A Look At Malt Liquor Commercials Through The Years

Wednesday, March 5th, 2008

I don’t know what made me think of this recently, but back in college I went through a Colt-45 phase where I wouldn’t drink anything but malt liquor. I blame this totally on too many repeated viewings of Menace II Society. It wasn’t like I was a wigger or anything, but after approximately 278 daily viewings of the greatest gansgster movie ever, I just found the allure of drinking out of a brown paper bag to great to over come.

Like I said, I was reminiscing about it recently which led to what I like to call “research”. Meaning I watched a bunch of malt liquor advertisements on YouTube.

Wikipedia says:

Malt liquor is an American term referring to a type of beer that has an artificially-induced high alcohol content and is therefore considered too alcoholic to be marketed as “beer.” In the UK, similarly-made beverages are dubbed super-strength lager.

While Colt 45, St. Ides, and Olde English 800 are most closely associated with malt liquors in the United States, the beverage itself is older than these products. Clix is often credited as the first malt liquor made in the United States, granted a [patent] in 1948. The first widely successful malt liquor in America was Country Club, which was first produced in the early 1950s by the M.K. Goetz Brewing Company, and marketed toward middle-class whites.

Today though, malt liquors are marketted to an entirely different segment, resulting in a stereotyping of the typical consumer. According to a study by Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science in California, malt liquor is the alcohol of choice of the homeless and unemployed. Moreover, in the United States, a disproportionate number of African Americans consume malt liquor. While approximately 13% of the United States population is black, studies have shown that approximately 28% of malt liquor is consumed by African Americans. Beginning in the 1980s, many brands of malt liquor began to aggressively target this market and used popular actors (like Billy Dee Williams) or rappers in their advertisements; Ice Cube, for instance, appeared in radio advertisements for St. Ides. Some rappers vigorously opposed this trend, feeling that malt liquor manufacturers were exploiting the African American community. For example, Chuck D, of the group Public Enemy, took a very strong anti-malt liquor stance and once sued St. Ides over an advertisement that sampled his voice without permission.

Country Club Malt Liquor
This is pretty much the exact opposite of the malt liquor image these days.

More beer drinking out of brown paper bag goodness after the jump

Ice Cube for St. Ides
Now this is more like it. According to Ice Cube, St. Ides will “put hair on your chest”. He fail to mention it will also the contents of your stomach in the toilet. Funny, too, because Ice Cube would probably fit in better in that first commercial these days.

Shlitz Malt Liquor
This reminds me quite of Outkast’s Hey Ya video quite a bit.

Colt 45 Surrealism

Fred Williamson for King Cobra
I would drink anything that would cause me to have a posse of dancers walking along behind me everywhere i went

Colt45-D
“It won’t make you forget you’ve got a cold. You just won’t give a shit.”

Budweiser Malt Liquor
I wish beer cans still had those pull-tabs.

Snoop Dogg & 2Pac for St. Ides

Billy Dee hawks Colt 45
What Lando Calrissian says, goes

Phil Hartman plugs Rocket Fuel Malt Liquor
Newsradio

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