We call these things Wild Rainiers, and in the 1970’s they rescued Seattle’s Rainier Brewing Company from an ominous spiral of decreasing sales. 

By all accounts, Rainier Beer is and always has been a middling, uninspired, forgettable lager. Since that sort of nondescript, beer-that’s-a-beer flavor defined American brewing up until the 21st century, Rainier wasn’t struggling because of flavor– they fell behind from inadequate advertising. 

In the early 1970’s, Rainier Brewing Company had contracted three different ad agencies in five years and was sixth in sales within their home state of Washington. The brewery needed a spark, badly.

In their search for advertising talent, Rainier found Heckler-Bowker, a small Seattle agency that, at the time, was mainly working with the upstart coffee company, Starbucks.

Heckler-Bowker pitched Rainier a slew of unorthodox concepts and was hired on a probationary basis. Among those concepts was the idea to strap 40-pound, 8-foot fiberglass Rainier Bottles to men in black tights, treat the bottle-men like a herd of wild animals, and name said herd the “Wild Rainiers.” 

The Wild Rainiers were a hit. By the 1980’s, Rainier Brewing Company became the top selling beer in Washington, surpassing Budweiser, which had a reportedly 8X larger advertising budget.