What’s your favourite museum mascot?

I first met Arthur on Twitter. I sent him an email. We struck up correspondence. We have yet to meet. But we will.

I should clarify. Arthur is a stuffed Siberian bear at the Haselmere Educational Museum in Surrey, UK and is one of many museum mascots that are taking part in International Museum Mascot Day on Twitter today, a space where inanimate objects (and the occasional animate one; you know who you are Bill Sparks) are busy tweeting their thoughts, exploring the importance of objects, exhibitions, collections and museums around the world.

It’s a fun place to hang out for a while. After all, everyone’s got a favourite museum mascot. I was expecting to find a bunch of famous characters like Dippy the Diplodocus at London’s Natural History Museum and Sue the T. rex at the Field Museum in Chicago. But Dippy’s not got involved yet and Sue will only just be waking up.

Instead, there are dozens of lesser-known but no less fascinating specimens, like George the Gorilla (at the Nottingham Natural History Museum in Wollaton Hall), Spotticus the Giraffe (at the Natural History Museum in Dublin) a Jar of Moles (at the Grant Museum of Zoology in London) to name but a few. And, of course, Arthur the Bear.

In my correspondence with Arthur, I discovered that he had found his way out of Russia with a Mr Oswald Sissons, the director of a paint manufacturer in Hull who’d been on a business trip to Riga in 1919. The bear, it appears, “was being used as a dumb waiter”. If you happen to own a large bear that’s been stuffed on its hind legs with its forelimbs outstretched, I suppose it makes sense to put it to use. When Sissons and his family (who lived in nearby Fernhurst) moved into a smaller house, he donated the bear to the museum in Haselmere. In time, the bear became known as Arthur, after a former curator Arthur Jewell. 

Over on Twitter, with a keen eye on the #MuseumMascot hashtag, I had the temerity to suggest that most museum mascots were probably stuffed mammals. But KVM Mummy (a 2,300 year old mummy at the Kalamazoo Valley Museum in Michigan, US) piped up, pointing out that there were plenty of human remains that tweet.

There are also lots of manmade mascots, notably some dinky diecast figurines at the Babbacombe Model Village and a toy caveman called Cavog from Kents Cavern (both in Devon) and a camouflaged toy bear at the Tank Museum in Dorset. I suggested that they have a tweet-up. I’m sure they’d get along.

But here’s my question: if you were to confine yourself to museum mascots of the animal kind, who would get your vote?