Continuing the series of beer cars from local breweries in New York we have announced our fifth beer car This one is for the Forest Brewing Company. This one was inspired by William1's beer can collection that was posted on our Schaefer beer car post. One of his cans was for Gablingers beer and it is a piece of beer history
Rheingold was originally known as Liebman Brewing It was run by the Liebman family along with some Jewish immigrants that fled the Nazi's. They ran two breweries in the early 1960's Bushwick Brooklyn and Orange New Jersey. They were New York's number one beer controlling 35% of beer sales. They couldn't compete with the National Breweries In 1963 it was sold to Pepsi Cola They changed the name of the breweries to Forest Brewing from Liebman Brewing. Forest was selected because the Bushwick Brewery was on Forest Street. They hired a guy named Joseph Owades as a Vice-President Technical Projects. He developed Gablingers which was America's first Light beer. The marketing of it killed it as their ad campaign called it diet beer. They were sued by some people that said they really weren't dietetic which led them to add the line on the front of the can "Not dietetic or Therapeutic" Gablingers was originally brewed in Orange New Jersey. Pepsi moved the brewing of Gablingers to the Pepsi bottling plant in New Bedford Ma as a way to seperate it from Rheingold The marketing never worked They sold the formula to Meister Brau when Rheingold was in its demise . Meister Brau was another company in trouble and were purchased by Miller brewing which changed the name to Miller Lite with a great ad campaign The rest is history " Less Filling Tastes Great. Its America's first and best selling Light beer "
The man on the logo was a real person named Hersch Gablinger, a Swiss researcher who developed the technique for eliminating carbohydrates from beer.
The guy Joseph Owades also was the brewing consultant that worked for Boston Beer and developed Samuel Adams.
Our car is a 40 foot Steel sided reefer from MTH's Premier line with the Gablinger logo on one side and the Rheingold logo on the other.
- Intricately Detailed, Durable ABS Body
- Metal Wheels and Axles
- Die-Cast 4-Wheel Trucks
- Operating Die-Cast Metal Couplers
- Colorful, Attractive Paint Schemes
- Opening Doors
- Fast-Angle Wheel Sets
- Needle-Point Axles
- 1:48 Scale Dimensions
- Unit Measures: 11 5/8" x 2 3/4" x 3 9/16"
- Operates On O-31 Curves
There will be 2 numbers available on the car. The numbers are in honor of one of our founding members who passed away, Marty Horning. The numbers are of his birthday and his passing date. Delivery will be about April 2019
Order forms are available at our website www.njhirailers.com/njhr-store
This was the can from William1's post