Drinking with Universal Monsters

Promotional glasses have been a thing for a long time, well up until that whole poisonous ink on the Shrek glasses thing. Gas stations in the 60's would give out a glass with a free tank of gas they way fast food chains would in the 80's and the subject matter would reflect the popular trends at the time.

In 1963 Anchor-Hocking a glassware company produced a set of four glasses for gas stations

featuring the Universal Monsters. The glasses featured colorful images of Frankenstein's Monster, the Wolf Man, the Mummy and the Creature from the Black Lagoon but surprisingly no Dracula. The release date of the set falls before the lawsuit that virtually removed Dracula from merchandising due

to the Bela Lugosi likeness so it unusual to see the Creature included. One could argue that they wanted an even number of glasses but the inclusion of the Bride of Frankenstein or the Phantom would have evened the number of glasses out, however it may just have been a case of preference of characters by the production team.

In 1980 a new set of glasses were released but this time at Universal Studios itself. This collection of five glasses included Frankenstein's Monster, the Wolf Man, and the Creature again but now included

Dracula and the Metaluna Mutant from "This Island Earth". The designs on the glasses are more generic approximations of the characters and resemble the artwork from the Monster Gallery Coloring Book and the Famous Monsters of Legend figure cards. 

More recently Universal Studios Theme Parks sold a VERY limited number of boxed Universal Monster Steins

exclusively at their parks. The Series included

Frankenstein's Monster with a miniature castle Frankenstein at the bottom of the stein, Dracula with a red cross at the bottom, the Wolfman with a pentagram, the Mummy with a grave marker, and the Creature from the Black Lagoon, whose stein is

empty... like his love life. 

Sideshow Toys produced a set of four Universal Monster shot glass heads that included

Frankenstein's Monster, Dracula, the Mummy and the Wolf Man.

Next we'll look at the most recent additions to your Universal Monsters barware choices...