Members of the public were surprised to see the intruder making appearances at Charing Cross, South Bank and Hampstead Heath as they made their way to work.
Despite looking like a wild and fearsome Arctic beast, however, the bear was actually part of a PR campaign to promote a new television show, “Fortitude" which boasts an all-star cast including Academy Award nominee Stanely Tucci, acting legend Michael Gambon and Christopher Ecclestone.
The 8ft tall, fully animated bear, which features a staggering 90 square feet of fake fur, was created by a team of Hollywood special effects experts, and took 19 prop makers eight weeks to design and build the replica animal.
The bear is fitted out with cameras which allow the two operating puppeteers to follow its movements and see out of the front.
The puppeteers, who spent three years working as the famous leading horse Joey in the West End’s “War Horse,” studied footage of polar bears and spent five days rehearsing to make the movements as realistic as possible.
The series, which premiers on January 29, is set in the Arctic wilderness, and the TV channel said it wanted to bring this to the streets of London.
Zai Bennett, director of Sky Atlantic, said: “In Fortitude, there are 3,000 polar bears to 713 residents. Polar bears are the most dangerous animal on land and present an ever-present threat to Fortitude's inhabitants.”
“To launch our new Arctic-noir thriller we wanted to bring a realistic polar bear to the streets of London to give people an up close experience of what it must be like to come face to face with one of the biggest, but uncredited stars of our new show.”
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