Posted on 04/10/2008 12:16:45 PM PDT by toddlintown
I can’t wait! This is the beer I was raised on, long before certain people at Schlitz got greedy, leading to Schlitz beer becoming known as “Schitz” beer.
The downfall of Schlitz, combined with a bottler’s strike at Anheuser-Busch in 1976 allowed Old Style, a sleeper brand that had been in Chicago since the early 1900s, to take over the Chicagoland beer market. OS distributors took their battle for supremacy to neighborhood taverns, bottle by bottle and case by case until the brand dominated more than 40% of the local beer market.
The problems of the Jos. Schlitz Brewing Company were brought upon themselves and a board of directors that refused to acknowledge their production mistakes, the sudden death of CEO Bob Uihlein, Jr., and no real leader to take over the business when Bob died, a leader who could handle the meddlesome Uihleins.
(Excerpt) Read more at beerinfood.wordpress.com ...
Yahbut ... din't hold enough ... pinch off, pitch the full out the window, grab another ...
Get in a fight with the guy in the back seat that swore you din't get it all out n' "Ahmo kick yor @$$, @$$hole!"
Hey!
You stole my memories! Those are mine.
Schlitz. The 6 pack was $2.05 at the Lone Star. I’d kick in a buck. My buddy would kick in a buck. And whoever had a nickel; well.... we’d get that 6 pack. That was when the legal drinking age was 18.
But we knew where the stores were with the cool clerks on duty. So no problem.
Schlitz.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ah4nBAm86Hc&feature=related
“I thought that Schlitz was a Milwaukee beer along with Blatz?”
“In June of 1981, workers at the Schlitz Milwaukee plant had gone on strike. The reaction to the work stoppage by the Schlitz board was to close the old and inefficient plant, stopping the fiscal hemorrhaging at the Milwaukee brewery, and pave the way for the best possible price for the entire company by a potential buyer. In a sense, the brewery workers union played into the hands of Schlitz management. As the oldest, but tarnished, gem in the Schlitz crown of breweries, it was also the most costly to operate. The hard-nosed action by Schlitz management to close the old brewery so quickly seemed to ignore any possible repercussions by the Milwaukee brewery worker labor union or unfavorable hometown reactions.
For the people of Milwaukee, the closing of the local brewery was numbing, for some, an affront. Disgruntled Milwaukeeans started calling the hometown beer “Schlitz, the beer that made Milwaukee furious.”
In September of 1977, a group of Leo Burnett’s top officials met in their 10th floor conference room in the Prudential Building in Chicago to view four commercials using the resurrected gusto theme. The commercials had been put together quickly, a reaction to Schlitz’s insistence on getting something ready as soon as possible.
Burnett employees had researched their commercial ideas by taking a simple storyboard with a sketched sequence of the proposed commercials to the Woodfield Mall in nearby Schaumburg, Illinois. Passers-by were asked by the Burnett people if they understood the commercials. Because of the urgency imposed upon the advertising agency by the brewery, the Burnett people simply wanted to make sure that their initial efforts were on the right track. As a result, they did not ask for the subjects’ opinions as to whether they either liked the product or its proposed style of presentation. With assurances that the test subjects simply understood the concept of the storyboards, the four commercials went into film production.
The commercials varied from one featuring a Muhammad Ali-like boxer with a full entourage to a rugged outdoorsman with his pet mountain lion. In each of the four commercials, an off-camera voice asked the lead characters to give up their Schlitz beer for another brand. The commercials, as Richard Stanwood, at the time Burnett’s director of creative services, would later recall, were meant to be “interruptive.”
At the screening of the new commercials, the Burnett people watched as the boxer told a disembodied voice that he was going to knock him “…down for the count” for even suggesting a switch from the Schlitz label. The outdoorsman in one of the following commercials told his pet mountain lion to calm down after his choice of Schlitz beer was also challenged and snarled back to the animal, “Just a minute, babe. I’ll handle this.”
The group of fifteen Burnett creatives approved the series of commercials without objection as did Schlitz representatives who viewed the commercials soon after.
The reactions to the commercials once they went public were almost immediate; people hated them. Burnett officials were appalled at the reaction.
Jack Powers, who managed the Schlitz account at Burnett, was stunned by the swift public response to the commercials. “I can assure you that we have no desire to threaten the people of the United States. It (the commercials) was supposed to be fun, tongue-in-cheek stuff.”
At Schlitz, the feeling about the unexpected consumer backlash to the series of commercials was much worse. “A really great tragedy-—really, really bad,” a brewery spokesman admitted.
Ten weeks after the commercials first began to air, Schlitz management ordered them pulled. Soon after, the Leo Burnett ad agency was fired by the Joseph Schlitz Brewing Company.
The short-lived run of commercials would go down in advertising history as “The Drink Schlitz or I’ll Kill You” ad campaign.
Iron City.
I remember Schlitz. I remember how I used to describe it: “Schlitz s**ts.”
"When you're out of beer, TOUGH SCHLITZ!"
I have an old tackle box my dad gave me. It opened up from the top like a clamshell. The right hand side had the usual array of trays for lures, etc. The left hand side was open, lined with about 1/2 inch of styrofoam. Dad said it was for bait, etc. Then he gave it to me, and I quickly discovered that 4 cans of my favorite malted beverage fit EXACTLY in it.
Circa 1960:
“I’m from Milwaukee and I ought to know,
“It’s draft brewed Blatz beer, wherever you go,
“Smoother, fresher, less filling, it’s clear:
“Blatz is Milwaukee’s finest beer!”
And if you were driving south from Green Bay, there was a large brown triangle Blatz sign outside Milwaukee that was so huge you could see it for thirty miles before passing it.
How about some other Wisconsin brands: Oconto, Kingbury, Rahr’s?
Hey, I liked Black Label. Ice cold it was good. If I brought a twelve pack to a party I did not have to worry about people bumming my beer.
andy: Now there's a blast from the past. Best Road Beer, Ever. I'll bet some of you even know why.
Of course, an aluminum can fits most Dem guys better.I went to high school in rural Northwest Indiana during the 60’s. There was a country bar over on the Illinois state line which was only 20 miles or so away and there were a couple of seniors who could get served over there. We used to meet up at the pool hall at noon on Friday and put in your order for the weekend. One of the guy’s names was Artie and Artie had a ‘55 Chevy. It had a built 283 in it and Artie claimed he could get to the State Line Inn in 12 minutes if he didn’t stop to cross U.S. 41. We’d meet up at the pool hall after school and pick up our order. Artie had to put helper springs on the back of that ‘55 so the bumper wouldn’t scrape the ground.
Anyway, when you’re only 14 one can’t be choosy so we’d just take whatever Artie brought back. Usually it was PBR or Hamm’s but we also drank copious amounts of Fallstaff, Schlitz, Drewrys, Strohs (or as one guy called it, “Strolls”)Carlings Black Label, Falls City and Sterling. Got into the Colt 45 and Schlitz Malt Liquor too.
Oh, those were the days!
Wow, what a fortuitous coincidence.
How about Edelweiss?
I've never eaten Hassenpfeffer, but I stepped in some once.
Point Beer. It’s worth the drive all the way to Stevens Point from Indiana just for a six pack. Of course, buying a whole trunk load allows you to claim enough carbon offsets to pay for the gas.
The Schlitz brewery was in Milwaukee. I visited it in my youth.
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