Old Milwaukee - Swedish Bikini Team / "Golden Bikinis" (1991) :30 (USA)

This short-lived beer campaign, it only ran for seven months, had a huge cultural impact. What began as a combination of a parody of Old Milwaukee's classic tagline "it doesn't get any better than this", and stereotypical beer commercials, soon became a pop culture icon outside the campaign. "The Swedish bikini team" was a joke said with a wink and a nod so often that I started claiming that I was Norwegian to avoid it. 

In this ad, everything keeps getting better, from finding gold next to the cold beer to the Swedish bikini team boating in to do the men's fishing for them, and that's the joke. 

The models who were the Swedish bikini team soon appeared on tv shows like Married with Children, and even on the cover of Playboy. By that time the joke wasn't quite as funny anymore, as talk show hosts began a moral crusade against "the Swedish bikini team" who now came to symbolize all sexist ad campaigns that they parodied. And to top it all off five female employees at the brewery have filed a lawsuit claiming the ads encourage sexual harassment at their job. 

See also the commercials Swedish Bikini Team "surf bikinis" and Swedish bikini team "truck" for more.

Client: Old Milwaukee
Ad agency: Hal Riney and Partners, San Francisco
Group Creative Director: Patrick Scullin

Models: Peggy Trentini, Avalon Anders, Suzanna Keller, Heather Elizabeth Parkhurst and Jane Frances