Friday’s ad is for “the Pride of Canada,” a claim made by Molson in this ad from the — what do you think? — sixties or seventies? It also includes this classic quote from founder John Molson, from 1786, when he would have been 23 years old. “An honest brew makes its own friends.” I wonder if he ever really said it?
More like the 80s I bet at the bottle is the long neck that only gets used in Canada in that decade. Before that, it was all about the stubbie: http://beerblog.genx40.com/archive/2003/september/stubbies
I defer to your native institutional memory, sir. I think at least they were going for an older, retro look.
But that ad is from the US – note the US importer on the bottom of the page “Martlet Importing, Great Neck, NY” – and Molson used those “heritage” long-neck green bottles for the beers they exported to the US in the 1970’s-1980’s.
The story goes that Martlet was formed by Molson and an ex-Van Munching (Heineken) salesman, Gerald Regan, who had learned the lesson of the image of imported beer in the green bottle. So the US didn’t routinely get Molson or most other Canadian brands in their classic brown stubbies (which, after all, were deposit returnable/refillable bottles)- Labatt and some Carling-O’Keefe brands also came in unique to the US bottles at the time. The first Canadian stubbies I remember seeing here were when Molson’s Brador first hit the US in the mid-80’s (and that could be because I was in neighboring NY state) but that beer went to a long neck (brown) eventually, too.
Martlet was eventually taken over entirely by Molson, and evolved into “Molson USA” and then Molson did a deal with Miller to import their brands into the US.
Gents – I think the best description of the Molson bottle is “mid-neck”. To me, “longneck” is the classic reusable bar bottle – taller & skinnier than the bottle seen in the ad. Molson’s bottle was akin to what Heineken still uses to this day – as do SN & many other craft brewers). Beck’s & St Pauli Girl still use bottles that fit the “longneck” descriptor (as do Sam Adams & Speakeasy, the SF craft brewer).
As for the ad’s time frame, I’d be more inclined to go w/the 70’s – the grocery store I worked in in MD 71-78 sold Molson, & it was in that bottle type.