What the...?!

So I don't really care too much for football (surprise! right?) however, every freaking year I end up watching the Super bowl for the half time show and commercials and Dad has the tenants up to watch the game to "start the year off with some camaraderie to thank them for last year's rent".

Every year the biggest advertiser is Anheiser-Busch (A-B) which was once the oldest and largest American brewer and was based in St. Louis... until they sold out to Belgian-Brazilian owned InBev in 2008 to become A-B InBev. (That caused an immediate and steadily increasing drop in sales. Why they assumed St. Louis and Missourians wouldn't notice the buyout of St. Louis' largest employer I don't know. Why they assumed that we would still drink their Belgian beer when we don't drink the rest of their crap, I don't know. We have other awesome breweries in St. Louis we can and did turn to.) The trademark beer for A-B was Budweiser. It's a basic beer. Bud Light was the basic redneck counter part.

The icon for Budweiser made an appearance every Superbowl, and that icon was the Clydesdale. Every year (without break since 2001 and prior to that for at least as long as I've been alive) we could count on watching a Clydesdale -a large and majestic horse- pull a sleigh through snow to deliver it's riders to the brewery, and watch the leading Clydesdale kick a winning field goal. The horse as a long time icon for A-B - ever since a Clydesdale pulled the delivery sleigh to the white house for the president's first beer after prohibition ended- became an icon for St. Louis.

Early this week the advertisements for the Superbowl were announced. As usual the largest advertiser with 5 minutes of air time is A-B InBev. As expected, Bud Light commercials are going to be funny. As planned, InBev's smaller breweries are getting more air time.
Surprisingly, there are no Clydesdale's in this year's line up. Not one. Not even a guest spot in the back. Not even stumbling on set in the background. Not even a toy Clydesdale in a child's hand.

Now, I'm all for change. I'm a big fan of changing ad campaigns when they don't work. But Clydesdales are tradition and a good one. That's a tradition that was voted as a high contender for favorite ad by readers of the USA Today. That's a tradition that not only St. Louisians, Missourians and Midwesterners love, it's loved nation wide. It's a tradition that brings to mind Thomas Kincaid and Norman Rockwell Christmases while simultaneously creating an excitement of a race track and the soothing joy of a cold beer on a summer's day.

It's a dumb move on their part. If I was still drinking, if I was still drinking their European-South American stale goat urine I would never touch it again. I would rather starve than drink a Budweiser now.