{"id":1685,"date":"2014-04-08T06:30:38","date_gmt":"2014-04-08T11:30:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/?p=1685"},"modified":"2014-04-07T09:08:12","modified_gmt":"2014-04-07T14:08:12","slug":"lol","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/?p=1685","title":{"rendered":"LOL…."},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Spuds\"<\/a>Like most young people, my first memories of beer took place with my father and grandfather.\u00a0 As a young boy I remember my father opening a Miller beer can in the kitchen one day with a church key opener and he let me smell the hops escape.\u00a0 I had a sip and can still vividly remember the taste.\u00a0 Around the same time, my grandfather took me to a bar off Camp Bowie road in Ft. Worth of which he owned a small portion, \u00a0and I remember sitting on a bar stool while he sipped on a Pearl Beer on a hot summer Texas afternoon.<\/p>\n

In recent weeks, the industry has been buzzing over articles that have criticized the craft beer industry for their apparent lack of concern regarding how their beers are named.\u00a0\u00a0 It has been touted for many of the crafts that the name\u00a0of the beer, or the graphics on the can, suggest the brewer is deliberately marketing to underage kids.\u00a0 It has been\u00a0claimed that this illustrates a double standard in the industry, meaning the big brewers have “toed the line” with graphics and yet the crafts do not.<\/p>\n

After reading these articles one might get the impression that the big boys have a higher ethical standard than the crafts, yet\u00a0might be\u00a0losing sales because of this standard.\u00a0 It was also been stated that the TTB has approved these labels. \u00a0What is the issue if\u00a0these labels are\u00a0considered to be legal?\u00a0 An unfair playing field perhaps?<\/p>\n

One of the attractions of buying the Schlitz distributorship in the Rio Grande Valley was that the territory included South Padre Island.\u00a0 During the early 1980s, SPI was regarded as the second best spring break beach in the US, only behind Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.\u00a0 Every year in March, thousands of kids from Texas and the mid-west, flooded the island all looking for a party.<\/p>\n

All the big brewers, AB, Schlitz\/Stroh, Miller, Coors, etc. spent millions on the island.\u00a0 Teams of brewery sales people conducted events including major concerts, wet t-shirt contests, on premise promotions, free giveaways with all kinds of wearable items, music vans, and almost everything you can imaging.\u00a0 I remember the display contests between the rooms on ground level at many of the hotels on the beach.\u00a0 The kids would build the displays with the empty cans and cases of beer just outside their rooms.\u00a0 Some were very creative.<\/p>\n

When the LDA changed back to 21 in the early 80s, it did not deter either the kids or the breweries.\u00a0 In fact,\u00a0SPI continued to grow.\u00a0 While all the breweries claimed to be only supporting events to include LDA kids, it was clear that they all were after the soon-to be LDA drinkers who were also everywhere.\u00a0 AB’s Spuds Mackenzie was at the fore front of this marketing which soon became highly controversial as critics claimed this was nothing more than targeting underage drinkers.\u00a0 AB eventually dropped the Spuds Mackenzie ads which soon became frogs and lizards.\u00a0 Go figure….<\/p>\n

There have been beer labels which some considered over the line for years, including those early ones of Flying Dog Brewing Co. of Colorado.\u00a0 After all these years Flying Dog is still around just like SPI and spring break, so when I read about craft breweries targeting underage drinkers and having an unfair advantage over the big boys all I do is LOL!<\/p>\n

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Like most young people, my first memories of beer took place with my father and grandfather.\u00a0 As a young boy I remember my father opening a Miller beer can in the kitchen one day with a church key opener and he let me smell the hops escape.\u00a0 I had a sip and can still vividly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_s2mail":"yes","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s2xRTi-lol","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1685"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1685"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1685\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1712,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1685\/revisions\/1712"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}