Olde English 800 🐯 Ads and Commercials July 30, 2024

Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen. Welcome back to another post by yours truly. Every so often I look to back in the day to some of the brews that I used to drink back back before the year 2000. I've profiled a a few of those beers in the following posts: 

• Ballantine Ale Ad from the New York Times December 23, 1937 January 7, 2019, 
• What is Malt Liquor October 10, 2019, 
• Country Club Malt Liquor October 17, 2019, 
• Colt 45 Malt Liquor October 18, 2019

Today I'm going to show some of the ads and commercials of the brew that we used to call The Old Gold and Old E: Olde English 800. 

Old E hit the market in 1964 and would become a mainstream brand when it was purchased by the Pabst Brewing Company in 1979. By the 1980's, Old E was its best selling beer and by the early 1990's, the 40oz glass bottle Old E (along with Colt 45, St. Ides, Private Stock and Ballantine Ale to name a few) could be found in every bodega in the hood. The advertising campaign squarely reflected the demographic that it was targeting. Here are a few images:

By the 2000's, Olde E was no longer the best selling beer that it once was. Miller purchased the brand and once again, Olde E is being sold along the East Coast. Here is a classic Olde E commercial from the late 1980's:

Here is one more, this one is a radio commercial from the sometime in the 1970s or 1980's. 

Well, that all for today. I hope you enjoyed this small little walk down the Malt Liquor memory lane. See you soon. 

Until Then May You Have Some Happy, Safe and Responsible Drinking, 

SiscoVanilla 

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Liquor Ads From the 07-25-1935 New York Times July 25, 2024

Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen. It's been a while since I've posted something to my trusty SiscoVanilla Serves and Drinks blogpage. Not working in the bar business and being swamped with work at the USPS, leaves me with little time to do some research. But I'm going to try and change that one post at a time. So to start that change, I went back to the past and dug through the proverbial crates that the New York Times archive TimesMachine provides. 

For today, I'm posting liquor ads from the July 25, 1935, edition of the New York Times. Here are some of the ads that I found:

What I found interesting is that the types of liquor advertised were very limited. It goes to show how the popular liquor types at the time were Scotch, Whiskey and Gin. There are some familiar brands here: White Horse and Dewar's Scotches, Fleischmann and Booth's gin. The one brand I'm not familiar with is The Maryland Club Special Reserve Blended Whiskey.

As of yet I haven't found much about the Maryland Club Special Reserve Blended Whiskey. What I did find was that it was produced at the Baltimore distillery Cahn, Belt & Co. from 1870 and 1919. Not surprising, production ceased with the enforcement of the National Prohibition Act aka Prohibition in 1920. At the time of the ad in 1935, it claims that the company waited two years after the repeal of Prohibition that they waited to reintroduce the Maryland Club Special Reserve back into the market. When did they stop producing the Maryland Club Special Reserve? I haven't been able to find that out yet. What I didn't know that historically, American whiskey distilling has roots in Maryland and Pennsylvania. So, it's not surprising that Philadelphia based distiller New Liberty Distillery would capitalize on those roots.  

According to the article New Liberty Distillery: Commemorating Maryland’s Rich Distilling History by Stephen Patten from the Beverage Journal dated April 20, 2016, the Maryland Club brand was so influential, that it was even part of the liquor selection available to the guests on the H.M.S. Titanic. 

For a much more in depth history of Maryland's whiskey history, I recommend you read Lydia Woolever's article AMERICA’S FIRST WHISKEY WAS BORN IN MARYLAND. CENTURIES LATER, IT STRIVES FOR A HISTORIC COMEBACK IN BALTIMORE from Baltmore Magazine dated December 2023. Also, for some information on the renaissance of Maryland whiskey, check out Maryland Rye Whiskey Has Finally Returned. But What Was It in the First Place? by Clay Risen from the New York Times dated February 14, 2019.

Well, that's all for now folks. I have some beer ads from the same July 25, 1935, edition of the New York Times for the next post. Keep your eyes peeled for it. 

Until Then May You Have Some Happy, Safe and Responsible Drinking, 

SiscoVanilla 

#SiscoVanilla
#SiscoVanillaServesAndDrinks 
#SiscoVanillaHasABrewski
#SiscoVanillaBeerChronicles
#SiscoVanillaAtTheMovies