A bit of a fun diversion today from the usual beer blog fare.  As I was cruising around looking for things to write about this week, I found lots and lots of blogs with posts about beer commercials. 

A lot of the blogs were pretty raunchy once you explored past the commercials, so no recommendations to make.  But it's easy to find videos of relatively recent beer commercials on YouTube or other video sites.  Want to see a collection of Budweiser's Super Bowl commercials?  Click here.   How about the Miller Lite series, including the ones with Rodney Dangerfield, Bubba Smith, Bob Uecker and others?  Click here.  

The beer commercials I find most fascinating are the ones from the '50s and '60s.  I remember growing up during that era in Western Kentucky, where our television sets were fed by signals from either Evansville, Indiana, 50 miles to the north, or Nashville, Tennessee, 100 miles to the south.  I recall that the 10 p.m. newscasts and the outdoors shows scattered throughout the weekend TV schedules were heavily sponsored by breweries like Fallstaff, Falls City, Pabst and Schlitz.  Seeing those spots again gave me flashbacks to sitting in the family room with mom and dad. 

The video below, from YouTube, features Stag Beer commercials starring Mr. Magoo. There's just something a little weird about a cartoon character shilling for a beer company!

A gentleman named Carl H. Miller wrote a terrific history of beer commercials for All About Beer Magazine in 2002.  That article was reprinted with Mr. Miller's permission on the BeerHistory.com site.  It's well worth the read.