Would you love a Babycham? In post-World War II England, women definitely would!
Bottle #14 – Babycham – is double the size of a standard mini, at 100 mL or 3 ½ oz. But still smaller than what it was meant to evoke in size and name and styling, which was a bottle of Champagne. Instead of champagne in the bottle, though, what you have is a sparkling pear cider, or perry.
Read the rest of the story
While not as prevalent as apple cider, perry has been made for hundreds of years. But Babycham gave it a decades long boost. It was created by a brewer named Francis Showering from Shepton Mallet in Somerset, England. He originally introduced it as a “champagne de poire” at county agricultural fairs, but when the product took off and began to be packaged in tiny bottles, it became Babycham.
Launched in 1953, in 1957 Babycham has the distinction of being the first alcoholic product of any kind advertised on English television. And, even more notably – it was marketed at women. This was a good 20 years before any distilled spirits brand in the US would dare to do such a thing, as I talked about in my episode about Bottle #9: Wild Turkey Liqueur. Attitudes about women drinking were certainly more relaxed in England, but women were still limited in their choices for what was seen as an acceptable tipple.
Enter Babycham, which was fun and festive, packaged in a bottle perfectly sized to fill an old-style champagne coupe. The brand’s mascot was a leaping cartoon fawn, which emblazoned not only the packaging, but branded coupes sold to collectors. TV and print advertising portrayed the brand as posh and hip, with chic and sexy women having fun while drinking Babycham.
Today we could look at this as pandering to women, but as Mallory O’Meara puts it in Girly Drinks: A World History of Women and Alcohol, “Why on earth wouldn’t someone want to try something advertised specifically for them? Especially when nothing else is?”
Their strategy worked. Production soared from 300 dozen bottles an hour to 2,800 dozen in the 1960s and peaked in June 1973 when 144,000 bottles were being produced each hour! As far as I can tell, it was mostly a UK thing, but there must have been at least some exports, because my dad tells me that he and my mother split a bottle of Babycham to celebrate the night of my sister’s birth in 1969.
It would be lovely and poetic for my bottle to be from the same occasion – Babycham was sold in 4-packs, after all – but alas, I think it’s younger than that. The prancing deer logo has been with the brand since nearly the beginning, but its look has changed over time, and the yellow version dates to the 1970s. The bottle also lists volume in both mL and oz, which would put it to the period between 1976 and 1980 when the UK was going metric.
And when Babycham was still going strong. But by the end of the decade, it had become the drink your Aunt Jane drank, or even worse – your mom. By this time, younger drinkers had lots of other choices. While the brand never fully went away, the bloom was off Babycham’s rose. The brand was sold to Accolade wines in the 1990s, and had a brief resurgence in popularity around their 60th anniversary in 2013. And in 2021 the Showering family bought back the brand, returning it to Shepton Mallet where it began almost 70 years ago!
Listen Now
Watch Now
Would you love a Babycham? In post-World War II England, women definitely would!
Bottle #14 – Babycham – is double the size of a standard mini, at 100 mL or 3 ½ oz. But still smaller than what it was meant to evoke in size and name and styling, which was a bottle of Champagne. Instead of champagne in the bottle, though, what you have is a sparkling pear cider, or perry.
While not as prevalent as apple cider, perry has been made for hundreds of years. But Babycham gave it a decades long boost. It was created by a brewer named Francis Showering from Shepton Mallet in Somerset, England. He originally introduced it as a “champagne de poire” at county agricultural fairs, but when the product took off and began to be packaged in tiny bottles, it became Babycham.
Launched in 1953, in 1957 Babycham has the distinction of being the first alcoholic product of any kind advertised on English television. And, even more notably – it was marketed at women. This was a good 20 years before any distilled spirits brand in the US would dare to do such a thing, as I talked about in my episode about Bottle #9: Wild Turkey Liqueur. Attitudes about women drinking were certainly more relaxed in England, but women were still limited in their choices for what was seen as an acceptable tipple.
Enter Babycham, which was fun and festive, packaged in a bottle perfectly sized to fill an old-style champagne coupe. The brand’s mascot was a leaping cartoon fawn, which emblazoned not only the packaging, but branded coupes sold to collectors. TV and print advertising portrayed the brand as posh and hip, with chic and sexy women having fun while drinking Babycham.
Today we could look at this as pandering to women, but as Mallory O’Meara puts it in Girly Drinks: A World History of Women and Alcohol, “Why on earth wouldn’t someone want to try something advertised specifically for them? Especially when nothing else is?”
Their strategy worked. Production soared from 300 dozen bottles an hour to 2,800 dozen in the 1960s and peaked in June 1973 when 144,000 bottles were being produced each hour! As far as I can tell, it was mostly a UK thing, but there must have been at least some exports, because my dad tells me that he and my mother split a bottle of Babycham to celebrate the night of my sister’s birth in 1969.
It would be lovely and poetic for my bottle to be from the same occasion – Babycham was sold in 4-packs, after all – but alas, I think it’s younger than that. The prancing deer logo has been with the brand since nearly the beginning, but its look has changed over time, and the yellow version dates to the 1970s. The bottle also lists volume in both mL and oz, which would put it to the period between 1976 and 1980 when the UK was going metric.
And when Babycham was still going strong. But by the end of the decade, it had become the drink your Aunt Jane drank, or even worse – your mom. By this time, younger drinkers had lots of other choices. While the brand never fully went away, the bloom was off Babycham’s rose. The brand was sold to Accolade wines in the 1990s, and had a brief resurgence in popularity around their 60th anniversary in 2013. And in 2021 the Showering family bought back the brand, returning it to Shepton Mallet where it began almost 70 years ago!
0 Comments