Santa Claus by Haddon Sundblom -- Part 2

For most of my younger days (the late 50's and the 60's), every time Christmas rolled around, the Coca-Cola Bottling Company rolled out a new full-color Christmas ad in all the national magazines.  The ads featured what became the definitive image of Santa Claus as rendered by the brilliant artist Haddon Sundblom.

Below, four of Sundblom's non-Coca-Cola Santa images.  

                                 Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

Happy Holidays!

Adventures in Advertising

Before I landed a job in animation, I lived in the New York area and pursued a career in advertising...for about six months.   After that didn't pan out, I moved to Los Angeles where Bill Hanna gave me a job as an assistant animator at Hanna-Barbera.  Thank you, Bill! 

During my brief time in pursuit of advertising, I took a test at McCann-Ericson -- a large ad agency at the time -- to get into their apprentice program.  Below is one of the pieces that I submitted for that test.  The client was Puerto Rican White Rum.   In retrospect, I guess the magazine ad I came up with would please neither the rum company executives nor their customers.   But I went with what I liked:  talking animals.  

I didn't get the job, which turned out to be a good thing.  After the advertising world passed, I was able to pursue my true goal...animation.