Frostie Root Beer Revisited

The current logo

One of the reasons I don't remember going to the A&W Root Beer stand in Vermilion more than once or twice is because for many years, we had root beer floats at home on Saturday night. And while Mom bought a variety of root beers over the years (including Don Hilton's favorite: Hires), she bought a lot of Frostie Root Beer.

Here's an ad for Frostie Root Beer that ran in the Lorain Journal back on August 15, 1959 (the year I was born).

I always liked the little guy with the beard on the bottle. He changed a lot over the years.

Up until recently, the root beer bottle looked like this (below). It was a nice design, but with a little too much going on for my taste. And I wasn't crazy about the new rendering of the little old man. Sometimes things that are redrawn in Adobe Illustrator end up sort of flat – like root beer without its fizz.

Wisely, the owners of the brand decided to go back to one of the old designs from the 1960s for a retro look (below). I like it a lot. I also like the pure cane sugar in it. Like Hamm's Beer, it jumped into my shopping basket at Vermilion Farm Market.

How do I remember that Mom brought a lot of Frostie Root Beer? Because we sent away for these character mugs (below). We had a whole set of those things.

Anyway, I thought it was odd that one of the other pops that Mom bought regularly – Vernor's – also had a little guy with a beard. But he was supposed to be a gnome. 

As for the little old guy on the Frostie label, I'm not sure if it was just a frozen old man or an elf or – ?

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My previous post on Frostie Root Beer included some other renderings of the ad mascot over the years.