1/27/12

Hires Root Beer - Grayscale food challenge. Challenge complete!

Trying to get food to represent well in grayscale ranges from hard to impossible. This Hires Root Beer ad from 1963 shows us how it's done. Now I want a float.

Food needs color to look appetizing. This is almost always true. What I think Hires did here is take a photograph of a root beer float, and then have an artist paint over it. In the process, the artist was able to idealize the image, emphasizing the positive. All in all, it looks really good, especially considering it's a black and white halftone image.

I'm pretty sure the bubbles at the rim of the glass are fictitious. Also, the highlight on the glass was probably touched up to make sure it looked extra shiny. The striations in the ice cream dome ( from the scoop's scooping action) have clearly enjoyed some attention from the artist, too.

Wanna know a secret? Glass is usually transparent. But not the soda bottle. See where it overlaps the giant root beer glass? Ah well. These things weren't that easy to do in '63. The version of Photoshop available at the time was really primitive.

By the looks of the slogan, there must have been a jingle to sing along with the ad. No joy in digging that up, I'm afraid. But, here's an old FaceTube video for Hires root beer that must have run in theaters at roughly the same time. Different lyrics. Same rhyme. "Desires" and "Hires".

Check out the super cute root beer pixie! She deserves new life as clip art. Get your rude finger ready to right click her into your heart in a few seconds. Also, because you got an honest face, you can have her in JPEG and PNG flavors, with the PNG on a transparent background. You're welcome. Big and small. left and right. Coming right up!












3 comments:

Ypek said...

But how does it taste?

PhilAreGo@gmail.com said...

Dunno. Can't remember the last time I had any Hires. Probably sweet and stuff. The commercial in that FaceTube link says something about spices and some kind of tree parts in it. Root beer is a nice change of pace, but until someone makes root beer with caffeine in it, I won't be a regular root beer buyer. Hm. Caffeiney root beer. That sounds like genius. Somebody get on that, please.

Thanks for reading, Ypek!

[-Mgmt.]

Steve Miller said...

Used to be able to buy the Hires extract, and with ten pounds of sugar or so and a bit of water, you could brew your own... but the bottled stuff was better, WAY better. Best of all the root beers!

Wonder if you can still get the extract? It's been long enough ago I might be ready to try again.

Or maybe I should find a recipe for ginger beer. That's good too. Done right, ginger beer reveals ginger ale to be but a pale, pale echo.

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