Saturday’s ad is for Pabst Blue Ribbon, from 1952. Starting in the early 1950s, Pabst started a new ad campaign with the tagline “What’ll You Have” which lasted for a few years. They were colorful ads, and often had the tagline spelled out in creative ways. In this ad, “What’ll You Have” is written on the rind of a large red wheel of cheese. There are at least two more kinds of cheese and several types of crackers, along with two bottles and glasses of Pabst.
Archives for July 21, 2018
Bergner & Engel Brewing’s Railroad
The third Saturday in July is “Railroad Day,” which I know not only because I collect holidays, but also because of my son’s obsession with trains. So this is an interesting historical artifact. The Bergner & Engel Brewing Co. of Philadelphia was one of the more prominent breweries in the Philly neighborhood known as Brewerytown, a nine-block area of the city with breweries on virtually every street.
Bergner & Engel was one of the bigger ones in Brewerytown, and in the late 1880s they published a book with chromolithographs of their brewery and their brewing process that are a great timepiece. The 24-page bound publication is really cool. Anyway, because it’s Railroad Day, these two illustrations of the brewery’s boxcar and locomotive are especially awesome.
This is on Page 11, showing B&E’s boxcar:
And on Page 12, they show the locomotive, which they claim at the time is “the first and only locomotive owned and operated by any brewing establishment in America: