Honey Monster teams up with Big Bear

In a deal which is reported to have cost Big Bear between £25m (€36.7m) and £30m (€44m), the company has taken over Sugar Puffs and plan to increase the brand's profile.

Reviving familiar characters is a common tactic used by food manufacturers as they seek to capitalise upon nostalgia for brand promotions employed in the past.

Launched in 1954, Sugar Puffs traditionally enjoyed high product recognition thanks to the Honey Monster character, which featured in long-running adverts for the cereal.

After being sold to PepsiCo in 2001 as a member of the Quaker cereals company, the brand took a back seat to other products in the snack manufacturer's portfolio.

But this week's deal, which also included Quaker's range of Harvest Cereal bars, signals a re-emergence of the much-loved Honey Monster on UK television screens and increased investment in the children's cereal.

Big Bear was formed in 2003 as a management buy-in team when it acquired Fox's confectionery, who produce mints and chocolates, from the then-struggling Northern Foods.

Now the company could find itself needing to give the Sugar Puffs brand a healthier image after recent concerns over the nutritional content of children's cereals.

Breakfast cereals came under fire after a report from UK consumer magazine, Which?, found that many cereals marketed at kids contained high levels of salt, sugar and saturated fats and used a traffic light system to give a red light to the worst offenders.

In the report complied by Which? last month, Sugar Puffs were found to contain 35g of sugar per 100g - a level the group believed warranted their 'red' label.

The consumer group acknowledged that this was a reduction from the 49g of sugar per 100g that they had discovered in a similar survey in 2005 but remained concerned about the sugar content of Sugar Puffs.