Wednesday’s ad is for Labatt’s Pilsener, from 1955. First of all, there’s a funny-looking moose sitting on a stump wearing boots and a flannel shirt. Beyond “The Swing Is Definitely To Labatt’s,” there are some gems in the copy for this ad. “When thirst has you by the horns, just call for a tall, cool glass of sparkling Labatt’s PILSENER,” and “the wonderful dryness of Pilsener makes any thirst vaMOOSE fast!” There’s also a pretty interesting claim toward the bottom of the ad. “The only beer in the world endorsed by brewmasters of seven other breweries.” I wonder which ones?
I assume this Pilsner would taste way better than the lame, bland Pilsners they brew today. I am a homebrewer and brew Pilsners all the time and they are miles above the so called Pilsners Labatts’s sell today.
I drank this beer. It certainly was different, in a good way. Not like anything else being sold at that time.
This was what is called Labatt Blue today, it was originally called Pilsener and people ordered it by “Blue” as the label bore this colour.
It is difficult to know how good it was in the 50’s. It may well have been much better than Blue today, but we really don’t know this. I first drank it in the 70’s when it was similar to day but better (IMO).
At the present time, it is quite ordinary, and seems moreover to have been re-emphasized in Ontario by AB InBev in favour of Stella Artois.
Gary
Here you see the blue colouring on the label which gave rise to the name:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/7941972@N02/3425517026
The other thing I noticed in this ad and the other Canadian one Jay posted recently was the plaid shirt, something now a hipster staple via a series of unlikely shifts. The hoser image of plaid was given a big boost in those early SCTV shows, Dave Thomas and Martin Short I believe it was. This entered the American consciousness as a Canadian meme, but it’s interesting to note that advertisers were playing on the image in the 50’s, 20 years before SCTV. You see the plaid in American beer ads from then too (some ads Jay has posted show this), but it became associated more with the Canuck. Via SCTV, it finally became hip and seems to go in and out of fashion periodically. Since it’s a semi-official uniform of the craft brew crowd, it’s appropriate Jay has shown these early ads which were the first to link plaid and beer, eh…?
Gary