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You are here: Home / Art & Beer / Beer In Ads #2200: Heineken Refreshes Drag Queens?

Beer In Ads #2200: Heineken Refreshes Drag Queens?

February 27, 2017 By Jay Brooks


Monday’s ad is for Heineken, from the 1970s. 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, I’m not quite sure what’s going on. It’s an odd one. In the first panel, what appears to be a man in drag, wearing women’s clothing. In the second, a crease of smile’s starting to emerge when handed a mug of heineken. What did drinking the beer cause to happen? In the final panel, there’s no a bag over the head of our drag queen. Why, you might ask? I have no idea? Is it funny? I have no idea. An alert reader (thanks Beer Nut) noticed that the person in the ad is Les Dawson, who “was an English comedian, actor, writer, and presenter, who is best remembered for deadpan style, curmudgeonly persona and jokes about his mother-in-law and wife.”

Heineken-1970s-drag-queen-2

Filed Under: Art & Beer, Beers Tagged With: Advertising, Heineken, History



Comments

  1. The Beer Nut says

    February 28, 2017 at 1:57 am

    Another (memorable!) face from TV when I was a child: comedian Les Dawson.

    • Jay Brooks says

      February 28, 2017 at 6:48 am

      Thanks for the context, that makes a lot more sense, as people when the ad originally saw the ad would have known who it was, whereas me — forty years and a continent removed — had no idea.

      • The Beer Nut says

        February 28, 2017 at 2:13 pm

        I’ve added explanations to some previous ones too. I think these are 1980s rather than ’70s, though. The Hi-de-Hi one definitely is, since that show ran from 1980 to 1988.

        • Jay Brooks says

          February 28, 2017 at 11:04 pm

          You’re right about some of them being in the early 1980s. A few of them I had the exact date they ran and a couple of them were 1980 or 1981. But since most were from the 1970s, when I didn’t have a date, I went with a generic 1970s. I’ll go back and change those to 1980s where it makes sense. Thanks.

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