Tuesday’s ad is for Rheingold Beer, from 1958, and features Miss Rheingold from that year, Madelyn Darrow. In this ad, she’s on the bow of a fireboat, at sea, possibly in New York Harbor, as behind her you can make out a shower of water undoubtedly from other fireboats. It suggests that they’re putting on some kind of water show, although I’m not sure why her own boat’s water gun is silent, though at least one writer thinks it was a clever way to sneak sex into the ad with such a phallic image, although in Sex in Advertising: 10 Strangely Sexual Booze Ads from the 1940 – 50s he surprisingly fails to mention what the spray imagery might represent. Any ideas?
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