Santa Booted From Coke Cans

Monday, November 14, 2005
By John Gibson
September 06, 2005

Christmas trees are going up all over America, except in some places where shadowy and mysterious forces seem to be fighting it.

Seriously. Take for example the Coca-Cola Santa. For 74 years he has been a fixture of Coca-Cola advertising during the weeks just before Christmas.

The Coke Santa is a classic. But as of 2005 he is no more on Coca-Cola packaging.

That means Santa has been evicted from cans, glass bottles and two liter plastic bottles. And he's been replaced by polar bears.

The polar bear has always been a Coke favorite, in conjunction with Santa. But now the bear is carrying on the Christmas tradition alone.

Now some of you may remember that I brought this up a week or so ago and reported that Coke corporate told me, "No, no way. Santa is still there."

But Monday I called one of those customer service hotlines posing as a plain old customer and the person there told me Santa is not on the 2005 packages, but he might return in 2006 on what would be his 75th anniversary with Coke.

Read the rest here.