Secret Santa
There'll be no year without a Santa Claus.
On a chilly night long ago, Santa and his elf skipped their annual ride to visit the Apple Store.
It was 2008, and iPods were more plentiful than the snowflakes that fell from the sky. Before Apple Stores served a truly global audience, holiday window displays were explicitly Christmas-themed. The App Store was new, and it would be another seven years before pivot doors eliminated the space for expressive decorations.
It was under these circumstances that Apple developed its most memorable holiday displays to date.
Santa and his elf were a pair of life-size, earbud-touting figurines designed to highlight the iPhone 3G and iPod nano 4th generation. Each display was set against a snowy landscape dotted with evergreens and Apple products.
As soon as that jolly old elf slipped out from Backstage and into storefront windows, the Apple community effectively sprang from their beds to see what was the matter. ifoAppleStore reported that the real neon earbud wires installed in each figurine were made by Brooklyn-based Lite Brite Neon. Instructional videos for store employees were uncovered on the company’s website and promptly removed.
A 2008 commenter mentioned that the fiberglass figurine bodies were manufactured by Silvestri California, a producer of custom mannequins. This seems extremely plausible, but I’ve not been able to confirm it.
After Christmas, thoroughly exhausted but riding a peppermint sugar high, Santa disappeared into his workshop at Apple’s campus the North Pole. Such is the fate of all window displays. But there can be no year without a Santa Claus.
In February 2019, Obnoxious Antiques listed a set of the fiberglass figurines for sale. Santa’s crew was certainly worse for the wear, reduced to eating cheap processed food and squatting on porches in the suburbs. It was a far cry from the warm fireplace chimneys and oak tables of yore. The iconic duo was later separated, and Santa’s elf was found again sharing a vacant warehouse with Mickey Mouse.
In October 2019, another set of figurines made its way to eBay, presents in tow. While again gainfully employed as yard decor, the seller noted that “The elf has a crack on the neck but that can be fixed with a bit of sanding, bondo and a repaint,” and “The original invoice was $15,000 for the Santa with bag and $7,500 for the elf.” I’m not sure when Santa’s bag entered the scene, as that wasn’t part of the original Apple display.
Santa made his most recent appearance in 2020 at Night of a Million Lights, a holiday decoration extravaganza organized by Give Kids The World Village in Kissimmee, Florida. Both were sporting a fresh coat of paint.
Apple designed this window display for the 2008 holiday season based on a seasonal spot for the Get a Mac ad campaign that ran one year prior. Concept art for the window display published by MYKNYC Film Production literally borrowed a still frame of Santa from the advertisement. Claus here is pictured with an iPod nano 3rd generation.
Both the display and TV ad were indirectly inspired by the timeless Rankin/Bass holiday tv specials, the first of which including Santa was Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer in 1964. Like Apple’s window displays, the Tony Peters-designed Rankin/Bass figurines were originally built to promote new tech products. The show premiered on The General Electric Fantasy Hour, and 1960s GE ads featured Santa and his elf with a waffle baker instead of an iPhone.
In another strange coincidence, most of the original Rankin/Bass props were also discarded or forgotten by time, and those remaining were only uncovered and restored recently.
Happy Holidays from Tabletops! 🎁
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Photo via @kiyo_no_photo_.