Brookston Beer Bulletin

Jay R. Brooks on Beer

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Guinness Ad #115: Bear Up A Pole

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Our 115th Guinness ad is a variation on an earlier zoo ad. This one is vertical, and omits some of the detail of the horizontal original, showing just the bear, who’s climbed up a pole with the zookeeper’s Guinness so he can drink it undisturbed. I love he look on his face, which seems to be saying, “forget it bub, you’re not getting this back.” The hapless zookeeper waves his lunch trying to persuade the bear to give up his beer, but I don’t think he’s going to get back his Guinness. The ad originally ran full-page in the Illustrated London Times in November of 1944.

Guinness-bear-1944

Beer In Ads #584: The Guru Of Good Times

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Thursday’s ad is for Bud Light from 1988, during the Spuds McKenzie days. I never a big fan of Spuds, a booze hound, womanizing anthropomorphized pup. He debuted during the 1997 Super Bowl, a couple of years after Pete’s Wicked Ale started out with their dog Millie on their label. He was also a Bull Terrier, like Spuds McKenzie. To make maters worse, even though Pete’s use of his own dog on the label preceded Bud Light using a similar dog, they threatened legal action and, as they say, the big dog always wins. It’s never a fair fight. Pete changed their label and Spuds went on to become an advertising legend. After all, “he’s the guru of good times.”

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Beer In Ads #580: Beer Was First Brewed In A Hut

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Friday’s ad is yet another old one for Schlitz, this one from 1912, and is, like the last two, touting brown bottles as the best package for beer. I have to admire the effort to educate consumers to think about the package their beer came in, something craft brewers did again roughly 70 years later. And I love this bit of chutzpah. “As civilization advances — so do the sales of “Schlitz in Brown Bottles.”

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Beer In Ads #579: Don’t Say “Beer”! Say— “Schlitz”

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Thursday’s ad is another old one for Schlitz, this one from 1911, and is, like yesterday’s, touting brown bottles as the best package for beer. They list a number of reasons why Schlitz is such a great beer, and some of the reasons are priceless:

  • Our barley is selected by one of the partners in our business.
  • We go to Bohemia for hops.
  • The water is brought from rock 1,400 feet under ground.
  • Not only is Schlitz beer filtered through white wood pulp, but even the air in which it is cooled is filtered.
  • It is aged for months is glass enameled tanks.
  • It cannot cause biliousness.
  • It will not ferment in your stomach.

And the ads final words are the same as yesterday’s, urging people to choose Schlitz because they know best. “If you knew what we know about beer, you would say ‘Schlitz—Schlitz in Brown Bottles.'”

Schlitz-brown1-1911

Beer In Ads #578: Beer Keeps Best In Brown Bottles

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Wednesday’s ad is for Schlitz from 1912, and is touting brown bottles as the best package for beer. I don’t imagine UV light was as well understood a century ago, but Schlitz assures us that even then “chemists of this country as well have repeatedly warned against the possible dangers to purity following the use of light glass bottles.” And I love this gem. “Dark bottles only are used for beer in Germany and England.” Many? Undoubtedly. Most? Probably. Every brewery? Hmm, I’m sure someone can speak to the veracity of that claim, but I tend to think absolute claims are a bad idea. You can find an exception to almost anything. And I especially love their final words, urging people to choose Schlitz because they know best. “If you knew what we know about beer, you would say ‘Schlitz—Schlitz in Brown Bottles.'”

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