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.”
