Today’s beer video is an animated commercial for Rheingold Beer using stop motion, from around 1956. As an animation buff, an ex-marching band geek (and with a train for my son Porter), this commercial has everything I love.
Beer In Ads #1112: At The Word-Day’s End, There’s Rest … In Beer And Ale
Monday’s ad is for the United States Brewers Foundation, from 1941. This is one of a series of pro-industry ads that the brewer’s trade group engaged in post-prohibition to show the brewing industry in a positive light. This one shows an older farmer resting after, presumably, a long day in the fields tending to the crops. His wife, however, is still hard at work pouring him a beer. I guess it’s not yet the end of the work-day for her.
Beer In Ads #1111: He Gave Nature 100,000 New Ideas
Sunday’s ad is for Budweiser, from 1946. From A-B’s “Great Contributions To Taste” series, this one features Luther Burbank, the “American botanist, horticulturist and pioneer in agricultural science.” Although born in Massachusetts, he settled in nearby Santa Rosa, California and you can see his name everywhere here in Sonoma. Although he created over “800 strains and varieties of plants” he doesn’t seem to have had any relationship to beer, not that that stopped the advertising machinery.
Beer In Ads #1110: Tasting Is Believing
Saturday’s ad is for Jacob Ruppert Beer, from maybe the 1950s. I love the tagline, “Tasting is Believing,” but even better is the line at the bottom of the ad. “Slow Aged for Finer Flavor.” BUt I don’t know about the model, dressed in a nautical blouse with a captain’s hat on her head. She looks like she’s really there beachside as the boats put out. That I’m not believing.
Beer In Ads #1109: You Can Judge A Beer By Its Cover!
Friday’s ad is another one for Budweiser, this one from 1969. Showing a stubbie bottle of Budweiser bookended by a pair of actual Clydesdales bookends. My daughter would love those. As to whether “reading” the label makes the beer better and helps you “appreciate” it more, I’m not terribly convinced.
Beer In Ads #1108: Hallucinating Jazz Bands
Thursday’s ad is for Budweiser, from 1958. It’s seedy, steamy setting of seduction. A sultry, well-made up, siren lies on a shag carpet, cigarette in hand, its smoke wafting into the air. Using an LP (remember those, kiddies?) for a pillow, she glances up to see a bottle of beer being poured into a glass for her. She’s apparently hallucinating, too, as a jazz band can be seen floating in the air just above the radio/stereo system behind her head. Does that mean she’s had quite enough to drink already, despite being poured another? Frankly, I think she looks a bit too much like Agnes Moorehead from her later years, circa “Endora” from Bewitched.
Beer In Ads #1107: The Stagecoach
Wednesday’s ad is another one for Rheingold Beer, again from 1958, featuring Miss Rheingold from that year, Madelyn Darrow. In this one she decked out in a Western outfit, just arriving somewhere after a long journey by stagecoach. At least there are a couple of cases of beer on the roof, though they’ll probably need to be cooled down for a while after a long ride through the west.
Beer In Ads #1106: Fireplace Popcorn
Tuesday’s ad is for Rheingold Beer, this one from 1958, featuring Miss Rheingold from that year, Madelyn Darrow. Wearing a very wide skirt, she’s salting the first batch of popcorn. Her paramour is making a second batch over the fireplace. At least she has a beer at the end of her skirt, unlike so many of these ads.
Beer In Ads #1105: Better Try Extra-Dry
Monday’s ad is another one for Goebel Beer, this one from 1949. This ad shows a scene at a mill by a stream, with (I think) a painted glass of beer in the foreground.
Beer In Ads #1104: The World’s Largest Selling Beer In Small Bottles
Sunday’s ad is for Goebel Beer, from 1948. Sold in “the Bantam bottle,” which I assume was 7 or 8 ounces, I think you’d have to sell a lot more bottles of your beer just to equal what your competitor was selling in the larger 12-oz. bottles. Whatever the case, “The world’s largest selling beer in small bottles” seems like a dubious distinction, and one that doesn’t seem likely to sway consumers. I’d be asking myself “what’s wrong with their beer if they’re advertising is concentrating on the small size of their bottles?”
