Brass Monkey?


I never thought this series was a rip-off of the Indiana Jones series - but at the time it was on the air (in the early 80s), I always thought the idea was inspired by a series of full page liquor ads (I forget which liquor company - (Hueldin? Something like that.) that ran in magazines (like Playboy, National Lampoon, Rolling Stone, etc.) in the 70s that had mini-stories of adventure that took place in a bar called the Brass Monkey - and like this series - it took place pre-World War Two with Japanese and British spies (no airplane), in some South Pacific backwater. At the end of the ad the drink the ad was advertising was also called "The Brass Monkey."

Does anyone else remember these ads?

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I came on this message board after being notified by Amazon.com that the "Tales of the Gold Monkey" TV series will be released on DVD on June 8. I vaguely remember the Brass Monkey ads you have mentioned. I did some searching and found out that the company that produced the drink was Heublein. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brass_Monkey_%28cocktail%29

Someone on ebay is offering an original Brass Monkey ad for sale. You can enlarge the ad image by clicking on it.
http://cgi.ebay.com/RARE-1971-Heublin-Brass-Monkey-History-Ad_W0QQitem Z360167252815QQcategoryZ165234QQcmdZViewItemQQ_trksidZp4340.m263QQ_trk parmsZalgo%3DDLSL%252BSIC%26its%3DI%252BC%26itu%3DUCI%252BIA%252BUA%25 2BFICS%252BUFI%252BDDSIC%26otn%3D10%26po%3D%26ps%3D63%26clkid%3D808569 9750961358507

Here's another ad from Life magazine. It would be interesting to know which ad agency created the ads.
http://books.google.com/books?id=_1QEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA22-IA1&lpg= PA22-IA1&dq=%22Brass+Monkey%22+cocktail+ad&source=bl&ots=Q jL2mG2uSD&sig=EFO0Z51KilDl2rRnn94FmABOa_c&hl=en&ei=aAuGS6G uFpGSsgOFsZXLDA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3 &ved=0CA0Q6AEwAjgy#v=onepage&q=&f=false

Someone at a bulletin board back in 2000 had the same memory of the ad that you did. A commenter speculated that the Brass Monkey ad may have had some inspiration for the TV series.
http://www.goldmonkey.com/bbs/messages/813.html

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After 4, 5, or 6 Brass Monkeys I would be flat on my back without a worry in the world.

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I'm wondering if this brass monkey has anything to do with the brass monkey in the TV show Wonderfalls. Is the brass monkey a fixture in American culture?

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According to one of the directors on the making of documentary, the name was changed when they discoved the "brass monkey" is actually the name of a drink.

"Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies."

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I always related it to the 1948 film and figured that it went back much further than that as an expression.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Brass Monkey is the name of various people and things. In several cases, the people and things were named after, or as an allusion to, the colloquial expression.

* Brass monkey (colloquial expression), meaning something solid and inert that can only be affected by extremes, or meaning an extreme of cold.
* Brass Monkey (cocktail), an alcoholic drink
* Brass Monkey (band), an English folk band
* Brass Monkey (film), a 1948 film
* "Brass Monkey" (song), a song on the Beastie Boys' 1986 debut album Licensed to Ill
* Brass Monkeys, an Australian sitcom.
* A character in Salman Rushdie's novel Midnight's Children
* K2 Brass Monkey, a K2 bike that started production in 2000 and stopped in 2002

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