Coca-Cola Bear & Krampus (Patreon)

Both the Coca-Cola Bear and Krampus are changing up their usual holiday routines, so they can grow as people, of course! Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to our Big Patrons, thanks for your support and see you in 2020!

Coca-Cola had a very long history in the public eye, one that in many recent years had become somewhat muddied; regardless of how many drinks they had under their label, studies about the health-related effects of their products had only served to drive down profits. So with the holiday season coming up, several board members decided a new campaign for a new product was in order, and they had already tapped their most marketable mascot for the occasion.

“It’s a…protein shake? Seems kind of weird for Coke,” Byron said in a deep, rumbling voice, inspecting the package of the new product now sitting on his kitchen table. Byron Polasis had been working for the company for the past decade after the previous Coca-Cola polar bear had retired. While it wasn’t very proper to say, it was lucky for the company that polar bears didn’t wildly fluctuate in looks.

Byron shrugged, resigning himself with a soft sigh. A protein shake wasn’t the worst thing in the world. The bear wasn’t a small guy by any means, coming in at nearly seven feet tall. While not fat, much of his body was simply undefined mass. He had never been one for sculpting muscle, also it might have looked off for a mascot to be incredibly ripped. “Well, except for Tony the Tiger,” he muttered under his breath.

He ripped open the package, inspecting the new logo. “‘Colossal Cola, for all your protein needs’?” Rolling his eyes, the polar bear ripped open one of the pouches with powder inside, dumping it into a large glass and mixing in milk. He sniffed the liquid, biting his lip thoughtfully; it was more chocolatey than anything else. He tipped the glass back and chugged the entire thing.

Draining it, he smacked his lips; it had tasted a bit like chocolate, with an aftertaste of cola. Weird combination, but they had to stay on brand. Setting the glass in his sink, he grunted, a feeling of heat building in his chest and radiating outward. He briefly wondered if it was an allergic reaction, trying and failing to grab for his phone as his fingers twitched. The burning sensation ripped through his arms, his once merely solid pecs were now jutting off his torso, the swell of the muscle clipping against his muzzle while his middle bowed out. No abs were visible, but the dense wall of mass was as solid as concrete. Biceps rammed into the sides of his chest before lifting up and away as his lats spread. Byron found his stance slipping as his quadriceps pushed at each other, forcing him to spread his feet to not lose his balance. The bear groaned as he grabbed the counter top, fingers digging into the marble and cracking it. 

Gulping down air the bear tried to glance downward, his pectoral shelf getting in the way. Lifting an arm he watched a basketball-sized bicep shift under his fur. “Oh...oh jeez. Uh, well looks like the campaign is gonna go well… I wonder if Tony needs a gym partner.”

Krampus never had much appreciation for Santa’s job. For centuries, the Christmas Devil had been seething with jealousy for his rosy-cheeked counterpart; countless songs, movies, books, and cartoons had been lovingly made about Santa Claus, whereas he’d only gotten a few crummy B-grade horror flicks and some rather unflattering art on hand-painted German Christmas cards. Sure, everyone wanted naughty children to be disciplined, but the second he started beating the naughty ones with birch rods, he’d been labeled a Yuletide boogeyman. He dreamed of just one Christmas where he would be treated like Santa, and finally, he had his chance.

It was a simple agreement; Krampus would deliver Santa’s gifts to the world and bathe in the adulation, and Santa, that kind-hearted old elf, would be made to discipline all the naughty children. Krampus grinned ruefully at the thought of Santa being forced to run through town after town, no sleigh, magical reindeer, or elves to help him in his task. Meanwhile, Krampus had been working efficiently, and he was even ahead of schedule, soaring somewhere over the Nevada Desert, with just the Western Coast of the Americas left to cover, then a bit of island-hopping in the Pacific. 

Krampus shifted, tugging on his now very, very ill-fitting coat. There was a single drawback; the milk and cookies. Even now, he glanced at a small pile of the sweet confections, all of them the size of hockey pucks and loaded with chunks of chocolate. There were some families in the American Midwest that were feeling particularly generous to “Santa.” And, as part of his bet with Kris Kringle, Krampus had to eat all of them. Without exception. It would “ruin the magic” if a child woke up and saw that Santa hadn’t appreciated their offering, and so, Krampus had to stuff himself silly. There were worse things he could be eating, as far as taste was concerned, but the mountain of chocolate chip, peanut butter, snickerdoodle, and even the odd oatmeal raisin cookies (the last ones had a shocking correlation with children getting coal in their stockings) left Krampus resembling a Christmas Ham more than anything else. 

The coat provided for him, red and trimmed in white fur, was once loose, hanging off his trim torso when he began the evening’s excursion. Now, it clung to thick, flabby flanks and was fraying at the edges, a gut that filled his lap and was now spilling over the top of the sleigh stubbornly refusing to let the two ends of the coat ever meet again. His whiskers and shaggy, mane-like hair framed billowing cheeks and multiple chins, his face so inflated that Krampus was almost convinced even his horns looked fatter. A flabby chest like a pair of pillows rested atop his roiling gut, and his arms jiggled, wrapped in thick reams of fat as he struggled to reach for another cookie while also wrapping his sausage fingers around the reins. He shifted in the wide seat, painfully aware of how much his thick, blubbery rear was taking up more and more space. He still had everything from British Columbia, California, and Chile to cover, and Krampus wasn’t sure if he would even fit in the sleigh by the end of the night. Still, he thought, as he munched another cookie, a better Christmas for him than most.