I just stumbled across a picture while looking for Strangercrombie material, and it reminded me how awesome these ads were.

Now it doesn’t even live in the Northwest.

Grant Brissey covered everything from hard news and technology, to music, film, and visual arts during his time working for The Stranger. Grant's work has also appeared at Geekwire, and in Billboard,...

19 replies on “Rainier Beer Used to Have the Best Ads”

  1. Mind you, those ads helped the company earn a 35-38% market share, which is absolutely insane for a local beer company. National beers could only dream of getting a local share on a single brand of beer. So yeah, those ads were great, doing exactly what they were made to do.

    But the company was sold to Australian interests, who immediately fired the ad agency (Remember those ‘Pretty Cool eh?’ ads?) and quickly watched their local NW market share drop like a stone through a wet paper bag. Then it was sold to Anheuser Busch and the entire brew process was moved to the east coast, basically buying the name brand, firing everyone else.

    Wasnt much of a fan of the beer, even when I was old enough to buy it. But I do miss the smell of brewing hops when you drove passed it on I-5.

  2. Ah Grant, the reasons you are my friend are many and varied and shit like this is just one of them. I love you, man.

    P.S.
    Remember Coors commercials?
    From the land of sky bloooooo waters……

  3. I miss those old commercials and no one ever knows what I’m doing when I imitate the Raaaaaaiiiiineeeeeeerrrr Beeeeerrrr motorcycle noise. I was beginning to think I dreamed it up. Thank you slog for letting me know that it really was a commercial and I didn’t dream it.

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