It would not be fair to start December by not reviewing the new 2021 Christmas piece by King and Country. After all, we only have new releases in this collection once a year! So let’s be festive and take a look at the XM021 - Santa & His Polar Bear.

Christmas pieces are a bit of a tradition for King and Country. It started in 2008 with the release of the XM008-01 - Last Christmas of The War. This first set took a more realistic approach, depicting two American soldiers trying to give the best possible Christmas to two kids in the rest of a destroyed house. The XM008-01 is actually compatible with the Battle of the Bulges collection. But things quickly went more creative when Santa officially entered the collection in 2009. Since that moment, this character became a recurring figure where each version has a unique thing. He was depicted as a GI, a POW, a banjo player…

The XM008-01; the set that started a tradition.

This year, what makes this set unique is probably not the Santa figure. In this case, he is very standard in his approach. He walks on snow in his classic red outfit. On his shoulder, he carries a large decorated bag stuffed with toys and presents. A lot of love was given to detail the various items inside his giant pouch. You can easily identify a doll, a train, a drum, a scarf, a ball and a doll house.

What makes this year’s Christmas piece truly unique is the giant polar bear that comes with it. It’s a very large beast that could be very scary if it was not of the bells collar around its neck. And it’s really big. Santa is a large fat man figure and it looks dwarfed by the size of that monster. A nice detail is that the animal is painted with a slightly yellowish white, just as the fur of true polar bears. It is also not mounted on a base, making it compatible with different grounds although snow might be the only place where you might want to use it.

As far as I know this is the second bear that King and Country ever produced. The first one was in the Wojtek and his Handler - SKCX001 set depicting the famous Polish bear and war hero who helped carrying 100-pound (45 kg) crates of 25-pound artillery shells at the Battle of Monte Cassino. It was also a smaller bear than the one in this set.

This exclusive set was released in 2015 and only 300 were produced.

This association of a red Santa and polar bear is not without recalling of Coca Cola’s advertisements. Coke introduced the polar bear in its lore in 1922 in a printed ad for France and to show that it was better served cold. Eventually, the polar bear became a friend of Santa and they were seen together in various advertisements. Therefore I suspect that the coke legacy played a lot in the creation of this set. After all, it would not be the first time that we can see some references to Coca Cola. In the set XM017-02 - GI Santa On A Motorbike, a crate of bottles identified as “Cola” in a red script font was part of the items Santa was carrying on his motorcycle.

“I’m not saying that it was Coke… but it was Coke.” - Giorgio A. Tsoukalos

To conclude, the XM021 - Santa & His Polar Bear is a sweet addition to the King and Country’s Christmas collection. It also comes with one of the few official bears they ever produced by K&C. The set also seems to taps a lot in the Coca Cola image of Christmas. This is hard to know if this was intentional or not, but it’s fine. Ultimately, Coca Cola had such a large role in setting the look of the modern Santa that it’s almost impossible to avoid its influence when depicting this character today. I now leave you with one tv commercial from the early 90’s with 3D polar bears and Santa (apparently played by Eddy Murphy). Hopefully, this will put you in the mood for Christmas… or for some vintage computer animations.