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Above: A 1979 announcement reminds distributors that new Olde Frothingslosh cans “mean PLUS SALES…”

Top right: PBC introduced O.F. 1979 with this boffo 4-color, full-page newspaper ad.

Bottom right: A funky Rowan-and-Martin-type design graced the 1970 cases of Olde Froth.

Facing page: One of 6 very popular calendar pages from 1977. Images from the calen-dar were also used on cans in 1977.

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Olde Frothingslosh, America’s most beloved novelty beer brand, was the brainchild of Pittsburgh radio personality Rege Cordic, who in-troduced listeners to his fictional

brew in 1954. One of his most faithful listeners just happened to be Pittsburg Brewing Company President S.E. Cowell. Actually, bottling and sell-ing Olde Frothingslosh was Cowell’s idea.

Over the following dozen years Olde Froth-ingslosh became a holiday favorite, prized more for the goofy labels on the stubby bottles than for the beer itself. By the mid-1960s, it was being distributed in Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Virginia.

But change was in the wind for the marketing of everybody’s (or at least Pittsburgh’s) favorite pale stale ale. Cordic, having hired on with an L.A. radio station, was now a continent away, and S.E. Cowell—having launched both Olde Frothingslosh and the world’s first pull-tab beer can—retired from PBC in 1966.

Oh My Gosh—Miss Olde Frothingslosh!The label that appeared on the 1967 and 1968 holiday offerings was similar to the ones featur-ing caricatures of Sir Reggie from a decade ear-lier, but with both Cordic and Cowell out of the picture, the brewery was ripe for a fun new way to promote the brand.

The era of Miss Olde Frothingslosh began in 1968, when someone from the brewery discov-ered a 300-pound go-go dancer named Marsha Majors. Billing herself as “The Blonde Bomber,” Marsha was performing at places in Pittsburgh’s East End like The Casbah and Lou’s Lounge. The brewery auditioned a number of full-figured femmes for the role of Miss Olde Frothingslosh, but Marsha was the clear winner; at 23, she was about as attractive as a woman who outweighed most NFL defensive linemen could be.

The idea of a pseudo bathing beauty was a natural; at the time the country was in the throes of a love affair with beauty queens. Today’s Miss America Pageant is practically an afterthought, broadcast in 2010 on the lowly Learning Channel. But during the 1960s it was repeatedly the highest-rated program on American television, regularly drawing over 80 million viewers. It was first broadcast in color in 1966. Miss America was a symbol of the United States second only to the president.

In the summer of ’68, the brewery paid Majors $800 to pose for a number of pictures, taken here and there around a less-than-photogenic Pittsburgh, which it then put on cans, calendars and posters. According to Dan McCann, PBC’s marketing Director during the 1970s, the Miss Olde Frothingslosh calendar “really gave our sales a surge.”

To round out the publicity campaign, the brewery sponsored “Miss Olde Frothingslosh”

OH MY GOSH – OLDEFROTHINGSLOSH! PART 2


BY TERRY SCULLIN #1041

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nights at local taverns. Majors, as Miss Olde Frothingslosh (a.k.a. Fatima Yechburgh), visited bars that sold the Iron City line to mingle with customers and autograph cal-endars and photographs.

The first Olde Frothingslosh can proclaimed the legend of the fulsome-and-then-some Fatima:

Fatima Yechburgh, winner of the 1969 Miss Olde Frothingslosh contest, was chosen on the basis of beauty, talent, poise … and quantity. She is the woman who best symbolizes Olde Frothingslosh, the pale stale ale with the foam on the bottom. Now she’s the girl all others look down on.

Background—She’s from a small town outside Pittsburgh. It’s consider-ably smaller since she left.

Statistics—This you wouldn’t believe.

Occupation—Trapeze Artist

Education—Studying arc welding at night.

Hobbies—Skydiving, soap carving, ballet and reading. She reads comic books, race forms, cereal boxes and other good stuff.

Miss Frothingslosh’s formula for success: “Think big.”

What PBC intended as a holiday promotion turned out to be a huge success. The can, with its funny photo, became a keeper for beer can collectors and those who just loved it for its novelty. (Outside of the short-lived 007 series, it was the first U.S. can to feature photos of a real person!)

Then, inexplicably, Pittsburgh Brewing took an apparent step backward. For the

following three holiday seasons, Olde Frothingslosh was available only in bottles. The 1969 label reprised the 1957 label, the 1970 label had a psychedelic look reminis-cent of Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In and the 1971 label was a slightly smaller ver-sion of the 1955 label.

It appears that no Olde Frothingslosh was produced in 1972 and 1973.

In 1974, though, Miss Olde Frothingslosh came back with a vengeance. Management seemed to recall S.E. Cowell’s premise that consumers would buy a novelty brew for the packaging, not the brew. And they must have

been aware of the explod-ing growth of the Beer Can Collectors of America® since the club’s founding in 1970.

To sate the can collec-tors’ thirst for variety, PBC reproduced the 1968 can, but in four different colors: blue, orange, red and the original brown. Purple, yellow silver and white versions followed in 1975. Sales were brisk; the brewery was certainly getting its money’s worth from the Miss Olde Frothingslosh con-cept. The 1976 can featured a colorized Miss Frothingslosh image, plus a number of the old bottle labels.

If Marsha Majors’ career as Miss Olde Frothingslosh can be said to have had a pin-nacle, it was at the BCCA’s

CANvention VI in Philadelphia in 1976. She was the guest of honor, completely eclipsing that year’s Miss Beer Can. The over 1,500 at-tendees couldn’t get enough of her; they stood in line for hours for her to pose for photos with them and autograph cans; the club had to pro-vide a couple of bodyguards to protect her from the crush!

Marsha’s day job was as a cafeteria ca-shier at a local YMCA. It was around this

time that she divorced her first husband, Ed Majors, and in 1977 she married Norman Phillips. Her im-age on the Olde Frothingslosh cans, meanwhile, had catapulted her to popularity among beer can collectors all across the country.

In the twelve years following the ini-tial Miss Olde Frothingslosh campaign, Marsha—or should we say Fatima—hit the can show circuit in major cities, trav-eling to Detroit, Chicago, Kansas City and even farther west. In 1977, she averaged over one show a month. The sponsoring chapter(s) would pay her travel expenses and a $100 fee, and she would charge a small fee, usually $5, to pose for a picture and autograph a can.

Continuing to milk the original Miss Olde Frothingslosh photo shoot for all it was worth, Pittsburgh Brewing put out a 1977 version of its popular 1969 calendar and used the photos from it on a series of six new cans. One tells of an appearance in a parade: “Miss Frothingslosh’s float …had to detour a few blocks because of the Seventh Street Bridge weight limit.” Another depicts a ribbon-cutting cer-emony: “Miss Frothingslosh is always opening something: cereal boxes, frozen


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Center: 1976 was

the year Miss Olde Frothingslosh

came to CANvention!!!!Clockwise from top right: A cal-endar packed (you can say that again!) with images of Miss Olde Frothingslosh got snapped up so quickly by collectors in 1969 that PBC reissued it in 1977. Our hard-to-miss Miss was so besieged by autograph seekers that the BCCA had to provide bodyguards.

A 1974 stand-alone piece promotes the year’s three

new can colors.

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food packages, food cans, beverage cans, TV dinners, refrigerator doors and so on.”

For some reason, the brewery then chose to put the beer can collector’s favorite pin-up girl in mothballs. The 1978 holiday season brought the introduction of two silver cans that recaptured the “Sir Reggie” era. A four-can set featuring a Sir Reggie caricature that actually looked a lot like Rege Cordis followed in 1979. Then, once again, there was a hiatus. No Olde Frothingslosh seems to have been produced in 1980 and 1981.

Miss Frothingslosh made a brief but mem-orable comeback in 1982—this time with all new four-color photography. PBC commis-sioned a three-day photo shoot, for which Marsha Majors Phillips was paid $1,200. The newest Olde Frothingslosh cans featured Mar-sha/Fatima in three separate settings: politics (she’s big enough to run in both parties), busi-ness (she worked her way up the ladder, one broken rung at a time) and health (she’s been building up her body for years).

PBC certainly had the can collector’s num-ber; they reissued the 1982 Olde Frothingslosh cans in 1983—but in three new colors.

Thirtysomething and beyondIn 1984, the brand that had come to life as a holiday gag celebrated its 30th birthday. Pittsburgh Brewing, recognizing a good marketing opportunity, trotted out a special anniversary can for the occasion and threw a birthday bash. Miss Frothingslosh was there to help cut—and consume—the cake.

Unfortunately, the party be-gan to wind down for both the brand and the brewery. By 1985 the number of operating brew-eries in the U.S. had dropped to about 40. Like other regionals and locals, Pittsburgh Brewing was finding it more and more difficult to resist the relentless onslaught of the nationals.

In 1986, Pittsburgh Brewing Company was acquired by (and merged with) Bond Brewing Holdings Ltd. of Perth, Western Australia. But seven years later, the company’s owner, Alan Bond, suffering financially, gave up the brewery to Pittsburgh entrepre-neur Michael Carlow.

No Olde Frothingslosh was produced during these uncer-tain years. When the brand’s 40th anniversary came around in 1994, however, the brewery resurrected a 1969 photo of a nightie-clad Miss Frothingslosh

and put it on a commemorative can. They paid Marsha Majors Phillips $200 to make a spe-cial appearance. A press release announced: “After a ten-year absence, Pittsburgh Brewing Company is bringing back the pale stale ale with the foam on the bottom— Olde Frothingslosh. The return of Olde Froth will be marked by a kick-off celebration this

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ANNIVERSARY CANS: 1984, 1999, 2005

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Friday, Nov. 11 at Market Square from 11:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. Miss Frothingslosh, Fatima Yechburgh, will sign autographs as her entou-rage distributes 40th anniversary souvenir cans.”

The following year, Michael Carlow was forced to relinquish control of the brewery because of allegations of fraud. Pittsburgh native Joseph Piccirilli then gained ownership

of the brewery. The investment group Piccirilli represented, Keystone Brewing Company, closed the $29.4 million purchase on September 12, 1995, at a hearing in U.S. bank-ruptcy court, showing a new commitment to the Pittsburgh Brewing Company’s products.

The story of America’s most beloved nov-elty beer was now coming to an end. Marsha Majors Phillips, an Olde Frothingslosh icon for over three decades, died in May 2000 at the age of 54. Rege Cordic, whose comic genius created the fabled pale stale ale, had passed in Los Angeles a year earlier.

The very last Olde Frothingslosh can, is-sued in 2004, celebrated the brand’s golden anniversary. Fittingly, it boasted a caricature of Sir Reggie on the front and a tribute to Rege Cordic on the back.

Joseph Piccirilli proved dedicated to mov-ing the brewery into the 21st Century. His youthful enthusiasm prompted many new ideas, most notably the introduction of Iron City in aluminum bottles, but he was unable to stave off a sharp decline in sales. PBC had been hovering around the 1 million barrel production mark, even through rough finan-cial times, and, after producing fewer than 400,000 barrels in 2005 and being late on a

number of bills, the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

In 2007, the brewery was pur-chased, brought out of bank-ruptcy by Unified Growth Partners and renamed Iron City Brewing Company. Attempts to return it to full production proved unsuccess- ful, and in May 2009 the owners signed a deal with the City Brewing Company, a contract brewer, to begin producing Iron City’s brands in Latrobe, PA, the former home of Rolling Rock.

Will there be a 60th anniversary Old Frothingslosh can in 2014? One can only hope. The fact re-mains that Olde Frothingslosh, the one and only pale stale ale with the foam on the bottom, made both brewing and breweriana his-tory. No other novelty brand has had a longer track record or gen-erated so many can and bottle label variations. •

The telling of this story would not have been possible without major contributions from Iron City collec-tors Chuck Puckett #32804 and Mark Young #5494, whose knowledge of Olde Frothingslosh is encyclopedic. Thanks for sharing so much of your time and knowledge.

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