Brookston Beer Bulletin

Jay R. Brooks on Beer

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Beer In Ads #769: To Guard Your Well-Being

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Thursday’s ad is for Budweiser, from 1942. It’s a funny ad that would be totally illegal today thanks to the work of the prohibitionists and neo-prohibitionists, who have turned from trying to ban alcohol after the failure of Prohibition to instead making it as difficult as possible to sell, including increasingly stringent advertising restrictions, including that making health claims are banned, even true ones. But this ad is all about the healthy nature of beer, and the necessary vitamins and foodstuffs in beer, not to mention how R&D on beer has led to other discoveries.

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Mockingbird Beer Bottles

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Sam Wiley, a Brooklyn-based designer and advertising artist who’s done work for Anheuser-Busch, was asked to create packaging for a brand to be called “Mocking Bird Lager” and “Mockingbird Pilsner.” I don’t know if these were done for ABI – she doesn’t say — and as far as I know, no one has launched this line of beer, so it’s anybody’s guess, but it’s a great looking design. I don’t like clear glass because it’s not good for the beer, but from a purely design point-of-view she used the clear glass and the gold of the liquid to nice effect. I like that they don’t look like typical beer bottle designs and I think as the market gets more crowded, any brand’s ability to stand out on the shelf will become increasingly important.

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Beer In Ads #768: I Was Curious … By The Lake

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Wednesday’s ad is for Schlitz, from probably the late 1940s. It’s part of the long-running “I was curious” series from Schlitz that typically showed three panel showing the progression from curiosity to tasting to acceptance, a sort of mini Kubler-Ross of the three states of beer tasting. In this ad, it shows two couples by a lake. Why is it that most ads depicting couples during this time period show them separated and not interacting, boys with the boys and girls with the girls?

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Beer In Ads #763: Washington’s Headquarters At Valley Forge

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Wednesday’s ad is for Valley Forge Beer, because it was on this day, December 19, 1777 that George Washington set up camp for the winter in the small Pennsylvania town of Valley Forge. I went to the historical site a few times as a kid, including once as a Boy Scout where we followed some orienteering with maps and compass to earn some sort of ribbon, or something. I don’t usually do breweriana other than actual print advertising, but it made sense to break out the tray because of the date.

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Valley Forge Beer was brewed by the Adam Scheidt Brewery in Norristown, Pennsylvania, which is just a few miles from Valley Forge. Here’s a short history of the brewery, from a breweriana collectors website.

The Adam Scheidt Brewing Company was founded in the late 1870s and was incorporated in 1884. After Prohibition, the brewery thrived, brewing Valley Forge Beer, Ram’s Head Ale, and Prior Beer. The brewery’s name was changed to the Valley Forge Brewing Company in 1963 and, five years later, it was sold to Philadelphia’s largest brewer at the time, C. Schmidt & Sons. It continued to operate as a branch of Schmidt’s until 1975, when the facility was closed. Schmidt’s continued to brew the Valley Forge and Ram’s Head brands until the early 1980s, when Schmidt’s itself finally ceased operations.

And here’s another one of the same tray, this one showing better color.

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Frankly, I remember seeing these trays around when I was a kid, and cans of the beer, but it was never something I ever drank. I don’t ever remember even seeing it for sale where we lived. Below is a less common tray showing the same event, but by a different artist, obviously.

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Yule Shoot Your Eye Out

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This is just priceless. Eric Warner’s new brewery in Texas, Karbach Brewing, has named their new seasonal beer for one of the greatest holiday movies ever made, A Christmas Story. The 8% a.b.v. seasonal was made with ginger, cocoa nibs, orange peel, cardamom, allspice, nutmeg and cinnamon, and has one of the best beer names I’ve heard in quite some time: Yule Shoot Your Eye Out.

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There’s also a promotional video for the beer.

But wait, there’s more. There’s also a second Christmas beer that was inspired by A Christmas Story, this one slightly more subtle. It’s calle Fra Gee Lay — must be Italian! — an ale brewed with spices and aged in Bourbon barrels. It’s essentially the Yule Shoot Your Eye Out barrel-aged, and there’s another video.

Hilarious. Now if I can only figure out how to get the beer. Maybe if I hold up the brewery with my Red Ryder BB Gun.

Beer In Ads #762: For The Thrill Of Victory Or The Agony Of Defeat

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Tuesday’s ad is for the G. Heilman brand Schmidt, not to be confused with Schmidt’s. I’m not sure when the ad is from, but I imagine the most telling clue is the pull-top crown and the big mouth bottle. Is anybody still using those bottles? The last one I remember was Mickey’s Big Mouth. I haven’t seen them in California for a few years now. Also, with that tagline, For the Thrill of Victory or the Agony of Defeat, I’m not sure how invoking ABC’s Wide World of Sports ties into the beer, although it may offer a clue as the ad’s age. The show debuted in 1961, so it’s likely the ad was sometime after that, though it seems reasonable that it would have been long enough after it began that their catchphrase was already popular. But perhaps it’s the text at the bottom, “the same great beer every time,” that the tagline is referring to; insofar as you don’t want some beers to be winners and others to be losers, it’s consistency that’s king. Anybody have a better theory?

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