Wednesday’s ad is from Life Magazine, and ran in the April 17, 1950 issue. The Budweiser ads shows a couple gardening, with the tagline “There’s nothing like it … absolutely nothing.” But it’s the text that I really love, comparing mother nature to their beer.

No one works more tirelessly to give you the good things of life than Mother Nature. It is she, by the way, who brings you BUDWEISER. We supply her with the choicest of ingredients and the most perfect of working conditions and … slowly … slowly she matures every flavorful, sparkling drop of the world’s most famous beer.

Live life, every golden minute of it. Enjoy BUDWEISER, every golden drop of it.

Now that’s beautiful copy-writing.

Thursday’s ad during strange glances week also a 1958 ad, this time for Budweiser, under their campaign “Where there’s life .. there’s Bud.” Mr fix-it watches intently as his wife pours his beer from a can into a pilsner glass. What I can’t quite understand is how use fix a telephone with a hammer. There’s also an odd bit of text there, right next to the hammer.

THE KING’S CREDENTIALS: The King of Beers prints its ingredients right on the label. Know of any other beer that does?

Was that really such a bold claim in 1958? I think I was under the impression that most, if not all, beer labels contain at least the primary ingredients on them, but perhaps that’s a more recent development. Since there are only four, I wouldn’t think that would be a point of differentiation. But maybe then most people didn’t know what the ingredients were, or that they were virtually identical from beer to beer.

Tuesday’s ad is a bit of a horror show. The ad is for Bud Dry, since it was on this day in 1989 that Anheuser-Busch debuted the line extension to test markets, rolling it out nationally the following year. I’m no fashion historian, but those look like every bad fashion look from the late 1980s. Who do you think the target demographic was with this ad? The car is a 1957 Corvette. And maybe it’s just me, but apart from the obvious titillation and appeal to prurient interests, why advertise something called “dry” with such a “wet” scene?

Friday’s ad is for Budweiser and reflects the optimism of its publication date, which was 1933, just after the end of prohibition. Above cloudy skies, the Empire State Building, like a lighthouse beacon, shines around the city, lighting it up for the fun below. Below the beacon, an orchestra plays, people dine and dance, all, presumably, with the newly legal beer.