Charlotte Haye 19th December 2018

13 Things You Didn’t Know About the Coca-Cola Christmas Truck

Let’s face it, is it really Christmas until we see the Coca-Cola truck on TV? It’s been the harbinger of the festive season for well over a decade, and it’s almost as iconic as the big man in the red suit himself. And in fact, Coca-Cola are the ones responsible for our modern image of Santa in his bright red suit. And since the Coca-Cola truck is an HGV, and seeing as it’s nearly Christmas, we wanted to have some fun and end the year on a light-hearted note. So today, we have 18 things you didn’t know about the Coca-Cola truck.

The Coca-Cola truck made its first on-screen appearance in 1995 in the ‘Christmas Caravan’. But as you can see in the video (which you can still see here), most of the shots are actually special effects, and not the truck itself.

The special effects for that iconic debut were created by none other than Industrial Light and Magic. If that doesn’t sound familiar to you, that’s the same company that created the special effects in Star Wars. No wonder that truck looked so good!

By 1998, millions of people were watching the Coca-Cola adverts over the festive season, across over 100 countries. It was like the John Lewis adverts of the nineties.

The Coca-Cola truck has been touring the country for a long time. Now the Coca-Cola truck visits more than 40 locations up and down the UK.

In 2015 the demand for the Coca-Cola truck tour was so high that they actually decked out a second truck to make sure they could visit all of the cities on the route. One started a tour in the North and the other in South and they met in the middle.

In 1999 the now famous Coca-Cola advert showed a huge fleet of trucks driving along, but only three were actually used in filming.

Between 2001 and 2007, Coca-Cola decided to stop using their traditional Christmas campaigns and averts in the way they used to. However, this caused such an uproar that they actually brought them back in 2008, making the Christmas of many people.

The Coca-Cola truck doesn’t just drive around looking pretty. At every stop, it gives away free cans of original Coke, Coke Zero and Diet Coke, and encourages visitors to recycle their empty cans. Every year families queue up for hours just to get their free can.

The Coca-Cola trucks have travelled over 737,000 miles in their time, and are decked out in over 8.772 twinkling fairly light to create that festive glow.

The TV advert titled ‘journey’ saw the Coca-Cola trucks come to life. While a man and his grandson were reading a Christmas story in their home, the trucks surprise them by coming to life.

During 2013, the hashtag #HolidaysAreComing was tweeted over 57 million times. That same year, over 2 million people visited the Coca-Cola website to find out where the trucks were stopping.

Matt Smith (AKA The Doctor) was the first member of the public allowed to drive the famous Coca-Cola truck. He was trying to raise awareness for cystic fibrosis, and after he posted online and his tweets went viral, Coca-Cola decided to help and invited him to drive the truck.

The iconic image of Santa Claus that we know and love today was created by Haddon Sundblom for Coca-Cola. Until that point, jolly St Nick was portrayed in green, but Coca-Cola wanted something a bit more aligned with their brand. He is still featured on the big red truck, either drinking Coca-Cola or holding a bottle of it aloft as he tours the country.

So, love it or hate it, the Coca-Cola truck is one of those quintessentially Christmassy things that we can’t do without. And with the help of it, and HGV’s everywhere, Christmas will be delivered with a smile.

From all of us at Easy as HGV, have a very Merry Christmas and a happy New Year!

Charlotte Haye

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