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When a rival brewer released a 100-pack of beer, Finnish brewery Nokian Panimo did the only logical thing: They manufactured a 1,000-pack.
Had you visited a Finnish supermarket in April, you may have come across what looked like any typical beer display. Five stacks, 18 beers long and 18 beers wide – 1,080 cans of Nokian Panimo Keisari in total. But you wouldn’t have been able to grab a six-pack off the stack and be on your merry way. No, the brewery was selling the whole palette as a 1,000-plus-pack of beer.
The reason is a delightful tale of pettiness. It begins over a month ago, when a (different) Finnish beer company called Karjala released a 100-pack of beer. Here’s their promo video, which is fascinating even if you don’t understand Finnish.
Seems cool. Also, significantly, seems like something you can still transport with one or two people. Good stunt, Karjala.
But 100 beers isn’t cool. You know what’s cool? 1,000 beers.
Not one to be outdone, rival beer-makers Nokia Panimo created a 1,000 (technically, 1,080) pack of beer. It retails for 2,150 euros which is about $2,345. That comes about to a little over $2 a beer, which is about the same discount of a six-pack. It looked like this.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BTa7WbwDmHC/?taken-by=nokianpanimo
Is there a demand for 1,000-packs of Keisari? As it turns out, sort of. There is photographic evidence of these Keisari packs in the wild coming, of course, from social media.
Man seen buying a 1000-pack of #beer in #Finland. https://t.co/FZiXB8UIBM pic.twitter.com/s8QL6euMC0
— Robin Ahlfors (@R0bquake) April 30, 2017
https://www.instagram.com/p/BTjst9llss4/
https://www.instagram.com/p/BTqdX7rhKC9/
According to Grub Street, the 1000-packs were intended as a “spontaneous joke” in response to the Karjala’s 100-pack, which was, in fact, an April Fool’s Day “reverse joke,” whatever that means. Which is exactly the kind of thing you would say when your pettiness gets out of hand and people start wondering where on earth they could even put a palette of 1,000 beers if they had any desire to buy a pack.
Ultimately, this is a cruel, capitalist world with no time for stunts. Stores that don’t sell the 1,000-pack began breaking them down May 1 into more manageable sizes. Still,1,000-packs of beer may not sell, but pettiness lives forever.
