You are now entering Ad Space, a realm of commercials, brought before us so we might examine how they work, and discuss why we both love and hate them so. So it is written …

The Product:
Hamm’s beer

The Promotions:

The Pitch:
Laugh along with these delightful cartoon critters! … providedyou’reoflegalage *cough*

These commercials are cute, they’re amusing, and their animation is really quite good. They also really, really seem like they’re trying to sell beer to children.

Granted, not all cartoons are targeted at children. But a) during the time these ads were made, adult oriented animation wasn’t much of a thing, and b) these sorts of adorable animals and light, slapsticky hijinks very much seem like kid-oriented fare. I can’t imagine these ads being made today without drawing massive backlash (and, indeed, in the later part of the 20th Century, Hamm’s would largely retire their “Beer Bear” mascot over just such concerns).

But that raises the question: when these ads came out in the 50’s and 60’s, why were they accepted with little to no protest?

This isn’t like when the Flintstones promoted cigarettes. There, a lot of the values dissonance is because public opinion on cigarettes has soured significantly over the decades. At this point, advertising tobacco at all is controversial, let alone doing so with cartoon mascots.

Whereas, from what I can tell, it doesn’t seem like American views on alcohol have changed too much since the mid-20th Century. Maybe we’re less tolerant of day-drinking now, but the prevailing view of “harmless in moderation” seems broadly the same.

Is it instead that views on child rearing have changed? Just as modern parenting has cracked down on stuff like toy guns, or lawn darts, or any time at all spent without adult supervision, maybe advertising’s impact on children is just something people are a lot more wary of now.

Or is this due to how media consumption has changed? While television has always had some programs meant to appeal to children and some meant to appeal to adults, there wasn’t always as stark a division of who should be watching what. There was no television rating system back then, nor any channels dedicated solely to kids’ fare. And most homes had only one TV, kept in the living room where the whole family could view it. If you put something on TV, it was expected that children would see it along with their parents. So if you want beer commercials to exist at all, it’s just a fact that they’ll be absorbed by people too young to legally buy the product.

Or is there something else at play here that I’m missing? Tell me your thoughts, down below!