Friday’s ad begins the holiday season with an ad for Coors with the appropriate slogan “‘Tis the Season … To Share the Tradition.” The ad is from 1990 and is for the now retired Coors seasonal Winterfest. From here through the end of the year I’ll be featuring holiday beer ads because Coors is right, ‘Tis the Season.
Thursday’s Thanksgiving ad is a Miss Rheingold ad from 1945. In that year, Pat Boyd was Miss Rheingold. She was the fifth woman to hold the title. Leaning on a fence with a giant turkey perched on it, she’s reading “Carving the Easy Way,” which I can only assume would make the turkey nervous. “My beer is RHEINGOLD — the DRY beer! It’s beer as beer should taste.” Happy Thanksgiving everybody!
Wednesday’s ad is for Drewery’s Beer with the hilarious slogan “Big D Makes The Big Difference In Fun.” Drewrys Beer of South Bend, Indiana was done in the 1950s. Drewrys was actually a Canadian brand, but for most of its history was brewed in Indiana. How about all those really happy people in what looks like the cleanest, most nondescript bar in the world. And I love the bottom, where it says “some beers are two heavy … some are too light … Big D is always just right.” A Goldilocks beer.
Tuesday’s ad is for Blatz Beer from 1948. The ad shows a bottle of Blatz in a crate of raspberries with the slogan “at the peak of flavor.” Proving everything old is new again, inside the small red rectangle in the bottom right-hand corner it reads “Blatz, brewing better beer for the 97th year.” And here I thought the term “better beer” was a more modern term.
Monday’s ad is for Falls City beer, a Louisville, Kentucky brand that was founded in 1905 that lasted until 1978. The ad shows a surreal cap-wearing bottle with arms piloting a boat, with the slogan “Falls City gives you more of what beer’s for.” At the bottom of the ad is this gem: “pasteurized and bitter-free.” Classic.
Falls City re-emerged last year and is brewing beer again in Louisville.
Our 43rd Guinness poster by John Gilroy features a man lifting up a very large boat in order to paint the underside. The boat has “GIGFY” on it’s bow, which I assume stands for “Guinness is good for you” although the slogan for the ad is “Guinness for Strength.”
Friday’s ad is from around 1910 for a Germany brewery, Bergschloss. It’s for their Berschloss Bock and was painted by an artist by the name of Riemery.
Thursday’s ad is from 1960 and is for Pabst. I chose it because the man is wearing a mustache and the men in beer ads rarely have facial hair, surprisingly enough. I love the slogan “Back in the Days — The Good Old Days … When Beer Was Really Beer.” I wonder what they’re trying to imply with that one?
Wednesday’s ad is from 1963 and is Budweiser’s depiction of “The Tavern … a friendly spot.” Don’t you miss the days when all bartenders wore those red half jackets? And a tavern with only two people in it? That’s got to be a great place to talk about “bowling, baseball or city hall.”
Tuesday’s ad is an early one for Whitbread Pale Ale. The 1936 ad is all shadows and light, with the shadowed man wearing some sort of riding hat, or is he Sherlock Holmes?
