Standing 19.5 “ tall, Santa Claus is gorgeously dressed n red velvet and faux fur trim. His smiling and reassuring hand painted face and beard is cast in porcelain. His beige boots are crafted in porcelain as well, which match his vinyl belt and buckle. Both of his realistic hands, cast in porcelain, are holding a child’s toy that sparkles with glitter and in the other hand he clutches a bottle of Coca Cola. His cap is adorned with a holly berry sprig and a jingle bell!
Ready for the big night he is as beautifully made as his spirit portrays! He is a “posable doll”, as his main body is a firm stuffing with wire that can be felt in the arms and legs, but I haven’t wanted to try to bend him.
Always ready to stand with his own doll stand, he also rests in his original Coca Cola Co. box. The box has definitely protected him from the wear and storage that he has endured, as he is in perfect condition!
Note the dialogue on the back of the box in the picture. May be hard to read but it is dated 1990 and is a brief background about the artist that this Santa was fashioned after, Haddon Sundblom's, and how Coca Cloa Co used this image for all of therir Coke/Santa designs and “has fashioned the image of Santa that America knows and loves today”.
The box also states that this is “item #36055”.
Here is a little bit of history about the Santa Claus Coca Cola Doll from “Ruston Coca-Cola Santa Doll History”:
In the mid-1950s, The Coca-Cola Company found the answer to | help boost bottled product sales during the Christmas holidays: | the Santa Claus doll. Already having made Coca-Cola a part of every holiday season since 1931, Haddon Sundblom's Santa advertising artwork was used as the model for the dolls.
The Rushton Company of Atlanta, a large manufacturer of stuffed toys, was hired to create the first Coca-Cola Santa doll. Using Sundblom's Santa image as a model for the doll's face, these dolls captured the essence of Santa's warm personality.
Released in 1957, the first Santa doll was dressed in red, trimmed in white fur, and fitted with a black vinyl belt and shoes stitched together from four pieces of black vinyl. Santa's plastic right hand was designed to hold a bottle of Coca-Cola. These Santa dolls were made at a cost to bottlers of three dollars each.
The Coca-Cola Santa dolls were made available in two different ways. The first was as a display topper. If retail store owners built an additional display of Coke in their store, the bottler provided a Santa to decorate the Christmas display. Once the promotion was over, the store owners could keep the Coca-Cola Santa doll.
Consumers could also buy the dolls for $3.98 with the purchase of either one case or two cartons of Coca-Cola. The Santa dolls were promoted through television, radio and newspaper advertisements. Minor changes were made in the Santa dolls in the 1960's. The hands were covered with white plastic mittens and the stitched vinyl boots were replaced with white plastic ones. The doll wore the same red jacket and pants but his beard was made from a new material. As Coke moved into the 1970's, both black and white Santas were issued.
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Keywords: Santa, Santa Claus, Coca Cola, Coke, Christmas, St Nick, Xmas, Doll, Posable Doll, St Nicholas,
