Nice Cans continued from page 11 What’s most striking is that all those beers in all those movies and in that painting and in the presidential luggage compartment look a whole lot like the Coors Banquet you could pick up at a liquor store or order at a bar today. That’s intentional: Whether by can or by bottle, Banquet has been delivered since at least as far back as the 1930s with key design elements that “we’ve never wavered from,” according to Stephanie Clanfi eld, the global marketing manager for Coors Banquet Beer at the Molson Coors Beverage Company. Some of those elements are impossible to miss. The cans, the labels, the beer carriers and the cases are yellow. As Brett Whitley, a 24-year-old clothing de- signer from Georgia puts it, “If you see someone drinking a yellow can, even if there’s a koozie or brown bag over it, you know it’s a Coors.” Ryan Pelton, a 32-year-old furni- ture installation manager born and raised in Colorado Springs, agrees: “If I’m at a bar and I want to make sure the bartender gives me the right beer and not a Coors Light, I ask for the yellow can.” And according to Molson Coors Golden archivist Heidi Har- ris, “The most recognizable trait of a Coors Banquet can or bottle is the yellow or ‘gold’ labels.” So is it yellow or gold? “We call it our ‘buff yellow’ color,” says Clanfi eld. But University of Colorado football fans can settle down: While there’s more than a passing resem- blance between the color of a Coors can and the gold on the team’s uniforms, they are dif- ferent — and CU didn’t make a buffalo its mascot until 1934, some 61 years after Adolph Coors set up shop in Golden. Why yellow (or gold) at all? “You know, rado Kool-Aid, which is charming. But when I’m visiting Colorado, I just say ‘Banquet.’” Confi rms 42-year-old concrete contrac- tor Micah Bloom, who grew up in Golden, in the shadow of Coors, the largest single-site brewery in the world: “A Banquet. I’ll take a Banquet.” The word “Banquet” fi rst appeared on packaging in the 1930s, according to Harris, but Banquet was likely shorthand for Coors long before the company made it offi cial. After all, Coors dates to 1873, when mining was Colorado’s most signifi cant industry — and Golden was a hardscrabble town on the edges of polite society. If you believe the legend, Clear Creek Canyon miners would weren’t getting shortchanged just because the container was smaller; a stubby fi t in your hand just about as well as a can. But initially, the shorter bottles didn’t go over as expected, as advertisements from 1941 highlighted the product returning to traditional long necks. That might come as a surprise to the Coors drinkers of today, who are accustomed to seeing a beloved stubby slide down the bar when they ask for a Banquet. The shorter form returned in 2010, Harris says, “to stand out on shelves, and to celebrate Coors Banquet’s heritage.” This round, it’s been a hit. “I love the stubby bottle,” Whitley says. “It is such an absurd receptacle to drink out of. Why would you ever make a bottle that size? It looks like something you’d see on a medicine shelf in the 1800s. It’s perfect.” Whether on bottle or can, the rest of the packaging conveys more history. The two golden lions, or griffi ns, each with two tails, started appearing on Banquet cans as early as 1937, though similar lions have quietly watched people get drunk for almost as long as brewers have made that possible. They’re a “longtime heraldic brewing symbol,” ac- cording to Harris. “They’re elements that pay homage to the brewers of the past,” Clanfi eld adds. “They’re always seen protecting the brand, and we treat them in a sacred nature.” An original Coors stubby bottle, the brewery in Golden, and Fritz Scholder’s “Indian With Beer Can.” it’s something that I’ve asked the archivists about before,” Clanfi eld recalls. “I wish I had an answer, and I feel like there might be some tales out there, but I don’t have the true history on how they landed on yellow.” Some things are simply unknowable. What we do know is that the color inspired numerous nicknames, such as “yellow jack- ets,” as the cans are referred to on Yellowstone. The sobriquet pre-dates the show. Alex Piper, a thirty-year-old software sales consultant, drank the stuff in college before she moved to Colorado in 2015. “We liked Coors Banquet because Georgia Tech’s sports teams are the yellow jackets, so that’s what we knew to call them when we ordered them,” she remembers. “Yellowbelly” is another common nick- 12 name, and fans often get even more creative. “I like to go with the ‘CB smoothie,’” says Pelton with a laugh. “If the bartender looks at me funny, then I’ll go further and say, ‘I’ll take the buckskin.’ If they still don’t get it, I’ll say, ‘I’ll take a Coors Banquet.’” Adds Whitley, “I’ve heard it called Colo- drink a few after work to celebrate the end of a long shift in the mine, sometimes in a banquet hall or banquet tent. “It was dubbed good enough to be served at a banquet, hence the Banquet name,” Harris says, before so- berly noting that “we can’t confi rm the origin or accuracy of this story.” A good myth can be more fun than the truth, especially when you’re drinking. But there are some verifi able Coors facts in the historical record, even if they seem like tall tales. Today the aluminum can is far and away the most popular way to drink beer across the globe. According to a January 15, 1959, article in the Colorado Transcript, it was then-chairman Bill Coors who engineered the fi rst commercially viable aluminum can for Coors, an invention that would come to revolutionize the entire industry and lead to signifi cant societal leaps in recycling. That wasn’t the fi rst time Coors tried a new container. In 1936, the company intro- duced its now-iconic stubby bottle to save on shipping costs and to avoid breakage in transit — which was common with long-neck bottles. The 12-ounce stubby also helped turn consumers on to canned beer, then made of steel, by persuading them that they APRIL 21-27, 2022 WESTWORD | MUSIC | CAFE | CULTURE | NIGHT+DAY | NEWS | LETTERS | CONTENTS | westword.com MOLSON COORS BEVERAGE COMPANY/COORS GOLDEN ARCHIVES COLLECTION OF RALPH AND RICKY LAUREN, 1969, 24X24”, OIL ON CANVAS/PHOTO BY BILL MCLEMORE DENVER PUBLIC LIBRARY
