No, I'm talking favouritest EVAAAARRRR thing in terms of return for original investment, in bang-for-buck, pound-for-pound, power-to-weight-ratio terms. Mine cost me a buck fitty from the dodgy Chinese supermarket over the road from Chateau Dodgy v2.0 in St Lucia and has given me many years of loyal service and many hours of untrammelled happiness. It is at once a piece of irreplaceable memorabilia, an unrivalled bit of retro kitsch, AND possibly the most useful invention since bread came sliced. (Which to be honest is a bit shit really, it's not that fucking hard to operate a bread knife.)
I give you...
...my Marlboro World Championship Team bottle opener fridge magnet.
We'll deal with its usefulness first. Yes folks, it's a fridge magnet AND a bottle opener. Because where else could you put a bottle opener that would be more ingeniously useful than ON THE FRIDGE YOU'VE JUST GOT YOUR BEER OUT OF? Not only that, but it's been bench-tested on practically every brand of domestic and imported ale available in Australia and New Zealand, plus every variety of home brew ever produced by the Old Chateau Dodgy Brewhouse, with only minor metal fatigue and plastic delamination to show for its eight years of stellar service.
The memorabilia/kitsch angle... that's a bit more obscure. And controversial. And, to be honest, hypocritical. I've never smoked, never wanted to, always thought it was a fucking stupid habit with less upside than self-inflicted razor slashes to the genitals. As a kid in the '80s, when ciggy ads were still legal in Australia (being one of the first Western nations to ban them) I rated the work of legendary outlaw billboard defacers BUGA UP, a bunch of renegade health professionals and freelance street artists who saw it as their mission to turn glossy tobacco advertising into a medium for their more down to earth message:
Still funny now. But with age comes pragmatism. I still think Big Tobacco are a lot of absolute bastards, but Big Oil are inveterate bastards as well and Big Pharma ain't a lot better. Never give a sucker an even break, and never put a corporate in the position to trade human health for company profits, because they'll do it without question or compunction. But that ain't the point. It's dumb I know, and massively hypocritical, but I miss cigarette sponsorship of sport. I know why it had to go - when six-year-old me is hero-worshipping Brocky in his day-glo Marlboro HDT Commodore as he powers to another Bathurst win, it's hard to argue even if they weren't directly targeting youth they were certainly reaching it successfully. But that's kinda the point. All my most treasured memories of sport as a kid were tied up with cigarette imagery.
Benson and Hedges World Series Cricket. The Winfield Cup and the Rothmans Medal. Brocky's Marlboro HDT Commodores, the JPS BMWs and Allan Moffat's Stuyvies Mazda. The iconic JPS Lotuses and Marlboro McLarens of Formula One. Mick Doohan and Wayne Gardner's Rothmans Hondas. It wasn't just things with engines that benefitted from tobacco money, but they benefitted most, and benefitted last - even to this day 
Casey Stoner's MotoGP Ducati and Massa and Raikkonen's F1 Ferraris are emblazoned with Marlboro signage, on the three races a year when they're legally allowed to actually have the world 'Marlboro' on the side of the vehicle instead of a dubious looking barcode. It used to worry me that my heroes were trying to sell me coffin nails. I guess as you get older you realise that people don't just inexorably do what marketing managers tell them to, they have choices and they have discretion as to what they do with their lives. Doing what advertising tells you is called Being Stupid.
Anyway, back to my bottle opener. The Marlboro World Championship Team was a PR invention, basically a means of unifying all of the top-line motorsport bods who Phillip Morris were chucking cash towards at any given moment in either car or bike racing, which dictated whether it was the silhouette of a McLaren F1 car or a Yamaha 500cc GP bike in the logo. So it's all about the retro value. I look at that logo and it takes me back to good times, back to the halcyon days of the 500cc GP class in the early '90s - Gardner and Doohan on the Hondas, Kevin Schwantz hanging off the Lucky Strike Suzuki, and the likes of Eddie Lawson, Wayne Rainey and Luca Cadalora on the factory Marlboro Yamahas. That, and drinking beer.
Speaking of which... time for another.
The Doctor is OUT.
8 comments:
This is officially the first interesting story i have ever read about a bottle opener. Wow
Congrats U, you can now officially say you've lived.
Yeah. The 75000 alcohol related deaths in the US each year were obviously from drinking gin.
To be fair they only defaced billboards for shit beer, like VB.
Actually this is part of the reason that while I admire what BUGA UP were doing, I reckon they - and a lot of messianic public health campaigners - are off base. They basically take the view, being highly educated medical professionals, that everyone else in society is a bunch of unwashed thumbless braindead monkeys with no impulse control whatsoever, who can't be allowed to make up our own minds on anything which impacts upon our own health because we're inherently stupid and will choose the path of greatest potential health risk. They have a point, to a limited degree - the only things that kill more US peeps than the grog are smokes and eating shit food, all of which are self-inflicted injuries (not withstanding passive smoking, getting wiped out by oncoming drunk drivers etc) and bringing it down to lowest common denominator status, these things cost us a shitload to clean up. But the attitude that we're all incapable of looking after ourselves and need to be legislated for our own good is elitist, cretinous and insulting.
I've taken the BUGA UP methodology and applied it to other industries with highly dubious (if not completely faulty) moral compasses, like real estate. Peeling the plastic letters off For Sale signs, changing the message and (most importantly) replanting the sign as-was - or just presenting it to your flatmate as a tribute - is a critical part of such civil disobedience.
Love the bottle opener and Brocky's day glow dunnydore has to be the most iconic racecar ever built in Aus!
That said, I have to take you to task over you constant VB bashing. Yes the locally brewed VB in QLD is utter shite! I reckon they substitue XXXX for water in the brewing process, that's the only way it could be that bad. Last time I drank it, it took me 2 slabs to get used to the taste.
But VB brewed in Melbourne, drunk from a stubbie cold, is an acceptable brew. It's not fanatastic and I rarely buy it, but I will quite happily drink it from time to time.
Hey, I'm an equal opportunity shite-commercial-beer basher. XXXX, VB - it's all fairly ordinary. Even the last couple of Tooheys News I've had I've regretted. Old not so much, still rate the black. Definitely factual reality that NZ does generic commercial beer wayyyy better than Australia does. Speights >>>>>>> VB/XXXX etc.
My main issue with VB is that the occasions on which I used to drink it were never by choice. Tended to be out of a warm can or plastic cup at sports events or rock gigs/festivals - never never NEVAAARRR a good development. Tbf when CUB introduced Carlton Draught to Sydney about 10 yrs ago it was damn tasty, near indistinguishable from New, and when CUB were sponsoring the likes of Livid and Homebake the option to go for CD over VB was always taken - but at the same time VB was sponsoring the V8 Supercars and the Green Can Of Arse was all she wrote at those events, just what you want standing on the 'hill' at Ipswich Raceway in 37 degree heat inhaling dust and fumes. And as you point out, anything that comes out of CUB's Yatala plant south of Brisbane is inherently fucked anyway - VB, CD, Cascade Light, even their version of Crownies - all nastier than a week in Boonie's jockstrap.
"unwashed thumbless braindead monkeys with no impulse control whatsoever, who can't be allowed to make up our own minds on anything which impacts upon our own health because we're inherently stupid and will choose the path of greatest potential health risk." Sums me up quite well.
As for VB, its not my fave but can be an acceptable alternative. Tooheys New these days has a different recipe and thus the product has been degraded. CD is definitely now in front.
Jimmy Boags Premium is still my besty.
Therbs - that'd explain why the last couple of New schooners I've downed I've immediately sought alternative options to. Then again I'm usually on holiday and in a mood to catch up on Aussie beer I can't get off tap in NZ, so it's Coopers, Cascade etc. Bit fucked in Qld and nthn NSW as the Carlton product is substandard courtesy Yatala being a poo factory - still hate CUB for shutting Broadway and discontinuing Reschs Smooth, Kent Old Brown etc - and Tooheys having messed with New. Old's still the goods though. Uncle Ted I've gone off - they've probably changed that one too. Hahn Premium good. Hahn SuperDry not bad for beers on the second or third day of beverage consumption - most of those low carb beers are arse but HSD seems to be not too foul. Jimmy Squire good in its context - which ain't sitting in the sun drinking same in volume. Jimmy Boags' stuff in general would be my favourite mainstream Aussie brewer, they do a lot of good work. Their Premium sometimes gives me hayfever though. No idea why, might be the hops. Drinking more helps though.
I'm pretty sure most of those 75,000 were drinking Budweiser, which if you've ever had it, you'd know it's not beer. Or, they were, as you said, drinking gin. And vodka. Maybe rum. A LOT of rum.
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