Monday’s ad is for Heineken, from 1979. In the later 1970s, Heineken embarked on a series of ads with the tagline “Heineken Refreshes the Parts Other Beers Cannot Reach.” Many of the ads were in a sequential panel, or comic strip, format and they were intended to be humorous.
In this ad, a three-panel format, it features the international sport of cricket. In the first panel, a thick-bearded batsman is standing next to the wicket, bat in one hand and a beer in the other. In the second panel, he’s throwing back the mug of beer and drinking it down, and you can already see his bat is starting to grow. Thanks to the beer, his paddle has grown to the size of a pizza peel. Let’s see the bowler bowl one past him now.
This is based on a photograph of the legendary W.G. Grace, who played for Gloucestershire and England in the late 19th C.
This is from a photo of the legendary Cricketer W.G. Grace, who played for Gloucestershire and England in the late 19th c.