They weren't solely responsible: the jolly fat man image came from
the poem, the image of the beard and the suit with fur trim came from
Thomas Nast cartoons. Coke just made the suit red (Nast only drew
in black&white) in lots of ads, and it kind of caught on.
-- Lee Daniel Crocker <lee@piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lcrocker.html> "All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past, are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC