
Thursday’s ad is for Hamm’s, from 1959. Showing a pair of beer glasses toasting at sunset, the headline reads. “Yours, at the bewitching hour … from the land of sky blue waters.” So I guess that means the bewitching hour is sunset?

By Jay Brooks
By Jay Brooks

Wednesday’s ad is for Goebel Beer, from 1947. According to the ad, Goebel Beer fans are so enamored of their beer that even when they dream about tropical destinations, like Bali, they still find the Detroit brand sitting on the beach, waiting for them. “He goes native … at the drop of a moonbeam.” I think I’d rather have the trip to Bali.

By Jay Brooks

Tuesday’s ad is for Budweiser, from 1948, another in their “Great Contributions to Good Taste” series. The image of this as I have is fairly small so it’s hard to make out the story. It appears to have something to do with a man named Fred Harvey and how he made food on the train a better experience for people. I’m not sure what the frontier has to do with that, because it seems to me if the train went there it was no longer the frontier exactly. My understanding of “frontier” is that it’s meant to describe the edge or just beyond a settled area. Once there was a train station and regular rail service that seems to me that it would now be a settled area.

By Jay Brooks

Monday’s ad is for Schlitz, from 1951, showing a simple cartoon of the cow who apparently started the Chicago Fire in 1871. Today we know that’s probably not what happened, but the story of the ad is that with water in short supply after the fire, Schlitz sent a shipload of beer from Milwaukee. This was supposedly the first time their beer was sold outside their local market. Is it true? Who knows, why let the truth get in the way of a good story.

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

Tuesday’s ad is for an old New Hampshire brewer, Frank Jones, and this is one of those popular illustrations that so many breweries created before, and around, the turn of the last century. This one shows “a beer train led by the 4-4-0 ‘Gov. Weston’ stops at the Frank Jones Brewery — which was founded in 1859 by Frank Jones, who became president of the Boston & Maine in 1889 — in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.”

By Jay Brooks
By Jay Brooks

Thursday’s ad is for Budweiser, from 1945, and features as a backdrop an illustration of the grand canyon. With the main headline, “Every sip tells you what words can’t,” the idea is that the view is so incredibly indescribable, just like the Budweiser. The side tagline is “Remember the Sunsets … you Could Never Describe?” Same deal with the beer, I guess.

