Seems you can’t swing a shovel these days without hitting a hipster planting his own fruit and veg, and/or tattooing images of them on his butt. Growing your own is hot, and hot work calls for a refreshing beverage. And no one knows this better than the mad men pushing Pabst Blue Ribbon beer. Their swift seduction of today’s irony-loving urban hipster is, it turns out, in keeping with campaigns past.
This 1943 PBR ad piggybacks on the government-funded, wartime pro-grow propaganda effort to target the pipe-smoking, cardigan-cape-wearing dandies of the day. After hoeing weeds in their starched and ironed shirts, this cast from a John Cheever novel is pleasantly surprised to meet their neighbors and crack open a “symbol of friendly companionship.” Because after all, “there is no finer beer in all the world than a Pabst Blue Ribbon,” which “actually combines no less than 33 master brews into one magnificent beer.”
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(Hat-tip to Daniel Bowman Simon, the gardening advocate who campaigned for the White House kitchen garden, for sending.)
