Ad: Hires Root Beer

1931 Hires Root Beer

Does anyone else like Root Beer?  I know I do, along with it's distinguished brother Birch Beer and it's back of the woods cousin Sarsaparilla.  I suppose you could argue that Moxie is a part of the family, although Moxie's main taste is Gentian, the same herb they put into Peychauld's Bitters, used in the Sazerac Cocktail.  But all that is for another time as I'm going to concentrate on the Hires ad above.

Refreshing Welch's Grape Juice

Ah 1924, unless you went to a speakeasy you couldn't get beer and wine anymore so what was the younger generation to do for fun?  Drink Welch's grape juice of course!  The savvy hostess, in serving Welch's was "sharing one of Mother Nature's oldest secrets of hospitality."  Funny, I figured that secret was the product derived after the fermentation of grape juice.  Oh well, it was the Prohibition era and advertisers had to be politically correct, even back then.

1928 Maxwell House Ad With Mrs. Filibuster

The first time I saw this ad I thought to myself,"self, what is a winy coffee?"  Is this a coffee that sounds like Jerry Lewis?  Perhaps it complains too much about being ground up and thrown into hot water?  Perhaps it sounds like Al Sharpton whenever he's outraged over something.  Well you sort of get an answer is you read the ad itself.  Apparently "winy" coffees were the acidic coffee beans imported from Arabia.  Well that sort of explains it, winy in this sense must have been an older way of saying tannic, since this ad is from 1928.  Apparently Maxwell House was made of a mix of over 100 different coffees from tropical countries.  Quite the mix actually.  Also the artwork is quite interesting to spin a story off of.  Mrs. Filibuster has not been feeling well lately.  Her investments have taken quite the loss ever since the real estate market fell through in Florida.  "Never you mind Mrs. Filibuster," her account says, "We'll make up the loss in the stock market.  It's going up like a rocket and we just can't lose..."

Vim & Go With Coca Cola

I don't know what the guy in this Coke ad from 1907 is looking at, perhaps checking if anyone is around before licking out the glass. Or maybe he's ashamed of being a coke addict.  Who knows?  I love how Coca~Cola will "Quench your thirst and put vim and go into your tired brain ad body".  There's a word that has fallen out of the vernacular... vim.  I remember my grandmother sometimes using vim & vigor but she had to be the last one I remember doing so.  Even myself, Captain Vintage Vernacular, never uses vim... although that can change in the near future. 

Coke and Cookies

It's Christmas Eve and at the time Santa Claus is getting ready for that nightly ride through the world giving little boys and girls their presents.  According to this ad he'll be bringing Coke along to stave of the inevitable tiredness that comes from traveling all over the world in one night.  Few people realize that the jolly Santa wearing a red outfit was given to us by the Coca Cola company in their ad campaigns in the 1930's.  He wasn't the only one created out of an ad campaign.