Natural Brute (70's Popper Brand)

Natural Brute — Vintage 1970s Poppers Tee

Before discreet packaging and carefully focus-grouped names, there was Natural Brute.

Sold during the 1970s, Natural Brute was one of the many brands of poppers that became closely associated with gay nightlife and the era’s newly liberated sexual culture. Originally based on alkyl nitrites, poppers had existed for decades, but by the 1970s they had found an enthusiastic new audience in gay discos, bathhouses, leather bars, and bedrooms.

And the branding was fantastic. Names like Natural Brute borrowed freely from the hypermasculine imagery of the period—muscles, leather, mustaches, masculinity, and just enough pseudo-science to make a tiny bottle sound like something considerably more powerful.

Poppers became such a familiar part of 1970s and ’80s gay culture that their labels and advertisements now form their own peculiar category of queer ephemera. They capture an era of sexual liberation when businesses marketed directly to gay men with humor, innuendo, and absolutely no fear of being subtle.