Why so many beers have retro-looking cans

To quote Don Draper in his pitch for the Kodak Slide projector to company executives....nostalgia - it’s delicate but potent:
“Well, technology is a glittering lure. But there's the rare occasion when the public can be engaged on a level beyond flash, if they have a sentimental bond with the product. My first job, I was in-house at a fur company, with this old pro copywriter. Greek, named Teddy. And Teddy told me the most important idea in advertising is "new". Creates an itch. You simply put your product in there as a kind of... calamine lotion. But he also talked about a deeper bond with the product: nostalgia. It's delicate... but potent. Teddy told me that in Greek, "nostalgia" literally means, "the pain from an old wound". It's a twinge in your heart, far more powerful than memory alone. This device isn't a spaceship. It's a time machine. It goes backwards, forwards. It takes us to a place where we ache to go again. It's not called the Wheel. It's called a Carousel. It lets us travel the way a child travels. Around and around, and back home again... to a place where we know we are loved.”

 

Love to lay that can on an unsuspecting 18 yr old and watch them try and figure out how to open it.

 

LOL hey there is no pop top, not sure what we do with this.

 

It’s not common anymore to see old fashioned openers, I’d bet that they’d start with a knife or a screwdriver and start trying to bang openings in the cans.

 

No. They're all ugly. The only one that isn't completely terrible is the one with the meteor. And, those cans tell me that what's inside is likely to be even uglier than the labels.

 

Their beer wasn't very good. It was a short-lived gimmick.

 

I was thinking can opener. Just watch out for those sharp edges on the lips. LOL

 

I rather like the retro look being a bit retro myself.

 

Those are all atrocious

 

Bud was on top of their game huh

 

But, do you remember Nude Beer? It was post-retro. It never had a time.

 

I spent too long in the good old days drinking the beer when the retro label was new and wishing for something different to be seduced by a retro can now. And back in the retro times, we avoided cans because we thought they made the beer taste funny. If a beer sucked 50 years ago chances are pretty good it will still suck no matter what they put it in.

 

Haha. Alright. To each their own I suppose.
In the end I care more about the contents!

 

Fair enough. I guess I prefer color over cans that look like they were designed by some legal bureaucrat so as not to offend anyone.

Care to post any examples of what does it for you?

 

I guess "alleged" is the important word in that statement. Narragansett's golden era was well before the release of JAWS in the mid-1970s. Just a look at the market share the brewery (by then part of Falstaff, which bought the Rhode Island brewing company in the mid-1960s) had in it's home market and in next-door Massachusetts a little over a decade earlier:

RI
1975 - 25.9%
1962 - 67.2%

MASS.
1975 - 9%
1962 - 27.4%

Note that the 1975 figures included sales of Ballantine Ale & Beer (New England had always been a huge market for that NJ brewer) and their Falstaff brands, as well as their other smaller brands (Krueger, Croft, Pickwick) which were also being brewed by Narragansett in '62.

"We", who? I take it you don't mean "US beer drinkers" because cans started outselling bottles (both throw-away and refillables, for as long as the latter existed) around 1970 and that continued into the 21st century, with some variation.

Cans peaked in 1991, when 60% of all US beer went into cans vs.
T/A = 24%
Refill. = 5%
Kegged Beer* = 11%

(*note that the above combination graph is only packaged beer, and does not reflect draught. During this period draught beer was 14 -10% of US beer sales. The percentage of beer brewed in the US that was racked into kegs had pretty steadily gone down after Repeal (1933 = 68.4%) through 2010 (9.8%).

 

Genesee Brewing Company used to sport a retro look, but now they note their heritage by putting 1878 on the cans. Genesee Bock still has a classic retro look.

 

I generally enjoy beers that use classic or retro designs on their cans. I confess to buying Coors Banquet simply because they release interesting designs from time to time. However I hate the current Pabst Blue Ribbon can design. It looks like a smudged printer's error to me. Not sure what they thought they were accomplishing with this one. (image is the top one shown at this link):
https://mybeerbuzz.blogspot.com/2018/11/pabst-blue-ribbon-original.html

Any BA's who actually like this current PBR can? If so, I would love to hear what you like about it.

 

Maybe this is off topic, but today while walking in the woods I found a 7 oz Rolling Rock can. I wish I had taken a picture of it. How old might that be?

 

I thought the one can said BARF at first.

None of those would make me do anything but keep walking. Not attractive at all

Enjoy