Shock Top Beer and Their Deplorable Mascot Wedgehead Need To Back Away from The SHOCKER’s Turf
Go away from our good name forever.
Go away from our good name forever.
Brands. Like vulture capitalist and Supreme Vampire Lord Peter Thiel, they crave young blood. Which is why bigboy brewers like Blue Moon and Shock Top are so keen to snag folks who are young, dumb, and full of exploitable commodities. Not actual craft beers, these buds off the corporate sponge being around is akin to major labels signing indie bands to boutique labels to maintain the illusion of integrity and cool.
It’s like the Smashing Pumpkins being on Caroline Records — this ostensibly real-deal small label was gobbled up by EMI, along with Virgin records, in 1992. Blue Moon and Shock Top are the craft beer version of Steve Buscemi’s character on 30 Rock posing as a teenager. Blatant in pandering and completely insincere. Also Shock Top tastes like lukewarm wheat water, with a hint of orange and spices to make you truly regret your decision.
None of this really matters because craft beer is basically the purview of straight white dudes, like a country club for people with a lot of facial hair, too many tattoos, and a deep knowledge of the Polvo discography. These are not really my fish to fry: that fucker on the Shock Top label is. Imagine the son of the Mac Tonight Moon Man — a beautiful and awesome man, admirably chilling deep in the heart of America’s anxieties — abandoned in a North Dakota wheat field, inflicted with jaundice. That’s the basic look of Shock Top’s Wedgehead, a horrifying corporate creation borne of the same stultifying process as Poochie. Unfortunately, Wedgehead did not die on the way back to his home planet (which is Shit Planet, FYI).
Faced with millennials abandoning macro-swill in favor of micro-swill brewed by condescending snobs in areas of town dubbed up-and-coming and soon to price out their original inhabitants, the brands have decided what they really need is a business mascot with an attitude. Wedgehead is this, and Shock Top is the original beer from hell, not be confused with a Helles lager, a style of beer originating in Munich and originally created to compete with the crisp pilsners of Bohemia.
Wedgie’s sunglasses and mohawk are ample evidence that this “isn’t your daddy’s wheat beer.” If it were brewed by reclusive author and paper bag aficionado, Thomas Pynchon, it would be Inherent Weiss. (Technically speaking, Shock Top is a witbier due to the use of Belgian yeast; if it was a German-style brew it would fall under the category of weiss beer.)
For failed attempts to court young people via alcohol and cynical branding on the level of Shock Top’s disgrace, we recall the memory of Zima, the translucent beverage horror of the 90’s that wasn’t Crystal Pepsi. Crystal Pepsi has recently returned from its sadly breakable grave, so too might the scary rotgut of Zima, to once again stalk the aisles of local supermarkets next to Shock Top.
What makes Shock Top and Wedgehead even more pernicious are recent attempts to rebrand the brew as a hepcat bev with the assistance of T.J. Miller in an insidious Super Bowl commercial. Some of the jokes in said ad hit pay dirt, no doubt written by frustrated Twitter comedians just trying to make enough to pay the rent for their slice of squalor in some chic L.A. or New York neighborhood. We at the Shocker have no particular beef with them… yet. But there is no such thing as ethical consumption, so their time is likely to come.
We also give Martin Montana, voice of Wedgehead a pass, for now. After all, he has even less Twitter followers than Shocker contributor Andrew Crowley. Perhaps because he is living a happy and stable life in the actual world, unlike the famous cryaholic Andy C., who vomits nervously at the thought of prolonged human interaction.
What we are at war with is the very neoliberal idea of this corporate mascot, who dares to co-opt an outmoded brand of cool, and dares to cajole consumers into buying mediocre beer. Unless of course Shock Top pays us $200 right away. And to be sure, there is value and purpose in what Shock Top offers. It can make getting loaded — a brave frontier — cheap, and offer an alternative to endless arrays of adjunct lagers. This certainly beats drinking bottles of Night Train and passing out in the alleyway behind the Javits Convention Center during the World Stamp Show. Anyone who has earned the disdain of fellow philatelists can appreciate this.
But we cannot stand the idea of our site being confused for a mediocre wheat beer. It is with clear sobbing eyes and a full pukey heart that we at The Shocker declare war against Shock Top and Wedgehead. This is what the blue dog wants.