I was a huge Coke fan back then and I was beyond outraged
In 1982 it took a great beer(Schlitz) to bring The Who to America…
A few years back I read a book that was presented as being the novelization of a lost “road” movie from the '70s, where the plot is that a southern-fried ne’er-do-well outlaw type has been hired by Ted Turner to hand-deliver a six pack of Schlitz to President Carter within 36 hours.
Hijinks ensue.
I think the guys who wrote Smokey and the Bandit should have sued for plagiarism. 
It was very much a parody of Smokey-esque movies. The novel’s conceit is that the movie had the bad luck to be released on the same day as Star Wars, so it bombed and the entire world forgot about it until its novelization was rediscovered.
The “ULINE” company, which specializes in shipping products and the like, was founded by a family named Uihlein, who were a branch of the Schlitz family tree. They do sell quality products, but I’ve long heard that the company is a nightmare to work for.
Whenever I’ve heard of Schlitz Beer in the past 30-plus years, I always thought of my classmate who got her first degree at one of those expensive colleges that has a lot of wealthy students who didn’t get into Ivy League schools, and yeah, a member of the Schlitz family lived in her dorm, and would have regular phone calls with her parents where she would basically go berserk asking for money.
In fact, another Uihlein, Robert Uihlein Jr., was the president and chairman of the board of Schlitz during the 1960s and 1970s, and oversaw the cost-cutting moves which killed the brand. (I’m not certain, but I think that Robert Jr. was the uncle of Richard Uihlein, of Uline.)
My mom worked as a “Schlitz Girl” at the Brown Bottle Pub in the late 50s.
I guess we’re out of beer, now.
I could never stand the taste of the stuff, but I loved the idea of it. I have a model of a Schlitz truck, a lighted rotating bar globe, and a couple different tapper glasses. I used to have the full range of cans (6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16oz and 32 oz Tall boy) in my collection. I never did get a Schlitz neon sign, though. I’ll miss it.
Schlitz: The Beer that made Milwaukee Burp
But, as an oldtimer Wisconsinite, (and beer memorabilia collector) I’ve seen the demise, or decline, or absorbed into the mega breweries, and ultimate hipster revival, of many a brand. I miss them all: Chief Oshkosh, Huber, Red White and Blue, Point, Meister Brau, Blatz, Old Style, Old Milwaukee, Andecker, Hamms, Reinlander, Schmidt, and good old 99c/sixpack PBR. And more I can’t remember right now. I’ll add Schlitz to the growing list.
Do they still make Schlitz Malt Liquor?
Point is alive and well, Huber, Blatz, Old Style, Old Milwaukee, and Hamms all still being brewed.
Red, White, and Blue and A decker were reintroduced by Pabst for a while a few years ago.
Rhinelander is back, as well, though I don’t know how widely it’s distributed. I’ve found cases of bottles in one of my local liquor stores, in suburban Chicago, a couple of times in recent years.
Never had Schlitz, but we got the commercials on TV: “When you’re out of Schlitz, you’re out of beer.”
We did get Old Milwaukee and Meister Brau in our liquor stores, and they were fine served cold on a hot and humid day. Either also added a little extra flavour to a pot of homemade chili.
We always said, “when you’re out of Schlitz, that’s the shits!”
But what will the hosts of the podcast “Bonanas for Bonanza” drink to honor the Schlitz Playhouse of Stars?
I’m a bit late to the party. But in a very real sense, GM killed Olds and Pontiac in the same way Schlitz killed itself. Incremetal cost-cutting until the product is unrecognizable to previously loyal customers.
Back in the early 1950s each of GM’s brands were really very different vehicles with different engineering and styling heritages. And different customer bases to match.
Slowly but surely in the name of the conglomerate saving money at the expense of its brands distinctiveness, the vehicles were redesigned to share more and more of their parts, and their styling, and their marketing, and …
By the 1980s Cadillacs and Chevys differed only in the upholstery and the price tag. And Olds and Pontiac had become utterly superfluous; squeezed in between the ever-shrinking differences in GM’s 7-layer Dagwood sandwich of nearly indistinguishable brands.
So they died. Or rather were put down by their management like an old no longer wanted dog that could barely walk. But it couldn’t walk because they’d starved it and hobbled it for decades first.
But the Schlitz Sludge that brought the beer down in the late 70’s isn’t what they’ve been selling these past 40 years. They corrected it and even went back to their original formula some 18 years ago.
But what they did 45+ years ago couldn’t be undone and many beer drinkers didn’t go back.
Plus there has been no marketing for Schlitz in over 40 years. When was the last time you saw a Schlitz commercial on TV?
Fair, but it was a chicken-and-egg situation. Sales of Schlitz had long ago declined to a tiny fraction of what they once were, and a major ad campaign would have cost far more than the profits that the brand brought in for whoever owned it (Stroh, then Pabst). At least in the last couple of decades, Schlitz was probably at the level of craft beers, as far as the size of its business.
And, we also don’t see network TV ads anymore for Pabst Blue Ribbon, Old Milwaukee, and Colt 45, the other once-prominent brands now owned by Pabst. Even PBR’s revival was largely fueled by small-scale “guerilla marketing” tactics (especially on social media), not a TV ad campaign.
FWIW, the Wikipedia article on Schlitz says this:
Now, I don’t remember seeing Schlitz ads around 2008, and I live in one of those markets, which suggests to me that that campaign didn’t have a whole lot of money behind it. There doesn’t appear to be a Schlitz ad from that campaign on YouTube.
Yeah. Lotta overlapping things happened.
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They nerfed the recipe then went back too late to recover former loyal customers.
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Budweiser got huuge as nearly all the second-tier brewers got bought up and shut down. Leaving just pipsqueaks.
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The whole microbrew / craft beer thing happened
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The whole Lite / light beer thing happened
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The alcoholic soda AKA hard cider thing happened
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Tastes changed; the Everyman no longer drinks watery American lager. And if they do, it’s probably a variation on Bud.
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Most recently, alcohol sales of all kinds are cratering, with beer leading the way. Young adults don’t hardly drink, and especially not filling bloating stinky old beer like Granddad (IOW you and me) used to like.
Each of those things contributed to the end of Schlitz and many, many more of its kind. I don’t know that we can apportion blame among them. More like death by a thousand cuts.
IMO which second-tier brands survive today as just another branded flavor brewed by Big Beer depended a lot more on that brand’s owner’s willingness to sell out back when the selling was good 30 years ago. Anybody who waited too long, or who wanted a premium price was simply left to die in the quicksand of a rapidly shifting and shrinking marketplace.
Oh my. The giant Schlitz light up sign at the ginormous Liquor emporium will have to go.
You know the one. Guy with a flat top and a mug of Schlitz.
Yeah. That looks just like pictures of my Daddy in his youth. In fact I told all my friends he was a spokes-model for beer.
Hmmm 
wonder can I buy that sign?