Just like last week, here’s more marketing brilliance from the 1950s.

If you’re a Midwestern beer maker whose customer base is overwhelmingly comprised of working-class stiffs and blue-collar bowling alley dwellers; and your product carries a sonorous, liliting name like “Blatz”– who should you get to be your celebrity endoser?

It would be a bonus if he was a local guy.  “Hey, I’ve got it!”

That’ll bring ’em in, grandpa!

Based on this ad, I’m guessing the ad agency decided to try to position Blatz as a classy, upscale drink. This, in spite of the fact that the name of the product is evocative of the sound a blob of oatmeal makes when dropped from a height of 10 feet.

And this doesn’t look odd at all:

Yes nothing befits a white tie affair like a bunch of bottles of Blatz on the table.

By the way . . . apparently the brand is alive and well.

Why is the killing of 19 people by outlaw-rebel-thugs big news when it happens on the other side of the world (Afghanistan); but it is unworthy of mention when 21 are killed by same an hour’s drive from El Paso, Texas?  Hugh wonders:

The Evolution of Stereo, Speakers and Home Audio

It’s been a while since we’ve visited the archives of advertising gold.

In the 50s, the Harley-Davidson brand stood for wild, tough, macho adventure and rebellion. But somewhere along the way, the company lost its mojo and floundered for decades until recovering in the 90s. Precisely when and how did the Harley brand go wrong?

I’d put my money on the day these ads came out:

Perhaps, in retrospect, marketing the Harley as a dweeb-mobile that even Aunt Beulah can ride was a tactical error.  The Aunt Beulah and finger-pointing salesman markets never warmed to the Harley and the rebels without a cause didn’t exactly appreciate being lumped in with these squares.

And thus an icon’s years in the wilderness began . . .

Not that you’re likely to need any convincing that the so-called stimulus bill is a disastrous, counter-productive pork-a-palooza, but . . .

Charles Krauthammer’s column today does a good job of summing it all up and at the same time showing how un-change-y and un-new President Obama’s prescription truly is.

Read it!

Friend-of-Blather Ted sent me this picture today with a very humorous comment about a “prayer line” you wouldn’t want to be in.

But something about the photo struck me as familiar. Not the composition, really, but some other quality. Then I remembered where I’d seen this before: