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?
Monday’s ad is for Ballantine Ale from 1947. The whale may not be white, but it sure seems to play on the story of Moby Dick. Ballantine did a series of diorama ads that featured different stories, some from literature and some from history. I don’t know how many they did, I’ve collected at least a dozen of them, but I’d love to know more definitively what subjects they covered.
Our 43rd Guinness poster depicts a man leaning against an ancient Greek column and accidentally knocking it down, just because he’s recently enjoyed a pint of Guinness. That’s, as the slogan suggests, “Guinness for Strength.”
And here’s another version of the ad with a lot more text than usually seen in Guinness advertising at that time.
