Comment by basch
14 hours ago
Buried at the end of the article is the real story. "Schlitz" hasn't existed since the early 70's. They cut costs and ruined the formula and brand. In 2008 it was "revived" and a new beer took the name. Now someone else is brewing a completely different reconstructed formula for "the last batch" and throwing the name on it, again. And im sure itll happen again and again after that.
After sales slumped in the 70s they created a disastrous advertising campaign which is a case study in customer alienation: effectively 'drink Schlitz or I'll kill you' :-
https://youtu.be/hC8mqPLHDVU
https://youtu.be/f_baloTGt5M
Wilkins Coffee (which gave employment to a young Jim Henson before Sesame Street or The Muppet Show) was quite successful with its implication that people who don't drink Wilkins get shot and suffer other misfortunes. Maybe having puppets do it was just more charming.
https://youtu.be/HVewx3-9x24
That's not my read of the message of those ads at all.
See
Oh, Schlitz: How a Historic Ad Campaign Helped Kill America’s Biggest Beer Brand
https://vinepair.com/articles/schlitz-history-ad-campaign
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Those seem pretty ordinary by beer commercial standards.
Advertising didn't kill Schlitz. They made some processing changes to their formula that caused a micro infection. Not sure, could have been Pediococcus. But they did it all at once, and ruined so many batches, that customers left and never came back.
I remember a cartoon of college kids opening beer cans.
“Beers that say their own name:”
Schlitz!
Pabst!
Busch!
Blatz!
Did I hallucinate drinking it in high school around 92-94?
No, it was around but it was probably just Stroh's in the can at that point. I drank a ton of it at a dollar a can in the early 00's (RIP J&J's Pizza, Denton, TX). This would have been after the PBR buy out and it was probably whatever the Stroh's formula was.
I drank a bunch of these PBR owned zombie brands over the last 20 years, Black Label, Schlitz, Old Milwaukee, Lone Star, etc [1] and I've always wondered when I'm drinking one if it's the same flavor as one from previous years or even if the flavor is consistent across regions (assuming PBR was just slapping labels on contracted brewing).
[1] https://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/447/
Wow. Never thought I'd see J&J's come up on HN, but as soon as I saw the title, I was intrigued for exactly this reason. I was there too in the early 00's. Small world.
1 reply →
> They cut costs and ruined the formula and brand.
"they" did not cut costs! "they" was actually one single guy, who inherited an empire, and put his mark on it.. which killed it.. Robert Uihlein Jr
This is listed among some collections of "biggest mistakes in the history of US Business" IIR