The Hamm's Bear: From The Land Of Sky Blue Waters

 Way, way back in the 1980s my father plunked down a fair amount of money to have giant NASA sized satellite dish placed in our back yard because he was sick and tired of paying for cable TV. For a few years my dad's plan payed off and my family enjoyed free programing beamed down from orbiting objects in the far reaches of space above. That is until the TV networks got wise and started scrambling their satellite feeds. 

One of the advantages of getting your TV beamed down from satellites orbiting over North America was that you not only received broadcasts from the United States but from Canada as well. One of the feeds that I could tune in was the Canadian music video channel MuchMusic. The channel featured a lot of great bands from Europe and Canada (naturally) that never made it onto American radio or MTV. Beyond expanding my musical taste I was also exposed to commercials for products and brands that I had never heard of.

Who knew that Hostess sold potato chips in Canada?

Another such product was Hamm's Beer and it's animated mascot The Hamm's Bear. Hamm's was a popular brand of beer in the Midwest and the Great White North. Due to the fact that I had lived the entirety of my existence in the American Southwest I was never exposed to Hamm's and the comedy hijinks of it's cartoon bear.

I eventually actually got to try a Hamm's and I liked it.

Let's get back to that bear. Here is a commercial that I probably saw back in the day:

Very effective advertising, now I want to go camping and watch cartoons while pounding down a few cold ones. 

Okay, I wanted to do that before I saw the commercial.

Here is some history:

In 1945, Campbell-Mithun of Minneapolis became the advertising agency for the Hamm’s company. To extend the beer’s appeal outside of Minnesota and to promote where the beer was brewed, the Land of Sky Blue Waters advertising campaign was created. It featured lakes and waves, the moon and stars, and the north woods, but no humans or animals. A jingle was added with a distinctive drumbeat and the lyrics, “From the land of sky-blue waters, from the land of pines, lofty balsams, comes the beer refreshing—Hamm's, the beer refreshing. Hamm's!” The phrase “land of sky-blue waters” is a loose translation of Mni Sota Makoce, a name for the homeland of the Dakota people; the jingle’s lyrics were inspired by Longfellow’s poem “Song of Hiawatha.”

Controversy exists about who first “created” the bear. Most agree that the character was born in 1952 at Freddie’s restaurant in Minneapolis at a meeting with Cleo Hovel, creative director for Campbell-Mithun, and Howard Swift, an animator who worked for the California TV production company Swift-Chaplin. Hovel usually gets the credit for drawing the bear on a napkin in response to the idea to add an animal character to the Sky Blue Waters campaign. Throughout the decades, however, many others were involved and credited with drawing the bear and creating the Hamm’s commercials.

An early memorable television commercial featured a birling (log-rolling) bear trying to balance on a log cut down by a beaver. Through the years, the bear, often with forest friends, was the star in many commercials. He was a sportsman and bowled, played hockey and baseball, golfed, skied, fished, and camped. He also was a magician and played the accordion. The commercials were so popular that newspapers printed the television broadcast schedule so fans could watch them. - MN Opedia

From the Land of Sky Blue Waters [(Echo) Waters]
Comes the water best for brewing,
Hamm's the Beer Refreshing,
Hamm's the Beer Refreshing,
Hamm's!

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