Pride crushed: Labatt Blue is not exclusive to Canada!

Growing up in Canada, I was always led to believe that Labatt Blue was a product unavailable outside our home and native land. The main reason for this belief was a Labatt Blue commercial that aired when I was a teenager. I couldn't find it on YouTube, but here's the gist of it:

It's a blazing hot summer day at the Canada-US border. Cars are slowly creeping south through US customs. A 20-something slacker dude is sitting in his front lawn, which somehow happens to be right in front of this huge line of cars. People are sweating their asses off, and he reaches into an ice chest and pulls out a Labatt Blue, glistening with moisture droplets. He cracks it open and takes a huge swig. Ahhh... You can almost taste how refreshing it is through the TV set. He looks smugly at the jealous fat Americans heading back to the United States. Then a voiceover comes in and says, "Labatt Blue, only available in Canada," or something like that.

It was wish-fulfillment for Canadians. They are bombarded with American culture day and night. But most often, they can only witness it. They don't "own" the culture or participate in it in. This commercial was a big Fuck You to America. And it must have worked, because Molson adopted a similar, but more annoying, I Am Canadian commercial a few years later. Those ads turned a generic looking guy named Joe Canadian into a minor celebrity, and earned an even greater place in the Canadian psyche. But I still remember that damn Labatt Blue commercial. Finally, we had this awesome beer to be proud of that they couldn't get their hands on unless they came north of the 49th.

Turns out, it is all a crock of shit.


In the above picture, you can see the bottle, purchased at an American liquor store in Austin, Texas was clearly imported. I've got to give them credit for actually brewing it in Canada, even if it was at some factory in Toronto. The label could very well have read, "Brewed in Milwaukee, WI."

But really, how "Canadian" is Labatt? It was bought by Belgian brewer Interbrew in 1995, and the company is now called Anheuser-Busch InBev.

Who cares. Labatt's cultural value remains in tact. When I'm down here in Texas and I crack open a long necked cold one with the proud Blue label, I feel like I could be in any of the Canadian locations depicted in these hilarious Labatt commercials from 1987. Cheers!