As a student in the mid-1970s I probably drank more vodka than was necessarily good for me. It was part of my fascination with all things Russian. It was also just at the time when Smirnoff launched its striking advertising campaign (by Young & Rubican), with images such as the one above alongside various plays on phrases such as “Well they said anything could happen” and “The effect is shattering”. In small print, as in the bottom right corner of the above image, there was also sometime written “Remember whatever happens don’t overdo it”. The images were often controversial or slightly risqué, and with later restrictions on alcohol advertising would mostly be unacceptable today, but they did capture a moment in our cultural lives. I remember using small amounts of blu tac in the corners to stick several of them on the walls of my rooms, along with large posters by Alphonse Mucha. The two went together well.
Going through countless boxes and files as I cleared out my mother’s house recently, I rediscovered some 20 of these adverts in various states of survival and decay, and thought that others might be interested in this snapshot of what was then acceptable in advertising. The campaign subsequently received a fair amount of criticism, especially from feminist writers, but at the same time it has also widely been seen as being among the best advertising campaigns of the last 50 years. I post the selection below as a cultural snapshot frrom the mid-1970s and a reminder of but one element of student life 50 years ago. One day I might get round to writing a serious article based on the large number of similar advertisements for wine that I have collected through the ages!
In Mexico and indeed in many other countries, Corona was above all else associated with beer! Produced by Cerveceria Modelo, Corona is a pale lager and one of the five top-selling beers across the world. In 2013 the 
In Pakistan, 
In Spain, Corona, or Coronas, was primarily associated with various wines. It is perhaps best known in its incarnation in the well-known Familia Torres wine 
In complete contrast, Egyptians thought that Corona was a type of chocolate biscuit (thanks so much to Leila Hassan for sharing this). 
To be fair, very few people made the above connection. However, the café takes its name from the baby elephant in the Circus Boy series (1956-58) and has persisted since the café first opened in 1967. Moreover, the Norwegian krone is pronounced in a similar way to the word corona, and as Tono Armas has pointed out in Spanish it is even called “Corona noruega“.
The 
I am never sure whether California should be seen as distinct from the USA, but for those who live there Corona is a town of about 150,000 people in Riverside County. It was originally called South Riverside, and was founded during California’s citrus boom in the 1880s. It was once called “The Lemon Capital of the World” (by USAns), and today is perhaps best known (at least by musicians) for being where the flagship factory, 
For astronomers, of course, a corona is the aura of plasma that surrounds stars including the sun. More simply, it can be considered as the outer layer of the Sun’s atmosphere that extends millions of miles into space, and generates the solar wind that travels across our solar system. It is difficult to see because it is hidden by the brightness of the sun, but is clearly visible during a total solar eclipse.
It is many years since I wrote substantively about the 
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