Vintage Poster Archives
Guinness Kangaroo 1950s | My Goodness My Guinness Gilroy
Guinness Kangaroo 1950s | My Goodness My Guinness Gilroy
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A kangaroo stands upright, a Guinness bottle tucked in her pouch. Opposite her, the bald little zookeeper bends forward in alarm, a bucket in each hand, his hat airborne, a joey peering from his apron pocket. Bold rust-red lettering fills the top third of the poster: 'My Goodness My GUINNESS.' The background is plain cream. The composition is complete in four figures and a slogan.
The zookeeper was a self-caricature of John Gilroy (1898–1985), the English illustrator who produced nearly fifty poster designs for Guinness over thirty-five years working with the S.H. Benson advertising agency. Gilroy conceived the zoo-animal series after visiting a circus in the 1930s: the family of unruly animals grew to include an ostrich, a pelican, a lion, a crocodile, a polar bear, a gnu, a toucan, and this kangaroo. Each design held to the same visual grammar: five or six flat colours, a clean white or cream ground, and a single gag resolved before the slogan was needed.
The kangaroo variant circulated through the 1940s and into the 1950s as part of what became one of the longest-running advertising campaigns in British history. Gilroy's illustrations were adapted for press, outdoor hoardings, postcard sets, and, from the mid-1950s, cinema commercials. The zookeeper's expression of mild existential distress, reproduced across every medium, became one of the most recognised faces in British commercial art.
Reproduced as an archival print from the original artwork held in the Guinness Archive. A considered choice for anyone who follows the history of British graphic design or the advertising tradition that Guinness built between the 1930s and 1960s.
