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Beer Can Dads 2012

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fathers
I posted these last year a couple of weeks before Father’s Day, but figured today was a good day to take another look at them. Last year, the good folks at Every Guyed designed eight beer can dads.

fathersday-cartoondads

Here was the idea:

To celebrate Father’s Day, EveryGuyed and Moxy Creative House have teamed up once again to deliver the second installment of the ‘Cheers!’. This time we had creative director Glenn Michael raise a glass — and his brush — to 8 iconic animated dads, re-envisioning them as beer cans.

When you were a kid, Father’s Day was a pretty boring affair. Now you’re of age, and all of a sudden you have the chance to do something with your dad that he’ll actually enjoy: share a cold one together.

See if you can guess all of the cartoon dads. You can see all eight of them in the slideshow above. The answers can found at the bottom of last year’s post.

Now I want my own dad can. What would yours look like?

Beer Can Dads

By

fathers
With Father’s day less than two weeks away, I thought I’d share this fun project done by the folks at Every Guyed, where they designed eight beer can dads.

fathersday-cartoondads

Here’s the idea:

To celebrate Father’s Day, EveryGuyed and Moxy Creative House have teamed up once again to deliver the second installment of the ‘Cheers!’. This time we had creative director Glenn Michael raise a glass — and his brush — to 8 iconic animated dads, re-envisioning them as beer cans.

When you were a kid, Father’s Day was a pretty boring affair. Now you’re of age, and all of a sudden you have the chance to do something with your dad that he’ll actually enjoy: share a cold one together.

See if you can guess all of the cartoon dads. The answers are below, just under the slideshow, where you can see the eight individuals posters for each beer can dad.

Now I want my own dad can. What would yours look like?

  1. Homer Simpson
  2. Peter Griffin (Family Guy)
  3. Fred Flintstone
  4. Papa Smurf
  5. Popeye
  6. George Jetson
  7. Mr. Incredible
  8. Mufasa (The Lion King)

You can even buy any of the prints as a poster at Moxy Creative House.

Buffalo With Buffalo: Beer!

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buffalo
I confess I don’t “get” the humor in this 2006 cartoon. I imagine there’s an inside joke here that would be apparent if I was a regular reader of Buffalo with Buffalo, a comic strip written occasionally by a Buffalo, New York blogger. But it is all about beer, so I thought I’d share. If you think you understand the joke, please leave a comment with your best guess.

bwb4

The Flintstones Drink Busch Beer

By

rocky
I’m an unabashed lover of animation, which is why I always bristle when the neo-prohibitionists invariably complain when a cartoon is used to sell beer. They always argue that cartoons appeal only to children, and seem to forget that adults love them, too. Many of the most famous cartoons we love were originally made for adults, to be shown before feature films at the theater in the days before television. It wasn’t until the advent of TV, I’d argue, that the split began between cartoons for kids and for adults.

Anyway, I recently was looking for and found a bootleg DVD of old Quisp & Quake commercials, which were created by Jay Ward, famous for Rocky & Bullwinkle, among much else. And, yes, I am that much of an animation geek. Anyway, I also discovered at the same website, something I hadn’t previously known about: a Hanna-Barbera made Flintstones cartoon done in 1967 for an Anheuser-Busch distributor meeting or convention. I promptly ordered that as well.

flint-busch-1

It’s a little over 19 minutes, shows some upcoming television and radio spots for Busch Bavarian Beer, but also includes a mini-Flinstones story, too, that begins when Fred and Barney lose their jobs and go to a bar to drink Busch beer. It appears aimed at distributors, and possibly retailers, to show what advertising will be used in 1967 to support the brand and help it continue to be successful. There’s some great old adspeak in the video, where the narrator talks about “advertising that moves the consumer to Busch” with what they call — and they say in hushed tones implying it’s a new term — “Target Advertising.” But here’s my favorite. “We used words that beer drinkers understood.” That had me laughing out loud. What exactly are the words that beer drinkers understand? Are they small ones? Simple ones? Ones without too many syllables?

flint-busch-3

After a few minutes of a Flintstones story, going to the bar, then back home, the boys return again to the bar. The bar’s name is actually “Tavern-Type Inn Bar Grill Lounge Pub Saloon.” They agree to take over for the bartender and serve some Busch beer, then watch a video within the video that’s aimed at the distributors and talks about advertising plans for 1967. Apparently last year’s slogan was “you can’t say beer better than Busch” and the new one will be “when you’re due for a beer, Busch does it!.”

flint-busch-4

I think my favorite part of the video is when the beer wagon comes out of the A-B gate, pulled by Clydes-dinos. After the video, the 5:00 whistle sounds and Fred and Barney have to go back to work serving Busch to the after work rush. When they’re done, they talk about what hard work it was, and they throw out this bon mot, which must have delighted the crowd. “It takes know how to work in the beer business,” to which Fred replies “yeah, and we got no know how, no how.” Eventually, their boss from the gravel pit, Mr. Slate, comes in the bar and they get their jobs back, of course, wrapping up the story arc from the beginning.

It’s a fun cartoon, especially for the beer geek, and I can’t imagine how expensive it must have been to get Hanna-Barbera, one of the premiere animation studios at that time, to do an industrial film for them. Happily, you don’t have to go out and buy a copy of it like I did, but can watch it right here, because I found it on YouTube, separated into two parts. Enjoy.

Part 1: 9:22

Part 2: 9:59

Beer In Ads #69: Japanese Anime’s Kotobuki Beer

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ad-billboard
Friday’s ad is a strange one, I don’t actually recall where exactly I found the image. I don’t believe it’s actually for a brewery’s beer but instead is a Japanese anime character called TsumugiKotobuki. According to one description, she’s a “high school student who walks in on the ‘light’ music club. She is inspired to join the club as a keyboardist and wields damn freaky eyebrows.” Actually I may have that wrong, as there appear to be a number of Japanese carton characters with the name Kotobuki and a different first name, like the several in the show Gals!. Whatever the truth about her is, I still thought it interesting that a cartoon character can be shown so happily holding a mug of beer. It’s just nice to see a culture that’s not so puritanical.

kotobuki-beer

Beer In Ads #61: Mr. Magoo For Stag Beer

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ad-billboard
Tuesday’s ad is for Stag Beer, whose original name was “Kaiser Beer” until 1907. In an effort to avoid growing anti-German sentiment, Star Brewing held a contest to pick a new name. A winner was chosen today in 1907, and the beer was renamed “Stag Beer.” It proved a very popular name. The ad below ran in a Pennsylvania newspaper in 1959. It features the popular UPA cartoon character Mr. Magoo.

magoo-stag

Mr. Magoo debuted in 1949 and was voiced by Jim Backus, perhaps most well-known as Thurston Howell III on the television series Gilligan’s Island.

magoo-stag-3

But being a cartoon, where Mr. Magoo really shined was in cartoon commercials for Stag.

magoo-stag-2

You have to love the cartoon of an adult character who’s allowed to act like an adult. That would never happen nowadays.

magoo-stag-1

Here’s an example of one of the Mr. Magoo ads for Stag Beer.

Jewel Pet’s Garnet Drinks Beer

By

rocky
I confess I’d never heard of Jewel Pet before now. As far as I can tell, Jewel Pet is one of those saccharinely sweet Japanese cartoons in the Hello Kitty mold. In fact, it was created by the same company, Sanrio. It’s a cartoon for kids in Japan so far at least 52 episodes have been produced. Here’s one description of the show:

In a magical land, small animals learn magic and are then turned into Jewels to travel to the magic forest. While her classmates are busy being transformed into jewels, Ruby, a rabbit, is off playing. The stork delivering the Jewel pets to the forest is overcome by a gust of wind, and the Jewels spill, falling to Earth. Ruby, who is being punished for going off and playing instead of becoming a Jewel with her classmates, is sent to Earth to retrieve her friends.

One fan, with apparently a lot of time on his or her hands was worried their favorite character, a bunny named Garnet, would lose air time as new Jewel Pets were discovered each episode, but was relieved to find that wasn’t the case.

What’s happened, rather, is that a troika of pets (Ruby, Garnet and Sapphy) has taken over. Each episode, after sharing the limelight with the new Pet of the Week, they pretty much banish it from ever rearing its ugly head in town. I’m relieved!

What surprised me about all this is the scene below shows Garnet drinking a beer! Remember this is a show aimed at kids around 8-years old, plus or minus. You have to love the Japanese when they don’t think anything at all about showing beer during a kids show. Apparently nobody screamed about corrupting the young, which almost certainly would have occurred if it had aired here. If you want to watch some episodes in Japanese, there are a few online.

jewel-pet
“That’s beer!! Garnet, stop that bunny!”