Smooth and Light and Unusually Appealing

You make sherry. It's called Dry Sack.  It's 1974/'75. The jokes write themselves. Do you cower demurely, hiding behind "classic" booze ad imagery of the day? (sexily colorful shot of the bottle and a glass of the booze set against a black background hoping to trigger and tantalize thirst sensors) Or do you go the celebrity endorsement route?

Interestingly (and somewhat confusingly), the same copy was used in both the Cheryl Tiegs and Frank Gifford ads.

Dry Sack on-the-rocks is a great drink. Its smooth and light and unusually appealing. It has the body and full rich nutty taste to stand up to ice. Dry Sack on-the-rocks...perfect before lunch or dinner.

You read that correctly. Perfect before lunch or dinner.

Oh, for those halcyon days of yore, days when "perfect before lunch" was a socially accepted selling feature for booze.

Welcome to the bawdy and often confusing world of the Gen X child, where thinly veiled slang references to male genitalia mingle freely with Frank Gifford and Cheryl Tiegs while hawking the perfect booze to drink before lunch.

My dad was a football fan and liked Frank Gifford. And my dad was known to imbibe in a glass of sherry (though not before lunch, at least not that I know of). My dad was therefore the target audience for these ads. But my dad never bought or drank Dry Sack. I have difficulty imagining my father ordering a Dry Sack on-the-rocks, even if it was macho enough for pre-emasculation-by-Kathy Frank Gifford*. (Dry Sack? At least he had a sack back then.) My mother was more of a sherry drinker than my dad. And when I imagine her asking the waiter if he has Dry Sack, and if so, her then telling the waiter, "I'll have a Dry Sack on-the-rocks," I feel simultaneous urges to giggle and throw-up. Perfect before lunch.

And yet people wonder why Gen Xers needed programs like DARE and the Just Say No campaign in elementary schools in the '80s.

Uh, maybe because the magazines in our homes were filled with ads featuring our sports and fashion icons drinking Dry Sack before lunch?


*Frank Gifford was an early adopter of the sports personality endorsement deal. Along with Dry Sack he sold his persona to hawk: Cigarettes, swimsuits, and hair gunk.