
Saturday’s ad is for Budweiser, from 1941. This just prior to World War 2 ad features a frontiersman chopping down wood to contrast how open America was compared to “Today, [when] “you can’t find a place to park.”

By Jay Brooks
By Jay Brooks
By Jay Brooks

Thursday’s ad is for Budweiser, from 1943. This World War 2 ad features the animals marching down a hill, maybe to the slaughter, since it’s their meat that is the subject here. Even during the war, Americans are very well nourished, apparently in part due to Anheuser-Busch’s yeast being used to fortify animal feed. Hmm, seems like a bit of a stretch, but it is making me hungry.

By Jay Brooks

Wednesday’s ad is for Budweiser, from 1944. This World War 2 ad features a group of pilgrims walking through a snow-filled forest with the headline “Not an A Card in Ye Group,” which is a reference to rationing during the war. If you had an “A Card” you were permitted 3-4 gallons of gas per week, whereas a “B card” got you 8 and a “C card” got even more, but was reserved for doctors, mail carrier, railroad workers, ministers, etc. There were also “T cards” for trucks and buses and “X cards” for VIPs. It was primarily to save rubber, which was in short supply, not gas.

By Jay Brooks

Tuesday’s ad is for Budweiser, from 1944. This World War 2 ad features a Colonial American scene with “Ye Olde Melting Pot” on a street corner. I doubt that’s what actually happened, but I know there were scrap metal drives during World War 2. I have a newspaper clipping when my mother was a little girl when she was made a general in the “tin can army” for collecting a lot of metal (primarily because my grandfather’s job gave him access to it). What it has to do with beer is less clear, except that apparently the brewery also gave to the war effort.

By Jay Brooks
By Jay Brooks
By Jay Brooks
By Jay Brooks
By Jay Brooks

Thursday’s ad is for Budweiser, from 1944. This ad features a history lesson on how much work was done by the “missus” of the average minuteman, with the obvious analogy to wives back home during World War II with so many husbands in the military overseas fighting the war. She does not look very happy. I think she needs a beer.

