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I remember when Schlitz was on top, along with Hamm's (love the blue colors on the can) and Pabst Blue Ribbon. If you lived west of the Rockies, you could get Coor's (giving it a forbidden-fruit magnetism for everyone else.)

And the great jingles with the beer commercials: "When you've got the time, we've got the beer", "From the land of sky blue waters", etc.

Times gone by. In retrospect, they were good.

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> If you lived west of the Rockies, you could get Coor's (giving it a forbidden-fruit magnetism for everyone else.)

Funny thing is, this same "forbidden beer" thing played out again in the 2000s with New Belgium beers in general, and Fat Tire in particular. Nowadays you can find it just about anywhere, but in 2002 it was tough to come by east of the Mississippi.

Once in college we took a seven hour road trip to West Memphis, Arkansas, because there was a rumor going around that it could be found there. Sure enough, we found three cases in a sketchy liquor store. We made those beers last. :)

The appeal of Coors was so great that the 2nd highest grossing film of 1977, behind only Star Wars, was about a smuggling run to bring Coors to Georgia. It's kind of shocking that was big enough to be the premise of a film.

> It's kind of shocking that was big enough to be the premise of a film.

I don't think most people at the time were really aware of Coors smuggling being "big enough." I know I wasn't. It's just that it provided a premise for an illegal trucking run. Here's some background, from https://vinepair.com/wine-blog/smokey-and-the-bandit-and-coo... :

"Turns out the plot of Smokey and the Bandit is centered on one lovable tycoon’s deep-seated thirst for Coors. ... The back story of how Smokey got made is a bit more interesting: prolific Hollywood stuntman Hal Needham was working on the set of Gator and was given a gift of (illegal) Coors.

"You read that right. Coors, ubiquitous potion of good time brohood, was once illegal in certain states. The movie was made in the late ’70s, and at that time, Coors was actually a regional product. It was made in Colorado, but because it wasn’t pasteurized and contained no preservatives, shipping could get a little tricky. Coors didn’t get national distribution until 1986. Which is why, in the 1970s, Coors wasn’t actually licensed to sell east of the Mississippi, making it, briefly, a rare and sought-after product.

"Coors’ cachet aside, Needham wasn’t a big beer fan, but he did notice that the Coors would disappear out of his trailer in small increments. Finally he figured out the maid was stealing two bottles a day. Realizing how important this beer was, to some anyway, he thought “bootlegging Coors would make a good plotline for a movie.”

"So in between being thrown around and set on fire and stuff, Needham actually wrote the script for Smokey and the Bandit. He showed it to his roommate at the time, who thought the dialogue was “horrible” but the plot was good enough. We’ve all had opinionated roommates, but Needham’s roommate was actually Burt Reynolds, the number one box office star at the time, and the inspiration for many a misbegotten mustache. Reynolds helped Needham get the movie made, and the rest is Dixie car chase and Coors history."

I recall when Coors pushed distribution out to Seattle. It was a rare treat and some stores overstocked, storing the beer on the floor outside the coolers. That beer went bad pretty quick and killed the mystique for quite a few customers.

If you lived east of the Rockies, and anywhere near Canada, you did what any discerning beer-lover would do ... drive north and drink Labatt's.

> If you lived west of the Rockies, you could get Coor's (giving it a forbidden-fruit magnetism for everyone else.)

Not that it matters, but wasn’t the dividing line the Mississippi River, not the Rocky Mountains?