🎅 Norelco Santa: The Wonderful Christmas Commercial America Never Forgot
Santa Claus does not need a sleigh. He does not need eight tiny reindeer or a red nosed guide. According to one of television’s longest running holiday ads, all he needs is an electric razor and a snowy hill. That is the Norelco Santa, and if you watched TV in December during the 1960s, 1970s or 1980s, you can probably picture him right now.
The Christmas Commercial With Santa on a Razor
Describe this commercial to someone who never saw it, and they will think you made it up. Santa sits on the head of an electric shaver. The shaver glides across the snow like a toboggan. Santa waves, grins and zips over the hills while an announcer talks about rotary blades and floating heads.
It makes absolutely no sense. That is exactly why it worked. Nobody needed to understand why Santa was riding a razor. The picture was so odd and so cheerful that it stuck in the brain and never left.
For millions of American families, that strange little ride became part of the season. It showed up every December, right alongside the holiday programming. Kids who had no interest in shaving still knew the Norelco Santa by heart.
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Santa Trades His Sleigh for a Norelco
The basic story barely changed from year to year. Santa climbs aboard the top of a Norelco shaver and pushes off. The razor head carries him over rolling hills of fake snow, down slopes and around bends. The floating shaving heads tilt and bob with the terrain, which was the whole sales point.
That was the clever part hidden inside the silliness. Norelco wanted viewers to see how its shaving heads followed the shape of a face. So the commercial turned the razor into a sled that followed the shape of the land. Every bump in the snow was really a demonstration of the product.
In the versions most people remember, Santa is a small handmade figure moving one frame at a time. The snowy hills have the cozy look of a tabletop set. Later versions even worked the selling into the music. One remembered jingle sang “floating heads, floating heads” to the tune of “Jingle Bells.”
Each spot usually had three parts. First came Santa’s ride. Then an enthusiastic announcer showed off the newest Norelco models. Finally, Santa slid away until the following December.
Where the Norelco Santa Came From
Company histories date the campaign to 1961. That year, Norelco launched a long running holiday push featuring Santa riding a razor across a snowy landscape. The ad has been credited to adman David McCall, whose later work included the Schoolhouse Rock TV series.
Norelco needed something big at the time. The company entered the 1960s in fourth place among electric shaver makers. Remington and Schick each held about 30 percent of the market. Sunbeam had about 20 percent, and Norelco trailed with about 18 percent.
The whole electric shaver business was also under pressure. Sales had peaked in 1956 at about $140 million. By 1961, the industry had shrunk to less than $100 million. Much of the blame went to Gillette and its aggressive push for disposable blade razors.
Norelco did have a good product to sell. It had introduced the first single headed rotary electric razor in the United States in the late 1940s. In the 1950s came the Speedshaver, a double headed rotary model with a pop up trimmer for sideburns. What the company lacked was attention.
Advertising became Norelco’s weapon. The company poured money into television, especially football broadcasts. Then it saved its heaviest push for the end of the year. Santa became the face of that holiday effort, and he kept coming back season after season.
The strategy paid off. By the early 1970s, Norelco had climbed to first place with close to half of the electric shaver market. A cheerful Santa on a razor was not the only reason, but he certainly did not hurt.
Why Is It Called Norelco?
Here is a piece of trivia that surprises a lot of people. Norelco was never really an independent American brand. It was the American name for products from Philips, the Dutch electronics company.
Philips had a problem in the United States. An American company called Philco argued the two names sounded too much alike. A 1943 court ruling let Philco stop Philips from using its own name on products sold here.
So Philips needed a substitute. It created Norelco, short for North American Philips Electrical Company. The name stayed in place for decades. Even after Philips bought Philco in 1981, the company kept Norelco for its shavers. In 2005, it began branding them Philips Norelco.
That makes the Norelco Santa a very American Christmas icon built on a Dutch razor. Most viewers never had a clue, and few would have cared.
Even Our Name Says Merry Christmas
The best part of every spot came at the very end. The Norelco logo appeared, and then the letters changed. For the holidays, Norelco became Noëlco. The tagline explained the joke: “Even our name says Merry Christmas.”
It was a simple gimmick, and it was perfect. Noël is the French word for Christmas. By swapping a few letters, a razor company wrapped its own name in holiday paper. Kids who could not spell Norelco still remembered Noëlco.
That little twist did a lot of work. It turned a sales pitch into a seasonal greeting. It made the brand feel like part of the celebration instead of an interruption. It also gave viewers a small payoff to wait for, every single time.
Why a Razor Company Bet Big on Christmas
Why would a shaver company care so much about Santa? The answer is simple. Most electric razors were sold in the last three months of the year, right at gift time.
An electric shaver was the classic present for Dad, Grandpa or a teenage son. It felt more special than socks or a necktie. It was practical, it came in a nice box and it looked impressive under the tree.
Norelco understood that the person buying the razor was often not the person using it. Wives, kids and grandparents were doing the shopping. A friendly Santa reached all of them at once. He made a grooming tool feel like a real Christmas gift instead of a bathroom appliance.
The plan worked best on the people with the least interest in shaving. A child watching cartoons could not buy a razor. That same child could point at the screen and tell Mom that Santa rides a Norelco. In a busy December, that kind of reminder was worth a lot.
When Norelco Christmas Meant Christmas Was Close
Before streaming and on demand viewing, everyone watched the same few channels. Commercials were not something you skipped. They were part of the evening, as familiar as the shows themselves.
Holiday ads came back on a predictable schedule. Once they returned, the season had officially started. Families noticed them the way they noticed the first snow or the first string of lights on a neighbor’s house.
The Norelco Santa became one of those markers. By the 1970s, his spots were one of the signs that the holiday season had truly arrived. Seeing Santa glide over the hills meant school vacation, Christmas specials and presents were not far away.
That repetition is what turned an ad into a tradition. Seeing it once made it a commercial. Seeing it every December for twenty years made it a memory.
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Why Stop-Motion Worked So Well
Stop motion has a special warmth that slick animation cannot fake. Every movement is made by hand. A figure is posed, photographed, nudged a tiny bit and photographed again. The result is slightly jerky, slightly magical and unmistakably real.
That handmade look matched the holiday specials perfectly. Rankin and Bass made the style a Christmas favorite with puppet animated shows that aired every year. When the Norelco Santa ran during that kind of programming, the ad felt like it belonged there. One marketing history even says viewers sometimes could not tell where the show ended and the commercial began.
Norelco was not afraid of new technology either. In 1970, the company aired a shaver commercial featuring a three dimensional man drawn entirely by computer. It was a remarkable experiment for its time. Yet the handmade Santa is the one people remember.
There is a lesson in that. Technology impresses people for a moment. Charm stays with them for decades. A little Santa figure bouncing over cotton snow had more staying power than any computer drawing.
The Commercial Changed but Santa Kept Riding
The Norelco Santa did not stay frozen in one version. The production quality improved over the years. New razors replaced old ones. Later spots spent less time on Santa’s journey and more time showing off the products.
Still, the core idea always held. Santa rode a shaver, the announcer made his pitch and the name turned into Noëlco. Viewers recognized the formula within seconds, no matter which decade they were watching.
The campaign did take breaks. Sources differ on the exact dates, but Norelco largely dropped Santa in the mid 1990s. A version from the early 1990s became one of the best remembered. Reports say Santa made a brief return in 2002.
Why did Santa ever leave? The answer came down to age. Norelco’s own research once put the average electric shaver user at 56 years old. The company wanted younger customers, and a jolly old man in a red suit did not fit that goal. Santa was retired in favor of tougher, faster ads aimed at younger men.
In 2011, Norelco brought him back in style. The new spots blended classic stop motion with modern 3D animation. Bix Pix Entertainment in Burbank built the sets and characters, and its animator Drew Hodges directed the stop motion. This time, Santa rode the SensoTouch 3D razor. The team even added an elf and a reindeer who both needed a shave.
The 2011 revival proved the old idea still had pull. The agency behind it set out to respect the look and feel of the classic campaign. That choice says a lot. Decades later, the handmade Santa was still the image worth protecting.
The Strange Power of a 30-Second Memory
Ask people about the Norelco Santa, and they will describe it in detail. Ask them which razor model it was selling, and they will draw a blank. That gap says something about how memory works.
We rarely remember facts from commercials. We remember feelings. The Norelco Santa delivered a feeling of December, of a warm living room and of something good coming soon. The product name rode along with that feeling, the same way Santa rode the razor.
The memory is so strong that it sometimes gets mixed with others. In Oklahoma, the jewelry store B.C. Clark aired its own animated Santa jingle starting in 1982. That Santa rode a sled, not a razor. Yet so many people blended the two ads together that the store posted an explanation on its website. B.C. Clark even sold Norelco razors back in the 1960s, which only added to the confusion.
That is the strange power of a short holiday ad. It can outlive the product, the decade and even the accuracy of our own memories.
Where to See the Norelco Santa Today
The good news is that Santa still rides, at least online. Fans and video archivists have uploaded many of the old Norelco Christmas spots to YouTube. Searching for Norelco Santa or Noelco usually turns up several versions from different decades. Watching them in order is a fun way to see how the ad changed.
Retro commercial compilations are another source. Collections of vintage holiday ads often include the Norelco Santa. They are a great way to spend a December evening with family members who remember the originals.
Collectors have options too. Vintage Norelco print ads from holiday magazines turn up at paper shows, flea markets and online auctions. They make fun framed decorations for a retro Christmas display. Older Norelco shavers also appear at estate sales, sometimes still in their original gift boxes.
If you find a vintage Norelco in its holiday packaging, look it over carefully. Check that the box, the cord and any travel case are all there. Complete sets tell a better story and usually appeal more to collectors.
Why Norelco Santa Still Works
Nobody set out to make the Norelco Santa a piece of American history. It was a razor ad. Its job was to sell shavers during the busiest gift season of the year. It did that job, and then it accidentally did something more.
It became part of how a generation experienced Christmas. It sat right beside the specials, the cookies and the catalogs. It made people laugh at something gloriously silly. It gave a shaving company a holiday personality that lasted for decades.
That is one of the great joys of Forgotten Americana. Ordinary commercial entertainment, made to be seen once and forgotten, sometimes refuses to be forgotten. The Norelco Santa is a perfect example.
So this December, look up the old spot and watch Santa glide over those cotton hills one more time. When the name turns into Noëlco, you might just smile like you did as a kid.
