Well, for some reason, I always pronounce it ‘La-bats’, slipping an ‘s’ on the end, there. Even when I say the full name: ‘La-bats blue’. Too late to change, I guess.
Funny Labatt Blue story: On one of our lacrosse trips, we went down to Northern Illinois University.
One of our nights there, we went out to the bar as a team. One of my friends goes up to the bar and asks the bartender for “12 bottles of Blue.”
The bartender looked at Nate with a confused look on his face and replied, “You want 12 bottles of SKYY Blue?!?”
Jaws dropped. The bar went silent. Nate, a barkeep himself, just looked at this man, aghast at what he had just heard. The other bartender walks over, taps his coworker on the shoulder and says, “Dude, they’re from Michigan. They want Labatt.”
I was just down in North Carolina, at a huge bluegrass festival, and the guys camping next to us were from down south. I was drinking the cheap american piss to save money (blechhh), but these guys were drinking Labatt('s) Blue! Strange, eh? But they were pronouncing it Law-Bot. I didn’t bother correcting them. Good thing it’s hard to mispronounce Moosehead.
They had a not-half-bad ad campaign a few years ago where they put “La” in front of everyday English words, to make them sound more French (and hence ‘exotic’ I guess). Of course each ad went something like: "La Chair… La Bar…La Hot Lady… La Batt’s…)