Merry [Cola] Christmas 2005!

I've received a number of e-mails from soda collectors over the past few weeks complaining about the quality of the Christmas packaging this year for Coca-Cola and Pepsi. So here's my two cents worth: I love Pepsi's "holiday" packaging this year with the snowman and snow-covered house. The graphics are almost cartoonish, but they're staying neutral as they have for years. It's cute, but not flowery. Pepsi may have decided not to go to the trouble and expense of bottling 'Holiday Spice' for 2005, but it's obvious they've been concentrating their efforts in the right places lately.

On the otherhand, Coca-Cola has ditched the Haddon Sundblom Santa Claus on its Christmas packaging for the first time in a gazillion years (that's a long time). I'm not an expert on all the reasons why, and I haven't been told by Coca-Cola that they removed Santa for a specific reason this particular year. The company is still sending out the Coca-Cola Christmas Caravan tour this year - and to my knowledge the trucks featuring Santa Claus haven't been painted over with images of penguins and polar bears... yet.

What do polar bears and penguins have to do with Christmas? I have no idea. Maybe I'm in the minority, but I don't think their holiday commercial with the polar bears drinking Coke will jump-start sales or send the masses on a Coca-Cola buying spree.

It's not a conspiracy against collectors to remove the Santa image from packaging this year... in fact, Santa Claus DOES appear on Coke bottles in the UK and the U.S. World of Coca-Cola commemorative Christmas bottles. And in many Coca-Cola grocery store displays, the Haddon Santa is still prominently featured as a life-sized cutout. So don't write off the big guy just yet.


OK, that's all for now. From my family to yours, here's wishing you a Very Merry [Cola] Christmas and a Happy [Soda] New Year.

See you in the pages of our print editions.