With the World Series and baseball ads plus Halloween this weekend, I’m doubling up on ads so I can highlight both baseball and Halloween-themed ones. Today’s baseball ad is from 1942 and features baseball legend Leo Durocher, when he was a manager for the Brooklyn Dodgers. Durocher is saying that “My beer is Rheingold — the DRY beer!”
With the World Series and baseball ads plus Halloween this weekend, I’m doubling up on ads so I can highlight both baseball and Halloween-themed ones. Today’s Halloween ad is fairly contemporary and is for UK beer Hobgoblin, brewed by the Wychwood Brewery located in Witney, part of Oxfordshire.
With the World Series and baseball ads plus Halloween this weekend, I’m doubling up on ads so I can highlight both baseball and Halloween-themed ones. Today’s baseball ad is from the 1970s for Pabst. The “Cool Blue” Pabst baseball player is running to make the catch … of a mug of beer.
Our 41st Guinness poster by John Gilroy features the largest, most twisted tuba ever made, whose playing is undoubtedly made possible by Guinness. That’s what gave him “Guinness for Strength” to be able to play such a big tuba.
With the World Series and baseball ads plus Halloween this weekend, I’m doubling up on beer ads so I can also highlight a few Halloween-themed ones. The first of these is a Budweiser ad from 1953 featuring a truly scary mask and a witch holding up a glass of beer to toast a jack-o-lantern along with the tagline “When you know your beer … it’s bound to be Bud.
Friday’s beer and baseball ad is the ninth one featured going into the World Series. The ad is from 1951 and is for Schlitz. It features two players — or perhaps managers? — arguing about something while the ump keeps on smiling, as he pours himself a bottle of Schlitz.
Thursday’s beer and baseball ad is the eighth one featured going into the World Series. The ad is from 1968 and is for Narragansett Beer. The spokeswoman is wearing a Boston Red Sox cap and urging customer to “Go For Two!” Just like the San Francisco Giants tonight.
I just heard that the National Organic Standards Board (NOSB) earlier today voted unanimously “to require organic beer to include 100% organic hops beginning January 1, 2013.” If you haven’t been following this, under current USDA guidelines, a beer can be labeled “organic” if 95% of its ingredients are organic. Since less than 5% of beer consists of hops, that means almost any beer using organic malt may be called an organic beer. If a brewery uses 100% organic ingredients, they may label that beer “100% organic,” but all but the most savvy consumers are unaware of the difference. And it’s hard to argue that the current standard doesn’t cause confusion. I think most people who see a product labeled “organic” are going to assume that it’s all organic, not just mostly organic. There are actually four ways that beer can be labeled “organic” which includes the two I just mentioned plus “Made with Organic Ingredients” and “Some Organic Ingredients.” You can see the different standards at a post I did several Years ago, What Makes Beer Organic? The last two seem to convey the intended information, and so does saying “100%.” It’s that simple “organic” designation being only 95% that has people concerned — rightly so, I should add — and led the American Organic Hop Grower Association (AOHGA) to petition the USDA to “remove hops from the National List of non-organic ingredients allowed in organic food (section 205.606).” You can view the petition, and an addendum, at the AOGHA website.
Here’s some of the background, from an AOGHA press release:
Hops were first added to the National List by the NOSB in June 2007, when organic hops were primarily produced in Europe and New Zealand. Since then, the U.S. organic hop industry has made significant advances. Progressive, large-scale family farms in the Pacific Northwest and small, local growers across the country are now growing organic hops, even though the hop producers believe the market for them has remained weak due to the current NOSB policy which allows brewers to use less expensive, non-organic hops in their beer labeled organic.
In an attempt to remove hops from the National List, the American Organic Hop Grower Association (AOHGA) submitted a petition to the USDA in December 2009, supported by Sierra Nevada Brewing Company, Anheuser-Busch, Lakefront Brewery, Seven Bridges Cooperative, and Hopunion LLC.
When the USDA denied the petition, BT Loftus Ranches VP Patrick Smith wrote an impassioned essay, National Organic Standards Board to US Organic Hop Industry: “Drop Dead”, that nicely laid out the organic hop farmers’ case. In the middle of October, “thanks to his efforts, and the attendant “response from consumers, organic hop growers, and organic brewers, the NOSB Handling Committee has revised their previous recommendation and is now recommending that hops come off the National List on January 1, 2013.” Good news, to be sure, but it still required the full board of NOSB board vote on the petition again and accept the changed recommendation at a meeting in Madison today, as reported by Patrick Smith in an Organic Hops Update.
The AOHGA website is now updated with the following: “On October 28, 2010, the National Organic Standards Board unanimously voted in favor of the removal of hops from section 205.606 of the National List of Approved and Prohibited Substances, effective January 1, 2013.”
Wednesday’s beer and baseball ad is the seventh one featured going into the World Series. The ad is our second for Falstaff and appropriately mentions the seventh inning stretch. The ad is from 1963 and starts out with “For your Light-hearted moments … This is the One.” I can’t tell if the ad is photographed or a hyper-realistic illustration. The pair just look so perfect that it’s hard to tell. The veins in his arms, the impish smirk, the perfect hair. Then there’s the woman behind him, throwing off her catcher’s mitt with tousled hair and a perfect come hither smile. The guy actually looks a little bit like a very young Ed O’Neil, the Dad on “Married with Children” and now on “Modern Family.” The text at the bottom begins “Seventh inning! Stretch for a Falstaff!”
This Halloween, a new law in the state of Michigan takes effect. Officially, it’s known as the “High Blood Alcohol Content Enhanced Penalty” law, though most people call it by its nickname: the “Super Drunk” law. Essentially, the new law targets persons driving with a BAC of 0.17 or above and carries harsher penalties than regular drunk driving, to wit:
Under the new law, drunk drivers with a level of .17 or higher will face harsher punishment. Jail time will be doubled, a drivers license will be revoked for a minimum 45 days. Drivers who register .17 or higher will also face mandatory alcohol treatment and costs that could reach as high as $10,000.
According to Michigan ABC television station WJRT Channel 12, the “National Highway Traffic Safety is behind [the new law]. More than 40 states already passed the law and Michigan is one of them.” Strange that I haven’t heard of this before, especially if all but ten states have a similar law on the books. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, not including Michigan, indeed 42 states have increased penalties for drivers stopped with a BAC of between 0.15 and 0.20, depending on the state.
So I know what you’re probably thinking. “How could I possibly be against this?” Well, the truth is I’m actually not … not exactly, anyway. I’m not necessarily against having harsher penalties for different levels of intoxicated driving. My biggest problem with this law, and presumably it’s the same in the other states, is that while addressing the upper limit, it keeps the lower limit where it is, at 0.08, and also there continues to be “zero tolerance” areas that ignore the law and arrest people who are below 0.08 and also some jurisdictions that either have proposed or have already passed legislation allowing the arrest of people with a lower BAC. I’m just not sure any of this does much to actually stop people from driving drunk — the goal, one hopes — and it especially does nothing to stop the worst offenders. At least one Michigan newspaper agrees with me, writing In The Margins: ‘Super drunk’ law isn’t necessary, nor will it curb hard-core drunks.
To me the problem of the worst offenders driving drunk was never addressed by lowering the BAC. All that’s been accomplished is ruining the lives of more and more people. The argument is always, but what about the people who are hurt by drunk drivers? In a sense, that’s like asking “what about the people who might be accidentally shot during a robbery.” Making robbery illegal hasn’t stopped that problem, either, because people who will do stupid and illegal things will not stop just because the government says “hey you, stop.” Of course it would be great if everybody was responsible and didn’t get behind the wheel of their car when they’d had too much, but more and harsher penalties hasn’t worked before. Maybe it’s time to try a different approach?