Tuesday’s ad is for Pabst Blue Ribbon from 1911. Showing an elaborately uniformed server pouring a PBR, you can see the bottles still have silver foil and have an actual blue ribbon attached to each bottle. Now that’s fancy. The angled shape of the label looks a lot like the same shape used by Miller High Life, though I have no idea who first used it. The text is priceless.
Monday’s ad is from a different time, 1940 to be exact. This Budweiser ad will have feminists tearing their hair out. The ad features a mock essay entitled Portrait of a Happy Husband, written by none other than A Smart Wife. The happy husband being portrayed is still in his suit (minus the jacket) but is wearing slippers, smoking his pipe while reading the paper, and with a beer on the table next to him for when he becomes parched. Some of her revelations are that his favorite appliance is the “icebox,” that he “prowls” for snacks and is happiest, not with her, but with friends, and won’t you please “drop by this evening” and save me from this hellish nightmare. I’ll have the Budweiser.
Our 113th Guinness ad has a different look to it. Showing a stylized turkey (or as one commenter suggests, possibly a goose) ready for eating, but curiously still alive, the tagline explains things. “My Goodness where’s the Guinness?” I guess he wants a drink before being eaten? I don’t think I’d be smiling.
Thursday’s ad is yet another one for Miller High Life. This ad’s theme is a “Recipe For Pleasure,” with the High Life bottle is surrounded by food to pair with it; hot dogs, onions, hamburgers and mustard. Who’s hungry now?
Wednesday’s ad is yet another one for Miller High Life, this time simply showing a bottle and beer glass on a silver tray. ALso on the tray is a fancy bottle opener and an orchid, which naturally shows how fancy it is.
Tuesday’s ad is another one for Miller High Life, this time showing a wedding couple in what looks like to me eerie tropical moonlight. Apparently it’s Waikiki, Hawai. The happy pair is being toasted with Miller High Life. It must have been a quickie wedding, there’s only four guests (or witnesses) at the reception. The server on the left looks like she’s wearing a “Girl in the Moon” outfit.
Monday’s ad is for Miller High Life, showing the “new look” bottles in a champagne bucket filled with ice. Fancy, right? It may be I’m so used to High Life being a subpremium that nothing can persuade me to see it as a high end beer. Oh, and the new look? “Now it’s labelled in foil!”
Our 112th Guinness ad is a rough draft for an ad by John Gilroy, one that I’ve never seen in its finished form. Since it shows the Brooklyn Bridge, I assume it was done when Guinness introduced draught beer to the United States, whenever that was.
Friday’s ad is another older Ballantine Ale ad, with an illustration by J.W. Wilkinson. He was active beginning in 19-teens, and most prolific in the 30s and 40s so that’s my guess for when the ad originally ran. The man in the white suit looks a little Will Roger-esque, but of course could just be anyone from that time period.
Thursday’s ad is for Falls City beer, a Louisville, Kentucky brand that was founded in 1905 that lasted until 1978. This is the second somewhat surreal ad for this brewery, the first was Falls City Gives You More. Like that first one, they seem to favor ads that rhyme, too. The ad copy is “Two Big Reasons Why Fall City is the Beer to Buy.” And the two reasons? They’re class, as well. “* Pasteurized * Bitter-free.” The big face in the foreground looks out of perspective somehow; it looks too big, too in your face.
