Schlitzfest in Schlitzerland: Shoddy Goods 097

Cheers! I don’t drink as much beer as I used to, but I’m always up for another round of vintage beer advertising. Jason Toon here with another Shoddy Goods, the newsletter from Meh about consumer culture, marking the demise of a venerable beer label with a look back at their artistic high point.

American brewing is losing one of its greatest names, if not always one of its greatest beers. The final barrel of Schlitz will roll off the line this week in Milwaukee, the town it made famous. Pabst, its current owner, is retiring the brand. It’s the end of a legacy that goes back to 1849, and includes the first brown beer bottles (in 1912) and a two-decade run as the best-selling beer in America (from the end of Prohibition to the 1950s).

“The beer that made MIlwaukee famous” isn’t the only ad pitch Schlitz made famous. Saturation campaigns made slogans like “When you’re out of Schlitz, you’re out of beer“ and “Beer makes it good, Schlitz makes it great“, and the Schlitz Mall Liquor Bull, inescapable across several Presidential administrations.

But for my beer money, none of those can hoist a stein to the “Schlitzerland”magazine ads of the late 1950s. They’ve given me more smooth, rich enjoyment than the beer itself ever did.

Mama deserves a Schlitznight off

There were two basic ideas behind the campaign, which ran in 1957. One, no sociable activity is complete without Schlitz. Two, the word “Schlitz” was an all-purpose prefix to brand any quality or activity more fun than its usual, non-beer-soaked form.

A get-together is a Schlitztogether. A housewarming is a Schlitzwarming. You’re not thirsty, you’re Schlitzthirsty. Your pals are your Schlitzfellows. And this lifestyle is called Schlitzing. It’s a linguistic technique that the Smurfs would adopt in later decades.

Schlitzverbalizing aside, what makes the ads so charming is the art. Under the creative direction of the J. Walter Thompson ad agency, the Schlitz account retained the use of illustrators after most of its competitors had switched to photography. And oh, what illustrators.

While previous campaigns had mostly been in a lushly realistic painted style, the Schlitzerland artwork matched the verbal whimsy of the campaign with lighthearted work by Jan Balet and Frederick Siebel. These were guys who could both illustrate classic children’s books, and convincingly capture the bonhomie that flowed along with bottomless gallons of frosty, frothy Schlitz.

Schlitzerland extended to TV, too, with commercials whisking you away to “The Schlitzteenth Hole” and a “Schlitzparty at our house”. The animation style was necessarily simplified from the ad art, but at least those of us who can’t read music were able to hear the jingle transcribed at the bottom of every ad.

Fresh air makes the Schlitzthirst grow

Whether these ads caused it or coincided with it, Schlitz sales went up in 1957, to 6.1 million barrels from 5.9 million the previous year. After losing its “best selling” crown to Budweiser a few years prior, the Milwaukee brew had the St. Louis upstart in its sights again… which may have been its undoing. The cartoony conviviality of Schlitzerland was dropped for a (to my mind) blandly safe approach, emphasizing the “Move up to quality” tagline and generic mountain vistas in the artwork.

It didn’t work. Schlitz sales continued dropping until, in 1961, the company dropped J. Walter Thompson. The two would work together again, but Schlitz would never regain its post-Prohibition commercial supremacy. It would be taken over by Stroh in 1981, its Milwaukee brewery closed, the Schlitz name reduced to a nostalgic label on an indifferent procession of cut-price beers. Ironically, the final barrels that Wisconsin Brewing Co. produces this week will be the first Schlitz brewed in its famous hometown in over 40 years.

But wait… there is some precedent for Schlitz fans to hope it will be back. Back in 2008, Pabst, under previous ownership was the savior of the original Schlitz, reviving the beer’s long-lost recipe from its glory days. These days, it’s hard to imagine any beloved legacy brand - especially one that dates back to the 1840s - lying dormant for long. What, after all, is the difference between Schlitz and Shinola?

In the meantime, we’ll always have Schlitzerland. Anywhere a man attends a suburban barbecue or a bowling alley in lederhosen, for some reason, the Schlitzfest rollicks on.

This kind of makes me wish I had more Schlitz nostalgia than I really do because Shlitzland sounds amazing. What lost brand do you still miss? In the middle of weeding the garden or unloading groceries, "I'm a Toys R Us Kid" will pop in my head, with that fleeting feeling of walking into the giant toy store, looking around, and thinking everything is possible (even if I couldn't quite get much of anything on my meager allowance). What long gone brand still sticks with you? Let's hear about it in this week's Shoddy Goods chat.

—Dave (and the rest of Meh)

Shoddy Goods Schlitzreaders will Schlitzenjoy these previous Schlitzstories (none of which have anything to do with Schlitz):

• The dastardly Mr. Coffee Nerves, scourge of the overcaffeinated

• Where’s the Speef? And other pretenders to the Spam throne

• When hyperrealistic toy guns freaked out ‘80s America

And if you like Shoddy Goods, don’t miss Jason’s new other newsletter, Gnomenclature. Every week he digs into the 178-year-history of Hammacher Schlemmer, America’s oddest retailer. It’s gonna get weird!