Brookston Beer Bulletin

Jay R. Brooks on Beer

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Beer In Ads #2203: Thanks For The Job!

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Thursday’s ad is a trade ad, by the United States Brewing Industry Foundation, from 1939. After prohibition ended, the industry started doing PSA-type ads in an attempt to create goodwill for beer and brewers. They would later go on to do a fairly sophisticated series of ads between 1946 and 1956, known unofficially as Beer Belongs. Officially, they were “The Home Life in America” series, consisting of 120 ads, with a new ad running in major periodicals each month. Last year, for my Beer in Ads series, I featured every one of them. But in the years before that, the U.S. Brewing Industry Foundation (a precursor to the original Brewer’s Association) dabbled with a variety of similar ads promoting the industry as a whole. These were especially popular during World War 2, and in fact they even won an award from the government for some of these ads. Most of the ads were black and white, although a few were in color, though usually in a minimal way, with a few colors accented rather than being in full color.

In this ad, another blue collar worker (it may be our “Mike Anders” from yesterday’s ad) walks hand in hand with his son after a hard day’s work. But he’s happy because he has a job. Now that alcohol is legal again (it was only six years after repeal) lot’s of people had jobs, and the beer industry was trying to make sure it thanked its consumers and also let them now what a positive impact their business was having on the economy.

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Beer In Ads #2202: Me

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Wednesday’s ad is a trade ad, by the United States Brewing Industry Foundation, from 1942. After prohibition ended, the industry started doing PSA-type ads in an attempt to create goodwill for beer and brewers. They would later go on to do a fairly sophisticated series of ads between 1946 and 1956, known unofficially as Beer Belongs. Officially, they were “The Home Life in America” series, consisting of 120 ads, with a new ad running in major periodicals each month. Last year, for my Beer in Ads series, I featured every one of them. But in the years before that, the U.S. Brewing Industry Foundation (a precursor to the original Brewer’s Association) dabbled with a variety of similar ads promoting the industry as a whole. These were especially popular during World War 2, and in fact they even won an award from the government for some of these ads. Most of the ads were black and white, although a few were in color, though usually in a minimal way, with a few colors accented rather than being in full color.

In this ad, “me” is a man named Mike Anders is sitting, faces us, with his lunch pail on his knees. He looks good, sturdy blue collar stock, a hard-working American. He’s in his forties, married, with four kids. He works hard, he’s supporting the war effort. But he needs to relax to, so after dinner he’ll “get together with a couple of friends. For a quiet sensible evening. Lots of good talk … and maybe another glass of good ale or beer. We’ll take it easy.”

Vintage-1942-Brewing-Industry-Foundation-Magazine-Ad-Beer

Beer In Ads #2201: Heineken, Beyond Reach

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Tuesday’s ad is for Heineken, from the 1970s or 80s. In the later 1970s, Heineken embarked on a series of ads with the tagline “Heineken Refreshes the Parts Other Beers Cannot Reach.” Many of the ads were in a sequential panel, or comic strip, format and they were intended to be humorous.

In this ad, a three-panel format, a man who could charitably be called less than handsome holds a mug of beer. In the second panel he takes a drink of the beer. But in the third panel, he looks exactly the same, apparently he’s “Beyond Reach,” so I guess even Heineken has its limits in transforming people by the power of beer.

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Beer In Ads #2200: Heineken Refreshes Drag Queens?

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Monday’s ad is for Heineken, from the 1970s. In the later 1970s, Heineken embarked on a series of ads with the tagline “Heineken Refreshes the Parts Other Beers Cannot Reach.” Many of the ads were in a sequential panel, or comic strip, format and they were intended to be humorous.

In this ad, a three-panel format, I’m not quite sure what’s going on. It’s an odd one. In the first panel, what appears to be a man in drag, wearing women’s clothing. In the second, a crease of smile’s starting to emerge when handed a mug of heineken. What did drinking the beer cause to happen? In the final panel, there’s no a bag over the head of our drag queen. Why, you might ask? I have no idea? Is it funny? I have no idea. An alert reader (thanks Beer Nut) noticed that the person in the ad is Les Dawson, who “was an English comedian, actor, writer, and presenter, who is best remembered for deadpan style, curmudgeonly persona and jokes about his mother-in-law and wife.”

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Ballantine’s Literary Ads: John Steinbeck

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Between 1951 and 1953, P. Ballantine and Sons Brewing Company, or simply Ballentine Beer, created a series of ads with at least thirteen different writers. They asked each one “How would you put a glass of Ballantine Ale into words?” Each author wrote a page that included reference to their beer, and in most cases not subtly. One of them was John Steinbeck, who’s the “American author of 27 books, including 16 novels, six non-fiction books, and five collections of short stories.

Today is the birthday of John Steinbeck (February 27, 1902–December 20, 1968), who was “widely known for the comic novels Tortilla Flat (1935) and Cannery Row (1945), the multi-generation epic East of Eden (1952), and the novellas Of Mice and Men (1937) and The Red Pony (1937). The Pulitzer Prize-winning The Grapes of Wrath (1939)[2] is considered Steinbeck’s masterpiece and part of the American literary canon. In the first 75 years after it was published, it sold 14 million copies.

The winner of the 1962 Nobel Prize in Literature, he has been called ‘a giant of American letters.’ His works are widely read abroad and many of his works are considered classics of Western literature.

Most of Steinbeck’s work is set in southern and central California, particularly in the Salinas Valley and the California Coast Ranges region. His works frequently explored the themes of fate and injustice, especially as applied to downtrodden or everyman protagonists.”

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His piece for Ballantine was done in the form of a few paragraphs of one of his novels about the desert, like “The Grapes of Wrath:”

The sun is straight overhead. There isn’t enough shade to fit under a dog. The threshing machine clanks in a cloud of choking yellow chaff-dust. You wear a bandana over your nose and mouth, but your throats aches and your lips are cracking. Your shirt is black with sweat, but inside you’re dry as the Los Angeles River. The water in the barrel tastes like chaff. It only makes you thirstier.

Let’s say the boss is a man of sense and humanity. When the machine stops for lunch, he comes bucking over the stubble in a jeep, and on the back seat is a wash boiler of crushed ice and bottles of Ballantine Ale. Such a boss will never lack for threshing hands.

Well, first, you take a big swallow to cut the crust, and suddenly you can taste again. The you let cold Ballantine Ale rill into your parched throat like a spring rain on the desert. Smooth malt and hops pull together against the heat and dust and weariness. That’s the biggest thirst I know, and the best antidote.

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Beer In Ads #2199: Hi-De-Heineken

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Sunday’s ad is for Heineken, from the 1970s. In the later 1970s, Heineken embarked on a series of ads with the tagline “Heineken Refreshes the Parts Other Beers Cannot Reach.” Many of the ads were in a sequential panel, or comic strip, format and they were intended to be humorous.

In this ad, a three-panel format, an unhappy-looking maid holds a dirty mop and frown into the camera. In the next panel, the frown is still there, but now she’s also holding a mug of Heineken. After drinking some of the beer, she’s been completely transformed in the final panel. Now she’s smiling, dressed in a bright yellow (beer-colored?) suit. She still has the remaining beer in her hand, but the mop has been replaced with a microphone. Judging from the new tagline, I believe she’ll be singing the Cab Calloway classic Hi-De-Ho.

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Beer In Ads #2198: Heineken Refreshes The Invisible Man

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Saturday’s ad is for Heineken, from the 1970s. In the later 1970s, Heineken embarked on a series of ads with the tagline “Heineken Refreshes the Parts Other Beers Cannot Reach.” Many of the ads were in a sequential panel, or comic strip, format and they were intended to be humorous.

In this ad, a three-panel format, a tuxedoed magician holds a mug of Heineken. In the next panel, he proceeds to start making the beer disappear by drinking it, holding his left hand to give the “OK” sign. But in the last panel, half of the beer is still in the mug, but the magician has disappeared!

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Beer In Ads #2197: Heineken Refreshes Baldness

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Friday’s ad is for Heineken, from the 1970s. In the later 1970s, Heineken embarked on a series of ads with the tagline “Heineken Refreshes the Parts Other Beers Cannot Reach.” Many of the ads were in a sequential panel, or comic strip, format and they were intended to be humorous.

In this ad, a three-panel format, a bald man is in the first panel. Although I didn’t know who he was, apparently it’s Duncan Goodhew, an “English former competitive swimmer. After swimming competitively in America as a collegian at North Carolina State University, he was an Olympic swimmer for Great Britain and won Olympic gold and bronze medals at the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow. He also swam at the 1976 Summer Olympics.” In the second panel, Goodhew sips from a mug of Heineken. You’d think the last panel would have shown our guy with a full head of hair. The tagline was changed “parts” to “pates,” which means “head.” But he has added some fur on top of his bald pate, although it is in the form of a live rabbit. Close, but not quite. If it wasn’t Heineken maybe I’d think they were trying to say the beer was “hoppy.”

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Beer In Ads #2196: Heineken Refreshes Joe Jordan

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Thursday’s ad is for Heineken, from the 1970s. In the later 1970s, Heineken embarked on a series of ads with the tagline “Heineken Refreshes the Parts Other Beers Cannot Reach.” Many of the ads were in a sequential panel, or comic strip, format and they were intended to be humorous.

In this ad, a four-panel box format, featuring illustrations of Scottish football player, coach and manager Joe Jordan. “A former striker, he played for Leeds United, Manchester United, and Milan, among others at club level, as well making 52 appearances and scoring 11 goals for Scotland. As a player he gained a fearsome ‘Jaws’ persona due to having lost two front teeth early in his career.” And that’s the angle played in the ad, where in the first panel he’s holding a mug of Heineken, smiling broadly through two missing front teeth. In the second he’s downing the beer, while by the third panel his missing teeth are back, plus his teeth are gleaming white now. So that’s a pretty impressive beer.

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Beer In Ads #2195: Heineken Refreshes Don Martin

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Wednesday’s ad is for Heineken, from the 1970s. In the later 1970s, Heineken embarked on a series of ads with the tagline “Heineken Refreshes the Parts Other Beers Cannot Reach.” Many of the ads were in a sequential panel, or comic strip, format and they were intended to be humorous.

In this ad, a three-panel format, drawn by cartoonist Don Martin, who was best known for his work in MAD Magazine, a chef looks tired, as evidenced by his hat falling limp behind his head, so he’s drinking a mug of beer. Which — FWOT! — makes his hat stand up stiffly at attention. But in the last panel, once he’s removed his hat, his hair is standing up too, with a part down the center. So that’s where the changed text comes in: it’s not “parts,” but “partings” in this ad. Unfortunately, this was the best resolution of the ad I could find.

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