|
The
Swedish Bikini Team - A group of scantily-clad gorgeous blonde babes
featured in a series of Old Milwaukee beer spots in the early 1990s.
According
to their TV commercials, when males vacationing in the mountains, on the beach
or in the water became bored and thirsty, the
Swedish Bikini Team miraculously arrived to rescue them from their doldrums
by providing Old Milwaukee Beer and the companionship of beautiful bikini-clad
beer bimbos.
Although received fondly by many appreciative male viewers (who saw the spots
as spoofs of all beer commercials), the Swedish Bikini Team was maligned by
those who felt the commercial's alleged message "It doesn't get better than
this" associated "sexual conquest with drinking."
In 1991, the Center for Science in the Public Interest pronounced the ad
"unfair, misleading and irresponsible." Female employees of the Stroh's Brewery
(now Pabst) filed a lawsuit against their employers stating that their ads
(which portrayed women as "giggling, jiggling idiots who have large breasts and
small minds") helped foster a work environment that encouraged sexual
harassment.
Before the demise of the campaign, the Swedish Bikini Team appeared twice on the
sitcom MARRIED WITH CHILDREN, did a pictorial for
Playboy magazine (January
1992) and were the topic of much discussion during many Jay Leno and David
Letterman late night monologues. TV Guide magazine referred to the girls as
“this year’s Energizer Bunny.”
Members of the original Swedish Bikini Team (Uma Thorensen, Karin Kristensen,
Hilgar Oblief, Eva Jacobsen, Ulla Swensen) were actually actresses (Peggy
Trentini, Heather Parkhurst, Jean Frances, Anna Keller, and Avalon Anders)
wearing wigs and pretending to be Swedish.
The Hal Riney & Partners Ad Agency in San Francisco created the Swedish Bikini
campaign in 1991. It only ran for several months before social pressures forced
Old Milwaukee to drop the campaign. See also - "The
Fantanas"
External Links
|
