May 25, 2004

The Coca-Cola Nazi Advert Challenge Design a poster that accurately depicts the close relationship between Coca Cola and the Third Reich for a London exhibit. Unfortunately there are no entries yet, but the links are interesting.

Thus continues our theme for the day. :)

  • I've always resented Coca-Cola for its deep-rooted commercialization of Americana (e.g., Santa and WWII soldiers). So I don't feel much sympathy for Coca-Cola. Also, according to Wikipedia: "Max Keith, the leading bottler for Coca-Cola under Nazi Germany, actually joined the Nazi Party. Ostensibly, this was in order to lobby against prohibitions on the syrup used in manufacture of Coca-Cola. Throughout the Nazi Party's reign, from 1933 to 1945, Coca-Cola sold millions of bottles to Germany, having 43 bottling plants and 639 local distributors under the Third Reich by 1939. Coca-Cola was not the only American company to co-operate with the Nazis, of course. Standard Oil for instance, had much more direct involvement with the Nazis." Strange bedfellows all around.
  • How about a skin head drinking a Coke driving a VW bug with the decals "IBM" and "JP Morgan Chase" on the side of it?
  • OR OR OR with two skin heads in said van, pulling up to Auschwitz and unloading emaciated bodies into a furnace. After a few tosses, they take a break. "Das is good" they say and smile for the camera.
  • Ugh. Ich bin krank.
  • Coca-Cola: The Final Solution to your thirst. sorry...
  • I just saw 'The corporation' and they claimed the coca cola company only had Fanta Orange in nazi Germany.
  • People once said all's fair in love and war, but as the 20th century passed it came to seem more and more that all's fair in Business instead. And bad cess and woe to the soulless heart of big corporations. May their names be prickt.
  • Ah, but as a kid during WWII, and even after, I loved the Coke depictions of Santa. And, to tell the truth, I didn't connect them with the soft drink, even thought I saw the logos. It was Santa! It was more like a public service, 'cause otherwise Santa would have been the guy in the really fightening celluloid mask which stood away from his face a bit and made him look like a space alien when I sat on his lap! I still get the warm/fuzzies when I see those pictures (though the one linked above isn't the best of breed), and it's been years since I drank a coke. Even the depiction of the soldiers is cool, if sentimental. Unlike today's advertising, this was all pretty subtle. It seems to me that this not anything that should get your shorts in a knot.
  • Santa is American, but as a tri-national kid, in my heart of hearts, I believed in Father Christmas and didn't really grasp the two were identical until I was maybe nine or ten. Also believed when very young in Guy Fox who was an actual fox, in red Indians whom I envisioned as about the colour of a tomato, in being able to see across the Atlantic Ocean from shore to shore as easily as one could in an atlas, in Aladdin's lamp as a possible artifact to be dug up in flowerbeds -- needless to say, I suffered many shocks and disillusions as a kid. And as an adult, too, now I consider the matter, dammit.
  • How about during the Battle of Britain, the German Luftwaffe drops Coke bottles instead of incendiary bombs. And during the Battle of the Bulge, the Bulge transmorphs into a silouette of a Coke bottle. During parades, Hitler asks "Who wants Coke?" and everyone in the crowd salutes the Sig Heil "I do!"
  • why do you hate hate so much?