Remember Wild West Sarsaparilla?

Here's a newspaper ad for Wild West Sarsaparilla from the June 28, 1970 Lorain Journal. (Click on it so you can read it.) It caught my eye because of that cartoon cowboy. I seem to remember seeing him in the same pose in a huge ad on the side of a building near the McDonald's on West Erie Avenue; it's one of those iconic images (like Oakie the Squirrel) that still haunts me from childhood. Strangely enough, the cowboy didn't appear on the pop can.

However much I liked the cowboy illustration, though, I don't remember ever drinking this stuff. My family was too set in our ways when it came to pop. We had Pepsi with Yala's Pizza, and 7-Up or Vernors when we were sick. Other than that, we usually had Hires Root Beer (for floats), and the odd bottle of Cotton Club Ginger Ale now and then.

Looking at the sketchy cartoon cowboy makes me think that it is the work of the late well-known Plain Dealer cartoonist Dick Dugan, creator of the Cleveland Browns brownie. (Here's a link to a nice article about him, and links here and here with samples of his work.) What do you think?

Photo of can courtesy of www.rootbeerworld.com