Friday’s ad is for Narragansett Lager Beer, from 1948. The ad shows a waiter in a green jacket — with an awesome mustache — and a button with the number “5” on it carrying three full glasses of beer along with three unopened bottles of Narragansett Lager Beer with the tagline “Everybody’s Saying … Hi Neighbor have a ‘Gansett.”
Thursday’s ad is for Old Reading Beer, from the 1940s, I think. The ad is by famed pinup artist Alberto Vargas and shows a woman in a skintight skimpy outfit (to today’s eyes it looks like a modest one-piece bathing suit) with a belt. She’s also holding a hat. The tagline starts with “From the heart of the Pennsylvania Dutch Country.” Reading Beer was my hometown brewery growing up, although it closed when I was a junior in high school. The most interesting part though is their other claim. “Take Some Home … It’s Sugar-Free*. I’m sure that asterisk is important, but I’m not sure what it refers to. That part of the ad is missing and I can’t find many other examples. So far all of the similar ads include the asterisk but no additional information as you’d expect. Maybe at the bottom in a very tiny font, it says “just kidding.”
Wednesday’s ad is for Long Life beer, from the 1960s. The ad shows a woman sitting in an open refrigerator on top of six-packs of Long Life beer, which was originally an Ind Coope brand but is now brewed by Carlsberg UK.
This is an interesting photo I came across in 100 Years of Brewing, which was originally published in 1903. This two-page double truck is a photo of all the attendees of the Seventeenth annual convention of the United States Brewers Association, which was held in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The photo was taken on June 6, 1877.
There are 133 people in the photo, although not all of them are identified. Quite a few of the people in the photo are, or rather were, pretty big deals in the brewing industry at that time, which makes sense. This was, after all, the biggest trade convention for brewing. But when you read the names, it’s a veritable who’s who of the brewing industry.
Luckily, they included a numbered key to identify the people in the picture.
Interestingly, even though the photo was taken in 1877, by the time it was published in “100 Years of Brewing,” 26 years later, 55 of the 133 people in the photo had died, or over 40%.
Here are slightly larger images of the two pages, first the left page, followed by the right.
Tuesday’s ad is for Schmidt, from the 1980s. The ad shows two proud men who’ve just bagged a big one on their hunting trip. Tied up on top of their wood-paneled Jeep is their quarry: a ginormous can of Schmidt Beer. As a kid, those collectible Schmidt beer cans with pheasants and other game birds were everywhere. I had a friend whose father traveled for work and brought home beer cans from where he went. Their basement rec room was literally covered in floor-to-ceiling custom shelves built to hold beer cans, and there were a lot of Schmidt cans among them. I don’t know why more breweries didn’t do likewise, or don’t do so today. Anyway, this is obviously a promotional poster, but it’s the best kind of advertising: the kind that doesn’t hit you over the head and is cool enough that you’d want to hang it up in your hunting lodge or basement bar.
Monday’s ad is for Schlitz Malt Liquor, from 1965. The ad shows a woman staring into her glass of Malt Liquor. This ad was two years after introducing their malt liquor, so they were still trying to educate their potential customers, and it’s quite interesting how they characterize it. “Bolder than beer. More character than ale. Less filling than both.”
Sunday’s ad is for Ruppert Beer, from 1947. The ad shows a farmer taking a nap while his horse looks on disapprovingly. But the tagline, “Some Things Can’t Be Hurried” isn’t about growing crops, but about brewing beer, which Ruppert apparently does not just slowly, but s-l-o-w-l-y. I may not be an expert in the philosophy of time, but I don’t think you can age something slowly. Time is linear, at least in practical terms, and moves at a fixed pace. It may sometimes seem to go slower or faster, but that’s just our perception of it.
Saturday’s ad is for Molson, from 1994. The ad shows a great cartoon of — what is that? — a Canadian Goose wearing shades and leaning up against a giant bottle of Molson on the beach. He also has a fairly large bottle on his hand. He actually looks more like a duck, but Canadian Goose makes more sense in context. Whatever bird, he certainly looks satisfied.
Friday’s ad is for Grolsch, from 2005. That year, Grolsch introduced a new beer in the Netherlands called Premium Blonde, which they advertised using one of the most iconic blondes, Marilyn Monroe. At the bottom of each ad is written “Maar laten we haar nooit vergeten,” which Google translates as “But let’s never forget her.” There were at least three different Marilyn Monroe ads that I’ve found, which seems ideal since today is Marilyn Monroe’s birthday.
Thursday’s ad is for is by Ballantine Ale, from 1954. Most of this month I’ve been posting Brewer’s Gold ads from the 1950s, but I’ve shared all of the ones I could find, so for the remainder of the month there will be random Ballantine ads. In this ad, part of a small series, the focus is on “Winter Sports,” specifically three you can enjoy with Ballantine Ale. These are two obvious ones: skating and skiiing, but the third is more surprising. It’s curling, which in 1954 must have been almosy unknown. It wasn’t a regular Olympic sport until 1998, although it was a demonstration sport in the 1924 and 1932 games, and then again in the 1988 and 1992 games, but nowhere near 1954.
