing a police uniform with a helmet bearing a Hudson’s Shrewsbury biscuit just like Cookie Bear in the television commercial.
He was fined $125, a penalty which prompted a letter to the editor asking, "What sort of joyless society do we live in? What respect can we give our police force when they feel threatened by Cookie Bear?".
I was lucky enough to meet Cookie Bear in person, but just once. It was October 1975 and the organisers of a major conference in Dunedin arranged a What’s My Line? show for the wives of conference-goers (such gender-specific events were not uncommon in those days).
You’ll remember how it works. A panel of celebrities wearing blindfolds are introduced to a mystery guest and ask questions to find out the guest’s occupation.
The panel included colourful characters like artist Shona McFarlane, and I was roped in to be the compere. It all went well, and they even found a one-armed paper hanger as a guest. But the star of the show was Cookie Bear. (Inside the furry suit was a jovial and suitably well-padded Cadbury/Hudson’s man John Carlisle). Of course, the panel never guessed who they were quizzing and their reactions when all was revealed proved the bear was a great favourite with mothers and grandmothers as well as with their offspring.
The ODT ran a front-page photo of the panel’s gleeful reaction as well as another I’ve kept all these years showing my great moment in showbiz with Cookie Bear.
If only the biscuit burghers of Dusseldorf knew all this, then maybe we could save a star like Cookie Bear from being sidelined to the lesser stage of snack packs.
— Jim Sullivan is a Patearoa writer.
