7 Eleven Beer: And Yet No Hoverboard

I’m a simple man. I don’t ask for much.  While I’m reasonable, I demand people have a good sense of priority.

If you had to choose between eating a sandwich and saving a child thrown from a building, the decision would be tough.  After a decent amount of deliberation, you catch the child…but you probably thought about eating the sandwich while doing it, am I right?  Me too!

Or let’s say you have the choice to cure cancer or invent a fart-proof blanket?

I see. The fart blanket it is.  How about this simple choice: Add yet another mediocre dirt cheap beer to the market or invent a long-promised hoverboard?

Mankind again chooses to ignore the hoverboard.  7 Eleven presents Game Day, a cheap-as-your-father’s-beer entry sure to be found in dorm rooms everywhere.  Beer pong playing college students  will rejoice as Game Day attempts to one-up cheap rivals Keystone Light and the ubiquitous Miller High Life.  It’s called Game Day.  Could this be a more obvious marketing strategy aimed at game-oriented binge drinking?

The true question is how much of this watered-down swill do we need in a watered-down market of said swill?  According to this wonderful article at Huffpo, cheap beer sales are on the rise.

“We can give premium beers a run for their money,” said Skinner, adding that Game Day performed well in taste tests, including among suppliers of premium beers.

Sounds logical enough.  With a bit of advertising and decent market conditions, how could this possibly fail?  I mean, it’s cheap beer.  Oh.

This is 7-Eleven’s second attempt at beer. In 2003, they introduced Santiago, meant to compete with imports like Corona, but ultimately unable to gain much of a foothold.

I think my favorite thing about this is that 7 Eleven swings for the fences.  Instead of going for a “Game Day” every-man-type-brew they go for an ethnically leaning beverage called “Santiago.”  Could they have given this beer a worse name?  Perhaps naming it after a different Latin American country’s capitol would have worked.  Montevideo Beer?  Sign me up!

Ethically speaking beer like this always strikes me as suspicious.  It’s cheap as all get out and could actually be considered an effective weapon of mass, cheap silence.  Marijuana is still illegal yet one can spend eight dollars on a 12 pack and then kill someone with their car.  Something seems slightly out of whack here, but I digress.  Off the soapbox I hop.

7 Eleven now offers store brand wine and beer. If that isn’t a sign that our empire is waning, I beg you to reconsider the existence of 7 Eleven wine. Eat drink and be merry for tomorrow we die,  and with my luck I’ll die the day before the hoverboard hits the market.