Thursday’s ad is another Ballantine Ale ad, probably from the late 1940s or 50s. Featuring a pair of dudes on a fishing and/or camping trip holding up their glasses of Ballantine Ale. The tagline is a great one, too. “Ballantine Ale begin where other brews leave off … in flavor … in satisfaction!”
I was watching a documentary today about the Library of Congress and they talked about how the library is digitizing their collection, so I took a look at the website and discovered this little gem from 1937. Post-prohibition, apparently our government experimented with different methods for ensuring that breweries paid the correct amount of taxes. The “beer meter” was one such device they came up with, shown below.
The caption below is cut off in the original in the library’s collection, which is why it ends mid-sentence.
And now a beer meter. Washington, D.C., May 1. To aid Uncle Same in collecting the tax on the millions of barrels of beer brewed in this country every year, the National Bureau of Standards has designed a master beer meter for use of the alcohol unit of the Bureau of Internal Revenue, U.S. Treasury. Government inspectors employ this master meter in checking the accuracy of the brewery beer meter to determine the volume of beer brewed. In the photograph the large tank receives the liquid [after passing] thru the meter where it is weighed to get [the] true volume. Carl F. Stoneburner is reading ….
Wednesday’s ad is a Ballantine Ale ad from 1947. The ad is a fun little lesson on language, how the word “muff” can have different meanings. It ends on a nice twist, how the word “Ballantine Ale always means: ‘The Perfect Glass!'”
Tuesday’s ad is also Ballantine Ale, I think it’s going to be a Ballantine week. Today is also the anniversary of Peter Minuit buying the island of Manhattan in 1626 for the equivalent of around $24 (or more like $72 in today’s money) worth of “cloth, beads, hatchets, and other odds and ends.” At the time, the good were worth around 60 Dutch guilders, or about 1-1/2 lbs. of silver. Check out the Straight Dope for the … well, the straight dope. The ad depicts the scene with the humorous tagline “Early American Bargain.”
Monday’s ad is a 1957 ad for Ballantine Ale. I love the colorful late fifties dinner party, with lots of Ballantine Ale, but just soup for the guests to eat.
Our 69th Guinness ad is a fairly simple one, showing a half-empty pint of Guinness and the slogan “Life Is Brighter After Guinness” in large letters followed by the more familiar “Guinness is Good For You” in smaller print below that.
Friday’s ad is for a French brewery, Brasserie De Sochaux, which closed in 1979. It looks late 19th century, but who knows. I’m not seeing the old gray-haired dude in the military (or bellhop?) uniform as making me want to drink their beer. Plus, it just seems too busy.
Thursday’s ad may in fact not actually be an ad. It could just as easily be sheet music or the Playbill from a show. But the “Prince of Pilsen” sounds like a great title for a musical. I wonder why the woman on the left is dressed like the United States?
This week’s work of art is by an artist from Argentina, Carlos Morel. I saw the original in Buenos Aires at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes. The painting is known as Payada en Una Pulperia or Duel in the Taproom and was created in 1840.
The duel depicted in the painting is of the musical variety, with two guitar players squaring off against one another to the general merriment of all the people drinking in the taproom.
Morel is considered to be Argentina’s first great painter. He was born in Buenos Airies in 1813 and lived until 1894, painting a great number of watercolors and oil paintings throughout his career. Here’s a translated biography
Our 68th Guinness ad is an another odd one, the second from a time when sensitivities toward Native Americans weren’t particularly high. Using for a second time the cringeworthy tagline “— Him Strong,” this one shows not the iconic Toucan but a smiling group of Native Americans sitting in a canoe being held up by, presumably, the chief, who has a bottle of Guinness tucked into his pouch.
And here’s a second ad of the same scene, but from a different angle.
