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.
If you want to see what the girls are up to
these days, check out
The Official Swedish Bikini Team web site. See also - "The
Fantanas"
