Wall Street Journal
formatting link
Retailers sold more than 49 million cases of beer in the two weeks leading up to the Super Bowl last year, according to Nielsen. But how many drinkers will stop during the game tomorrow to think about the packaging of their favorite football beverage?
"Beer: A Genuine Collection of Cans" by Dan Backer and Lance Wilson (Amazon:
formatting link
) surveys almost 500 beer-can designs from the 1930s to today. Cans have long had several advantages over bottles. They are easier and cheaper to transport, for one, and they also offer a larger surface for marketing.The designs in "Beer" — pulled from one man's collection — range from the outdoorsy scenes of Schmidt, to the "Lager Lovelies" of the Scottish brewery Tennent's, to the sparest of generic supermarket brands, simply stamped with the word "Beer." Among today's collectors, rare vintage cans can sell for thousands of dollars.