PBR Makes Beer Commemorating American WWII Soldiers, Only Sells It In China For Some Reason

Jared Borislow11 years ago

File this one under “You came close to being frat, you smelly hipsters, but you failed miserably.”

Pabst Blue Ribbon, America’s favorite hipster beer, is apparently selling a commemorative beer honoring the U.S. World War II Army — but only in China.

Brand Channel reports that the Pabst Blue Ribbon Army green beer cans come emblazoned with stars and black-and-white pictures of grizzled U.S. soldiers on the battlefield. In English, the cans state they’re the “World War Two Edition in memory of U.S. Army,” with the slogan “Yes We Can” in big letters. (Whether there’s any relation to President Obama’s campaign slogan it is unclear).

Fox News calling PBR “America’s favorite hipster beer” is so classic. It’s a TFM.

Apparently the beer can came out 4 years ago and is now being reintroduced.

A commercial (from 2009) released in the regional dialect Cantonese shows specific battles in the Pacific, including those on the Marshall Islands and at Midway—all major U.S. defeats of China’s long-time enemy Japan during World War II.

China and Japan were involved in the Second Sino-Japanese War against each other during World War II, with the United States notably siding with the Chinese. I imagine that is where the sentiment behind this beer’s release came from, but I can’t be totally sure.

If Pabst had marketed these in the U.S. as well as China I’d be all for it. It’s just kind of weird that they’d celebrate our armed forces by pandering to another country, especially a Communist one that we’re basically in a cyber war with.

As far as the “Yes, we can” thing goes, I believe Obama was involved, though I’m not sure why. Maybe he was trying to remind the Chinese about how we saved their asses in WWII in an attempt to have them lower our debt to them by a few million yuan. Either that or he was just trying to get them drunk enough to forget about it.

Check out the commercial below:

[via Fox News]