— By Kevin Montgomery (@kevinmonty) |
It appears that the new Belgian owners of Rolling Rock have figured out that “the kids” don't like being marketed to and prefer the minimal packaging of simpler times. Ordinarily I'd hate on Rolling Rock for missing the mark on this—part of the cachet of PBR/Tecate/High Life/Hamm's/Olympia is that their packaging has always looked shitty and they haven't had national television campaigns during major sporting events in recent memory. This, on the other hand, is a blatant attempt to pander to the—dare I say it—“hipster” market, thus making it inherently lame.
So yes, ordinarily I'd say all that and then some; however, the new Rolling Rock “Throwback” was the cheapest 12 on the Castro Safeway's shelf, which landed it a prized spot in my refrigerator. I can only imagine that if Rolling Rock keeps dominating the cheap beer race to the bottom, it will become the park beer of 2011.
Comments (13)
I don’t have any problem with the marketing aspect, but GOD Rolling Rock tastes awful. Even PBR is better than Rolling Rock. No joke.
IGNITE ANGRY THREAD….GO!!!
From the glass lined tanks of old Latrobe… swill!
I really don’t care what their advertising schemes are but tecate has always had a huge advertising campaign. They sponsor every huge boxing event imaginable. Either way tecate is my favorite cheap beer.
it’s not even made in Latrobe. Once Anheuser Busch got it, they shut down the brewery. The movie “Beer Wars” has a section devoted to it.
BTW how much at safeway?
They could all easily afford a graphic designer and TV slot. It’s not like they’re spending money on the ingredients or anything.
high life has a huge tv ad campaign with the beer delivery guy
i gotta say rolling rock is the shittiest beer on earth, waaaaaay worse than highlife or peebsbr and was never the cheapest, hence never in my fridgerator.
BUT! if it became the cheapest due to this fancy new label im like more than willing to retest, so hopefully duc loi will jump on tha wagon of lowlowprices……….
For an old fashioned beer that tastes good, the “new” 60s-era Schlitz is actually really good. I actually liked the regular canned “watered down” Schlitz to begin with because it was better than PBR and always came in tall cans. But this new one (which you can find at the 500 club) is actually quite good, marketing be damned.
are hipsters actually more complex than re-gurgitated retro? i love how people argue that RR’s simple scheme to fool the hipsters may fail since its “even shittier” than that other asspiss, PBR
RR is positively top-shelf beer compared to “Genny” and “Genny Light”.
Since I’ve been away from SF, the Only Beer I Usually Drink (Anchor Steam) is generally unavailable at fine retail outlets such as our SLMs here that they call “marts”. So since I can’t be at Guam’s only brewpub (all hail their pale ale!) all the time*, I’ve developed a Stockholm syndrom-like habit of drinking Miller Lite. Miller Lite. Can’t believe I’m writing this down. Who knew you could get a buzz of something that had no flavor whatsoever! Might just drink it ironically when I get back and complain about how the formula must be different because it didn’t have that Island Flavor.
*I can, of course, be at The Mermaid all the time when the Giants are winning the World Series. But I’ll be in SF for this year’s pennant… drinking Anchor.
New Belgian owners? Can’t seem to find any info about this, any one have a link? Still looks like an Anheuser-Busch brand to me.
When I went to college in New York, Rolling Rock distirbuted 6 packs of miniature beer bottles. They were maybe 8 ounces. There are a lot of Google hits for the 1960’s era 7 oz Rolling Rock bottles, but none for what I’m thinking of. Anyway, if these cans are pandering to hipsters, then that marketing approach mustve been pandering to babies.